Review: The Dynamite Mega Bundle

I’m slightly distracted as I write this, but so would you be if you had a couple of hundred comics to choose from. And that’s exactly what I have thanks to the Dynamite Mega Bundle. You could be as fortunate as me for just $6. That’s right, $6! You can’t argue with value like that. Even if you don’t have $6, you can still get around 30 comics for free.

The Dynamite Mega Bundle is a great sampler which should appeal if you want to broaden your horizons. It’s ideal for comic book relative newbies but there’s probably enough in there for the serious fanatic and collector. Look at the list: Shaft, Django Zorro, Alice Cooper, Red Sonja, Green Hornet, Sherlock Holmes, The Twilight Zone, Frankenstein plus several others from writers including George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Amanda Hocking, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, Jeph Loeb, Kurt Busiek, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith. Dynamite is particularly proud of the inclusion of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time as it contains all 36 issues of the much-admired adaptation.

As you would expect, the artwork is of the usual high standard with some very compelling stories. Personal highlights for me include the retro stylings of Shaft and The Warriors Jailbreak, the modern city landscapes in The Twilight Zone and Uncanny, and the minimalistic look of Mocking Dead and The Hollows.

I’ve always been a fan of cult movies so I was pleased to see two 1970’s classics, Shaft and The Warriors, make an appearance. Shaft is in his normal superb form, seeing if he can to do to comics what he did to movies. Only with Shaft, it’s more of when he does it rather than if. The Warriors are in a continuation of the movie following the death of gang leader Cyrus. In the movie they’d been falsely accused of murdering Cyrus and have to fight their way back to the home turf of Coney Island. Now, they plan to break gang member Ajax out of jail.

Mark Waid and Kevin Smith both have a version of Green Hornet. Kevin Smith’s is a modern version battling the Yakuza, and Mark Waid’s is the more traditional, older style with classic cars and fast talking journalists. Also in the traditional mould is Sherlock Holmes in the classic London setting, ably assisted by Watson to discover who is behind a series of explosions. Sherlock Holmes has a nice touch in the way the narrative texts appear to be written on typewriter with more standard lettering for the speech. This adds to the feel of it being an old comic.

Alice Cooper exists in a strange demonic world of nightmares and reality (much like his normal life) and is trying to get back to his world of shock n’ roll. Cooper works well as an otherworldly figure, with his love of dark makeup, snakes and the macabre. It even utilises a broken record that starts playing backwards.

Jungle Girl Jana is a vaguely Tarzan-esque character, thriving in her life of hunting until a new arrival from the modern world changes everything.

The Mocking Dead is a darkly comic zombie adventure where all the plans and defences are based on movies and pop culture. Around the Reagan administration, secret plans with the codename TINSELTOWN were drawn up for every eventuality. The Mocking Dead is mostly illustrated in black and white with occasional (blood) colour splashes in a very effective way.

The Twilight zone features a successful Wall Street businessman, Trevor Richmond, wanting to take on a new identity in a story that’s as warped as you would hope it to be. I can’t say too much about this one without spoiling it, but it’s definitely recommended for those who like a story with a twist.

Here’s the technical bit. The Dynamite Mega Bundle includes over 200 comics (that’s more than 4000 pages of content) in pdf and epub format for as little as $6, but you are welcome to pay more if your budget and generosity allows. If you’re not sure and want to sample the goods, there are 30 or so free comics available. The free version gives you the first comic in the series and the paid version gives you the next few. You need to install BitTorrent (or similar peer-to-peer client) on your computer if you don’t have one already, but these are available for free. The BitTorrent bundle will even help you install one when you want to download the comics. Follow this link

The Dynamite Mega Bundle runs for five days only and ends on Friday 17 April at 5:00pm EST, or 2:00pm PST (which is around 9:00pm in Europe) so don’t delay if you’re interested.