The Lost Boys - The Comic

The Lost Boys: Comic Sequel 

Published 2016

I was going to skip this. I knew it came out and avoided it out of skepticism. I read it for this with the intent of leaving it as a footnote in the movie post. But I liked it. I really liked it. 

Quickly

The Emerson family, the Frog Brothers, Star and Laddie are living their lives until a tragedy reveals that Santa Carla still has "too many goddamn vampires". 

Nitpick

I got fixated on my confusion of why Lucy is Lucy Emerson and Sam and Michael Emerson. She's recently divorced and that would commonly be her husband's name but in this comic it establishes her father is an Emerson. It's not impossible that she would keep her maiden name and give that name to her kids but it's not common. The comic has enough going for it that I'm just stuck on a nitpick. Really, the only reason this bothers me is because it feels like a mistake. There were a couple tiny things here and there that didn't feel completely thought out but that didn't take away from the overall story.

Just Some Detail

The comic book picks up shortly after the film ended. Everyone's back and just living their lives. It's not easy and not glamorous but it's good. Michael's working at a nursing home. Lucy's still working at the video store. Sam's working at the comic book shop. Star and Laddie are living with the Emersons. The Frog Brothers are training with the grandfather to be vampire hunters. Then the vampires come and the Emerson family and friends need to fight back.

Thoughts

In the way the first movie was more Michael's story, this is more Sam's story. We learn more about Star and we learn about other vampires but Star doesn't change. She already changed in the first movie. She has to face her past now as the new person she's become. Sam starts out unconfident, still focused on superficial things, and neglecting the things that really matter. By the end, the Frog Brothers are even impressed with Sam.

One of my favorite parts is the Saxophone Man (Played by Tim Capello in the film). I loved his character. The expansion of this diegetic source of music into a character makes sense and it's fun.

I didn't really care about the new vampires. A couple of the vampires had interesting backstories but the story stops to flashback and it's a lot of effort for a character that's about to die. I didn't read the comic for the new vampires, I read it for the returning characters and the idea of what might have happened next. It was interesting but not much more than that.