When Zombies Attack!! #3, published by Red Maverick Publishing, was a really fun read. Unfortunately, I missed issue #2 of this series, while reading issue #1 a few years back when it first came out. Honestly though, I didn’t feel as if I couldn’t take in this whole issue without the prior one. The art on this issue is a complete 180 from the first issue (again, not knowing the art style of issue #2), which really didn’t throw me at all, considering it had been so long since I read the first issue. Which comes to my only complaint about this comic. It takes forever between issues. Sometimes more than a year or so. But it’s still worth reading.

The story: When Zombie Attack!! is like the reality show COPS, but with zombies (with occasional vampires and werewolves). The reader follows the nightly routines of Officer Frank Hadely and his rookie partner Chet, of the Post Mortem Animation Control (P.M.A.C.) of Burke County. There’s always of good amount of action and gore, mixed with an ample dose of humor. I should really find a copy of issue #2. Overall, I would suggest this comic for sure for zombie comic fans looking for something a little bit different than other zombie comics. Just get ready to wait between issues. Each issue also has a great cover by comic artist Mike Huddleston.

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Tokyo Zombie is completely ridiculous. This comic is so over the top, I’m not even sure where to start. The zombies? The awkward sexual moments? The bond between student and master? The sheep? Creator Yusaku Hanakuma, master of heta uma (“bad, but good”) manga, has made one of the most original zombie stories ever created. It starts out with Fujio and Mitsuo, two warehouse workers practicing their martial arts on their break, but slowly turns into an all out zombie apocalypse as the two make a run for it. Mitsuo falls victim the zombie hordes, while Fujio manages to escape and go on to become one of the nation’s most famous zombie ring fighters. The wealthiest members of society have taken control of what little sanctuary the humans have left and have turned the poor into their slaves and throw out whoever disagrees to the outside world of zombie mayhem. While this is a very silly book, it also seems to contain some very heavy underlying comments on the social-political nature of class warfare (seriously!). Politics, slap-stick and gore! Perfect! This has definitely become one of my new favorite zombie comic of all time.

Tokyo Zombie was just published this year in English for the first time ever by the awesome people at Last Gasp. You can get this at any local comic book store or at your local book dealer. I can’t recommend the book enough. Everybody who loves zombies should read this.

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I’d been looking forward to reading Dead Ahead since I first saw it solicited a few months back. The day it came out I grabbed it off the shelf and read it as soon as I got home. The verdict? It was a big let down.

Quick overview (POSSIBLE SPOILER?): Issue #1 starts- people on boat. Zombie outbreak. Issue #1 ends- people on boat.

The story was generic, and really didn’t go anywhere over the course of the first issue. The art is…well, confusing. The lack of any format at all on some pages makes it hard to follow. The coloring is awful does nothing at all to compliment the art, while the lettering is almost unreadable at times. Black lettering on very dark blue backgrounds, making it very hard to read. I won’t be reading the last two issues of this mini-series.

Interestingly, there is a sketchbook in the back of the comic with black and white art by Alex Niño, the series artist (who illustrated comics for classic horror comics Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella and Heavy Metal back in the seventies and went on to draw for DC Comics and Walt Disney), that is much better than the artwork in the story. When I googled his artwork, I found his older work and black and white work to be heads above the art in this book. The coloring and set-up of the book really seems to of ruined his art for me in this piece of work. Personally, I’d skip this comic book and instead check out his older work.

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Now this is what a zombie comic should be. The Dead: Kingdom of Flies #1, from Berserker Comics, is full of action, gore, a great mix of drama and humor, and non-stop over-the-top insanity. It’s starts off with a group of firemen trapped in their firehouse during the first few days of a zombie outbreak. Through the firemen, their television set and the eyes of a few stranded soldiers stuck downtown in the middle of the outbreak, you get to see the apocalypse unfolding right before your eyes. Blood, brains, guts and all.

