Bad Kids Go to Hell
by Matthew Spradlin, Barry Wernick, Anthony Vargas, Chris Allen (Bad Kids, 2010)


Bad Kids Go to Hell is equal parts The Breakfast Club (1985), The House on Haunted Hill (1958 or 1999, take your pick) and The Grudge (2004), all stripped of their cinematic splash and crammed into a lackluster graphic novel.

The problem is, the plot never really clicks, the two-dimensional characters never earn much sympathy and the story as a whole just trundles along in an effort to be something new ... which it's not.

You have a group of vastly diverse students locked in a library for Saturday detention as a school administrator and maintenance man tend to their own business elsewhere in the building. These kids never bond or anything, they just co-exist and occasionally clash. When the first one dies, you're mostly just relieved to have one less to keep track of.

These kids never seem too upset as their numbers drop. Attempts to build a sense of mystery around one of them fail, as do various efforts to inject a bit of humor or sex appeal into the mess. It's just not a very entertaining or interesting book, and there's little else to say about it.




Rambles.NET
review by
Tom Knapp


14 May 2011


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