By: Mark Sable (writer), Paul Azaceta (artist), Matt Wilson (colors) & Thomas Mauer (letters)
The Story: Zombies attack during the present day Afghanistan conflict.
What’s Good: In the first issue, Sable and Azaceta laid a lot of groundwork by showing us who these various Marines are as people. Let’s just say that they weren’t all buddy-buddy. That foundation paid off in this issue as the Marines were all trapped within their firebase as the shambling hordes descend upon them. Now those tensions among them can start to fester as their social and military structure breaks down around their ears.
Then layered on top of this are the local Afghans. They’d kinda like to come inside the base where it’s “safe” too. Lots of interesting angles on that. For sure you could point out how the Afghans were suddenly pretty happy to have Marines around when the shit hits the fan. But, you also know that some of these folks aren’t going to have “survival of the group” at the top of their lists.
This tension illustrates one of the wonderful things about Romero-zombies for dramatic storytelling: Because they’re slow and lumbering, the humans have time to breath and relax a little bit, allowing tensions to rise up in a way that isn’t as easy with the trend towards “the infected” zombies that have come into vogue. It’s hard to have human interest when the “zombies” run faster than you do.
The art is really nice. Paul Azaceta doesn’t have an awkward panel in the entire issue, which is saying a lot when there are surely over 100 panels in the issue. I also love how he knows when to have detail and when to get a little more vague with the characters as in one scene of a Marine shooting up zombies from a distance. No need to go nuts drawing those zombies. They’re far away, but we know what they are. Good characters, nice acting, nice depth. It has it all. And the colors by Matt Wilson are really nice too. For the most part it is a pretty drab book, but its nice to see a colorist who isn’t trying to foist primary colors on us when they wouldn’t be appropriate.
What’s Not So Good: There is a lot of flashing back in this issue to scenes from the past featuring an Afghan farmer who is caught between the Taliban (who want him to grow opium poppies) and the Marines (who want him to grow wheat). This may become important in later issues, but it wasn’t clear that it was important in this issue. I’m also all for understanding the plight of the Afghan commoner and think that Sable and Azaceta could kick ass on that type of comic, but I’m not sure I want that story mixed with my zombies.
I also had a lot of scenes where I couldn’t quite remember who the various soliders were and which ones they were from the first issue where we learned about their personalities. We are given a very nice pictorial dramatis personae in the front of the issue, and that is useful for remembering names, but I still couldn’t remember which guy was the by-the-book Marine and which was the authority-hating jackass. This probably won’t be a problem for folks reading the collected editions.
On a funny note, we get a scene where a machine gunner starts blasting away at the zombies, shooting them everywhere but the head. This leads to a moment of “Oh crap! They won’t stay down” before someone starts taking headshots. In today’s culture, are there any people who don’t know to shoot zombies in the head? Not really a flaw in the comic though.
Conclusion: Another solid entry in the zombie genre that also features some very good work featuring our men and women in uniform.
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
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