I couldn’t of been more happy with this comic. Simon Bisley’s interior artwork is brutal and completely nails the intensity of Alan Grant’s script. I really like the frantic feeling of the story line, and even though it jumps around a lot, it never feels rushed or disjointed. Top it off with a beautifully gorey cover by painter Glenn Fabry, it’s just an all around great comic. Lastly, I really need to mention colorist Andrew Brown’s great job on creating the perfect atmosphere for gut ripping and brain smashing fun. I can’t think of a single reason a fan of zombies and comics would not eat this shit up. Top notch.

-Shown above with the Forbidden Planet Exclusive Biz Sketch Cover

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I picked up Zombie Bob Gets A Job #1 a few years ago at a small press show near Detroit. I think it was $1 and it had a zombie on the cover, so I grabbed it. As I read it in the hotel room that night, it cracked me up. While it’s very short, only 12 pages, it has some great humor. The artwork is pretty good most of the time, with my main complaint being that you can tell in a few panels that the same amount of time was not taken illustrating them as others. Also, more backgrounds in panels would of been nice to see (I’m kind of a snob about comic backgrounds).

Overall, I would still suggest this mini-comic because it’s a cheap, fun read. Regarding it’s creator Jimmy Proctor, I’m having a hard time coming up with much info on him. You can check out his MySpace, his website, (both have almost zero info on him), or possibly reach him at: jimmy@nickelfreakshow.com if you are interested in trying to obtain a copy. Also, supposdely there is an issue #2, which I will try to find a copy of myself. If I can find it, watch here for a review.

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The Revolting Dead starts as a recent couple discuss their predicament of having become pregnant. This discussion ends in Duke storming off amidst Jenny’s decree that she will leave town if he leaves her. Duke somehow avoids the Crains‘, the local morticians, nocturnal mission to recycle caskets from the cemetery. Jenny is not as lucky and ends up hit over the head with a shovel and buried along with the former resident of the casket, one Jonathan Drue. When Duke cools off and comes back, he misconstrues that Jenny has made good on her word to leave town. 6 Months later, Marissa Drue is in town to pay her respects and finds her brother’s grave unkempt. Outraged, she confronts the Crains only to find that one of them is sporting an amulet that her brother was buried in. She vows to help the dead have their revenge on the Crains with the use of her Druidic magic and save a little time to make whoopie with her new found friend, Duke. The Crains, in dire need of business, show their true colors by drumming up mortuary clients the hard way – good old fashioned murder framed as a suicide. But with the dead having their chance at the Crains’ fresh flesh, their new business model will be broken in due time.

The first impression that you get from the lack luster, basic movie computer program-style title sequence is an apt indication of the level of quality to follow. The simple 1, maybe 2, camera angle coverage of every scene is painfully boring. A great deal of the scenes look as though someone is filming their high school drama class practicing for the school play. The sound of the movie is the reverberating sound of a cheap microphone in an empty room with hardwood floors. The background noise often drowns out the poorly projected, poorly delivered and poorly written dialog.

The story in The Revolting Dead is not a compelling one. Once you find out who the players are, there really is no character development. Duke continues to be a dopey good guy, the Crains continue to be evil for no reason and “so fucked up and disgusting” which really is overdone and played out (I’m guessing these movie makers saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

The zombie make-up is adequate, although not very realistic, given that six-month-dead zombie Jenny looked as fresh and lovely as day-old-dead Pappy. Mostly a mix of grease make-up and ill-applied liquid latex. The special effects budget did allow for some cheesy magic lightning from our heroine Marissa the Druid.

Seemingly The Revolting Dead was put together on the cheap as filler for a flashy video box to sell, en masse, to national video rental chains in hopes that saps like me would pay a few bucks to make it worth their while to pick-up more video fluff from their distributors. If one of my friends had told me that they made this, I would have said “Good job”, but I would not have fostered ideas of mass distribution. This might be so bad that it’s good for the occasional masochist, but most folk should just avoid it outright.

