By: Chris Roberson (writer), Michael Allred (artist), Laura Allred (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)
The Story: The end is near as the extra-dimensional squid-monster Xitalu (and his demonic minions) attack.
Two things: 1). Story isn’t moving quite the way it should. – This series only has two issues left and there is a LOT going on. In a way, this issue is a microcosm of the entire series where we’ve had more ideas and characters than we have pages. I Zombie has an ensemble cast, but Gwyn is really the main character. All of the other characters support her – or should support her. But Gwyn is only on 6 pages of this issue! And, it isn’t as if this is some isolated story arc in the middle of the series where the supporting characters move to the front…..only two more issues remain! How is Gwyn going to have a satisfactory conclusion to her story when she will probably only get a handful of pages in those final two issues? The answer is that she probably won’t have a satisfactory conclusion and it just smacks of this series being cancelled before it’s time. It’s a shame because there is such potential here. Gwyn is a great character has to yield time to interesting characters like: Ellie the Ghost, the hot vampire grad students, Amon, the Dead Presidents, Diogenes and Spot and his chimpanzee grandfather. True, there are a few characters who are less interesting (this phantom gunman, for example), but for the most part the characters are really cool. But, both this issue and this series suffered from the problem that more isn’t necessarily better. This series probably would have been better if Roberson had only used half of these characters and saved the rest for a future project.
2). Art is again very strong. – The all-Allred art team has been a consistent source of strength in this series. Time after time the “story” has gotten a bit jumbled and hectic, only for the art to be the anchor that kept me interested in the series. Again, in this issue they’re just nailing things. Their visual contributions are why this series will get sent off for custom binding and not get sent to Goodwill. Everything is strong in this issue, but there are a few panels in here that are just better than what most other art teams can accomplish.
Conclusion: At this point, there isn’t much reason for new readers to hop onboard. But, if you’re an existing reader, you’ll find this issue to be pretty much like the rest of the series: Too many interesting characters for the pages allotted with wonderful art keeping you interested.
Grade: B-
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion