I’ve had a hate-love relationship with House of Gold and Bones by Corey Taylor and Richard Clark so far. That is to say I hated the first issue and loved the second one. While the first issue was stilted and seemed indicative of the lack of experience one might expect from a singer-turned-comic-book-artist, the second issue really picked up its stride and matched the passion with quality. But what about the third issue? Does it continue riding the wave of momentum from the last issue, or does it fall into its previous bad habits? Read on to find out.
When we last left our protagonist, there were somewhere between one and eighty thousand* questions that needed to be answered about who Zero is, the Conflagration, and what in the world is actually happening (*all numbers approximate). This issue is titled “The Answers”, but the answers given actually raise far more questions than I had after the last issue, and with only one issue remaining, that’s more than a little worrisome.
This is going to be my shortest review in a while because there’s nothing I can talk about here that doesn’t give something away. The opening gives us an idea of how he got to this place, and the closing supposedly tells us what that place is, though what in the world it actually means is something I have yet to grasp despite re-reading it multiple times. It’s something so out there as a concept that I wonder if Corey Taylor just processes the world differently than I or anyone else I know does. My biggest worry for the final issue is that he deems the concepts introduced so far to be far more intuitive than they actually are, which would be problematic to say the least.
I can talk about the art without spoiling anything, so let’s do that. Like I mentioned in previous reviews, Richard Clark still has a rather large problem with human faces. They just never look quite right, and that’s made more obvious by the opening sequence of this issue. That said, the action sequences here are really well done, and some of the darker elements are handled quite well. It’s still only okay in my book, but he does seem to be improving ever so slightly from issue to issue, for what that’s worth.
House of Gold and Bones #3 would be a great issue in a five-issue miniseries. Unfortunately, this is a four-issue miniseries, and I don’t see any way that Taylor and Clark can answer all the questions presented so far while still having time for proper pacing and development. My preliminary guess is that the final issue will be a rushed mess. If you were in on the series before, you should drop the $3.99 to get this comic, since it is a good effort that advances the story in important and necessary ways. That said, this is not the issue that will change your mind if you were out on it before, and if you were considering starting now, I’d avoid dropping $12 to pick up the miniseries so far until we see how it’s all going to end.
Chase Wassenar, aka MaristPlayBoy, is the Lead Editor and Founder of the Red Shirt Crew. He’s never been more nervous about the ending of a miniseries in his life. And that’s saying something. Not sure what, but it is something. You can read his other articles at ToyTMA, follow him on Twitter at @RedShirtCrew or email him at theredshirtcrew@gmail.com.
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