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Santa Claus vs The Zombies is a short, independent comic produced right here in the ZRC’s home state of Michigan. It’s told in a rhyming style reminiscent of the classic Christmas poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” but avoids directly aping it. With a name like Santa Claus vs The Zombies you kinda know what you’re getting in to and I’m glad to report this comic doesn’t disappoint.

One would think that a 16 page comic about Santa Claus fighting zombies wouldn’t leave a whole lot of room for exposition, but author Jet Rosas does a wonderful job of keeping the story flowing and the pages turning. Erin, who is not a comic book fan, even found it surprisingly good and raved about it. The art is dynamic, colorful, and conveys a sense of motion and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. It’s also in full color which is a nice touch and shows off artist Angela Crouch’s work.

This review was difficult to write without giving away the story, but just take our word that it’s an awesome book that made us smile a whole lot. It will be available soon from Strange Holiday Comics and Comixpress. And it’s only $4.00! Order one for yourself and one to give away to a friend – I’m sure this will make a great stocking stuffer.

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In Shadows of the Dead, a traveling couple take a short-cut that leads to them beings stranded in the wilderness. They happen upon what they think is a dead body that ends up attacking the boyfriend and infecting him with a virus that slowly turns him in to the walking dead. The girlfriend decides to take care of her man and sooner than later he bites her and infects her with the undead disease as well. The couple fight with each other and fight their urges to kill people in order to sustain themselves. The outcome is tragic.

The dramatic nature of Shadows of the Dead really called for a dynamic cast of skilled actors, but sadly this was obviously not in their budget. At times their bickering was reminiscent of relationships past, but most of the time it just made for a boring watch. The fact that 90% of the movie took place in a single bedroom was less than exciting as well. This single fact makes for a pretty short review as well.

The make-up was rather lacking in Shadows of the Dead. The boyfriend gets infected and soon dons mummy-style wrappings on his head because he has become so hideous. They never show how hideous, which just seems lazy. The girlfriend gets infected and just looks rather pale for the rest of the movie. I guess they figured that watching two people in masks bicker in a bedroom for 92 minutes would be far too boring.

On the bright side, Shadows of the Dead seemingly sought to use the zombie genre as allegory, possibly for STDs transferred between partners. Allegory has always been my favorite part of zombie cinema and is seldom used, although Shadows of the Dead’s use of allegory was rather far fetched and lacking, in my opinion. You could do worse on a Tuesday night than to watch this movie, but you could do better.

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Vampires vs. Zombies is an entirely huge piece of crap! I usually start my reviews with a brief description of the story, but this tanker had me stumped. The makers of Vampires vs. Zombies were seemingly more interested in creating plot twists and lesbian sex scenes than making an actual plot. It was incredibly difficult to know what the hell was going on in this movie, which made it terribly boring to watch. The story was just awful.

The acting was completely terrible. These actors had no sense of dynamic or nuance or realism whatsoever. It may not have helped that the dialog was just fucking childish.

The special effects were slim to none. When one out of ten gore scenes happen off-screen to allow your mind to imagine the worst thing happening without actually showing you, it’s acceptable. When 19 out of 20 gore scenes happen off-screen, you’re just skimping on the special effects budget and confusing the fuck out of your audience. Whenever anybody or anything was stabbed or shot or sliced, it happened off screen. It was over use of an old studio tactic that wore thin immediately. The zombie were completely crappy looking. They were just people with wigs and a bit of cheap latex and gray make-up.

With a title like Vampires vs. Zombies, you’d think there would be some sort of battle or difference to be settled between armies or factions of the undead. Well, you’d be wrong. It’s just about a few people fighting a some vampires, then fighting some zombies, then, in the end a couple vampires get killed by zombies, I think. There was really no clear indication as to what the objective of this movie was in the first place.

