By: Mike Wolfer & John Russo (story & script), Tomas Aira (art), Digikore Studios (colors) & Williams Christensen (editor)
The Story: Maybe you can guess? It’s a zombie attack, duh!
What’s Good: If you’re a zombie fan and are frustrated that in The Walking Dead, the zombies haven’t eaten a notable character in forever and haven’t even really given a good scare in a few years (although that looks to change with issue #80 in a few weeks…. just saying), you might enjoy this. By now probably every comic fan is familiar with the story of Night of the Living Dead where a bunch of nobodies find refuge in a farmhouse beset by zombies fresh from the grave. Well, this story is NOT just a retelling of that tale. It is set in the same 1960’s, but is placed in Washington, D.C. as the zombies attack in the middle of a huge hippie, Vietnam War protest.
The storytelling is pretty good and one of the hooks seems to be that the zombies are kinda keeping it on the low-down in that they’re running around on the National Mall, but no one is really yet aware of them yet. In some ways I guess a “real” zombie attack would be kinda like that: At first you’d just wonder who were these smelly biting dudes! So, not only are the authorities unaware, but it doesn’t seem like anyone else knows what’s up either.
The art is perfectly fine and on the risqué side. You’ve got full frontal hippies enjoying a night of love in the reflecting pool on the National Mall. It’s got hippies boning in the church bathroom while the night watchman gets killed by the zombies outside. Generally, this book does what I like to see a non-Marvel/DC title do: Push the limits in some way.
What’s Not So Good: I’ll admit that I canceled my pre-orders for this after issue #1 because I just don’t need to see another “zombie attack” story. That may seem an odd statement coming from the guy who rates The Walking Dead as his favorite current comic, but TWD is great because of the character building. This comic doesn’t really have any character building at all and it certainly doesn’t look like it’ll get into the “breakdown of human society” that I enjoy in apocalypse fiction.
I also tend to think that “zombies attack” stories work a little better in film. There you get your whole fix in 2 hours and you move on. It’s hard to have that same sense of drama and dread in comics where the story is spread across months between issues. Conversely, I don’t think films do a very good job with post-apocalypse, breakdown of human society stories because 2 hours just isn’t can’t compete from a depth of story standpoint with 80 issue of The Walking Dead. To each their own.
And plot holes… Is there anyone who would really get naked and walk around barefoot in the reflecting pool? Maybe it was clean in the 60’s. And it seems zombies were only rising from the dead in the countryside and invading DC from there. Isn’t Arlington National Cemetery right next to the National Mall?
Conclusion: If you like zombies and need a zombie fix, or if you like seeing zombies attacking naked hippies, or if you like the potential of the stronghold against the zombie hordes being LBJ’s White House, you should give this a try. It isn’t great comics, but it’ll get you where you need to go. But, if you’re a Walking Dead fan, this is going to seem pretty shallow.
Grade: C
-Dean Stell
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Conclusion