By Ben Snyder

Glitterbomb: The Fame Game #1 picks up directly after the horrifyingly gruesome and subversive finale to the original Glitterbomb and offers a lot of promise for Fame Game with some tradeoffs.

Met with a barrage of reporters and countless questions The Fame Game opens with the focus on our new protagonist Kaydon Klay, Farrah’s former babysitter. Writer Jim Zub does a good job of portraying the sheer mass of confusion Klay must be feeling after the events of the massacre. I am interested to see how the agent character acts as the puppet master of the media as well as if he is responsible for the rumor of Kaydon’s relationship with Farrah.

Kaydon’s mother is bound to play a similar role that Marty played in the original series. I hope they do something more interesting with her as most of the time Marty was a simple nuisance and unfortunately, Kaydon’s mom is following suit. She doesn’t show much character in this issue besides being a concerned parent that borders on abusive as she shoves Kaydon into a wall. It’s a troubling scene in which she has every right to be upset with her daughter, but it seemed as though she was angrier than worried especially as she turns around and continues the aggression towards Detective Rahal. Perhaps Zub will play up this dynamic in future issues.

I love how Zub shows that the first arch didn’t happen in a vacuum and the people that Farrah interacted with are still reeling from their prior encounter, Detective Rahal being the primary example as he is seemingly placed on probation because he went crazy after meeting Farrah. The little touch of his partner messaging him to back off the case shows a lot to see how far he has fallen in pursuit of what is going on.

In most situations I could go without the typical high school angsty struggles in comics, however Zub seems to be cleverly using this environment as a breeding ground for whatever is killing again. It’s heavily implied that whatever infiltrated Farrah is now within Kaydon, and I actually really hope this is case. We saw what it was capable of when Farrah met up with her former costar and I’d love to see how it shakes up the typical high school experience.

I guess my biggest complaint story-wise is the lack of interest I have in Kaydon as a character. She really doesn’t show much of anything in this issue besides crying. I liked how she smiled in the cab, as she realized her dream of being famous came true but besides that she acted more a vehicle to see how terrible everyone else is. Hopefully in future issues her character begins to grow a bit more.

Djibril Morissette-Phan’s art is serviceable in this issue. The faces show emotion well enough and the character designs are realistic and not exaggerated. But Morissette-Phan’s art really shined in the prior series during the horror scenes and we just didn’t get enough of those this issue. The splash page of Rahal remembering his fateful encounter with Farrah was cool and showed the hectic chain of events that must be going through his head, but the last scene in which the monster ruthlessly murdered Conrad was the highlight of the issue. Morissette-Phan’s art is very kinetic and lends itself well to these fast paced scenes, especially when it comes grinding to a halt when a face gets slammed against a fence.

Glitterbomb- The Fame Game #1 is shaping up to be a very worthy successor to it’s predecessor, but there are some drawbacks that need to be addressed. Hopefully, Zub can make Kaydon and her mom more multi-dimensional and interesting. But most importantly, we see more gruesome gory deaths happen to some deserving Scumbags.

Score: 3/5

Glitterbomb: The Fame Game #1
Image Comics