There kept being some dream sequences that ended up not being dream sequences or maybe you were just supposed to think they were dream sequences after they happened, but then they really weren’t…or were they? I DON’T KNOW! It was too poorly done to discern or even warrant further exploration.

Since when do vampires walk around in broad daylight? Well, since this crap movie came out, that’s when. Since when can you dispatch a vampire by elbowing it in the face? Since this dung pile of a movie came out, that’s when. In fact, the only rule of vampirism these movie makers felt like following was the one that said that vampires have fangs and were seductive, which worked well for their desire to have a shit-ton of gratuitous lesbian sex scenes.

Another ridiculous aspect to this crap movie was the driving scenes. A great deal of this flick takes place in moving cars that are obviously moving at a rate of 2 miles per hour. There are the long drawn out scenes of bullshit dialog that take place while a few people seemingly push the vehicle. It’s not as if the camera person took advantage of this snails pace to get better angles on the actors, they couldn’t be bothered but to shoot every scene from the back seat so you get this boring ass half profile view of the actors.

In all honesty, I think everyone should watch this Vampires vs. Zombies just to see how goddamn horrible it is. Just so when you hear people say “ Daredevil was the worst movie I ever saw!” You can say “ Watch Vampires vs. Zombies! That’s right! I was in the shit!” I’m not usually the kind of person that says “This soda pop taste awful! Here, taste it.” But I think I understand that type of person a little more.

This movie was complete shit! Here, look at it.

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In Mutant, two city boy brothers are stranded in a rural town and keep running into the same rednecks that stranded them there. Agitated by their bad luck, the local Sheriff wants them out of town. But, when his brother ends up missing in the morning, Josh has found cause for concern and heads out on the town to find his brother and get his car fixed. Josh finds this easier said than done since a bug has hit the town and closed down most of the local businesses. Holly Pierce is a school teacher filling in for her uncle, who’s sick, at his bar when Josh come in to find help. Finding a mutual attraction, she decides to help take him to the service station across town. On the way Josh gets into more trouble with one of the rednecks, this time being framed for a murder. The victim ends up being a curiosity to the local practitioner who discovers a chemical that is changing the physiology of it’s victims. Josh, Holly and the Sheriff end up trying to get to the bottom of this illness and brought on by strange chemicals when all hell breaks loose and the zombie attack.

I would venture the guess that Mutant is one of the first films to try to unconventionally represent a zombie outbreak and could be considered the grand daddy of movies like 28 Days Later.

Mutant is chock full of actors with memorable faces that haven’t quite made names for themselves. Wings Hauser, who plays the lead Josh, can be found in movies like Dead Man Walking (not the Sean Penn vehicle) and appearances in every damn dramatic TV show you could imagine from “Air Wolf” and “A-Team” to “Third Watch”, “House M.D.” and “Monk”. Bo Hopkins is another familiar face without a familiar name with more TV appearances in the 80s on shows like “Fantasy Island”, “A-Team” and “Scarecrow & Mrs. King”. The acting by these cast members and the others are adequate if not well done.

The quality of the Mutant is of no question good, although the shadow of the boom-mic is quite prominent in one tender scene. The pacing on the other hand leaves something to be desired. Clocking in at 100 minutes, Mutant doesn’t quite make good use of it’s time, but is enjoyable nonetheless.

The zombies in Mutant are rather peculiar in that they transform from a healthy, fleshy pink color to a dusty, pale gray pallor, sometimes in seconds before your eyes due to contact with the chemical. Of course, when ganged up and charging after the camera, they do make a rather creepy visual. The special effects aren’t all that ambitious as this is not an overly gory effort, but what little effects they use come off rahter well. They make use of a straw yellow zombie blood that definitely took the gore level down, but did nothing to garner anything less than an R rating.

I found watching Mutant to be a pleasant experience, not only as a history lesson on the roots of the modern zombie “outbreak” picture, but as basically well crafted feature film. For 1984, Mutant is pretty good and original zombie flick. If you get the chance, take a look at Mutant.

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