The Walking Dead: A Continuing Story of Survival Horror: Book One

by Robert Kirkman (original story concept, writing, letters), Tony Moore (pencils, inks, gray tones for Chapter 1), Charlie Adlard (pencils, inks for Chapter 2), and Cliff Rathburn (gray tones for Chapter 2, gray tone assists for Chapter 1), 297 pages

Small town cop Rick gets shot on the job, falls into a coma, and wakes up in an eerily quiet hospital.  It doesn't take him too long to figure out why, as one rotting corpse after another slowly lurches after him, hungry for his flesh.  Desperate to find his wife and son, Rick heads toward Atlanta, hoping they've gone there ahead of him and are safe under the protection of the authorities in the big city.  But the zombie plague is neither isolated nor contained, the authorities are nowhere to be found, and Rick soon realizes that if anyone's going to survive, they'll have to make it happen themselves.

I am not a horror fan and normally have no interest in stories involving icky things like zombies (Heather, you are braver than I!  hee!).  But I've heard so much about this series that I figured I'd be a pretty poor comics lover if I didn't give it a shot.  And now I can see why it's so popular.  Yes, there are gross, ravenous zombies around most corners and, yes, things look pretty dire for the lucky (?) humans momentarily still alive, but what keeps me interested (and has me putting Book Two on hold) is the book's focus on character over shock value.  The individuals who make up the evolving ensemble cast have their own personalities and complicated relationships.  Even the most likable and capable characters have weaknesses and the potential for instability.  I like that level of realism and find watching them deal with the stress of their precarious situation surprisingly engaging.  The story offers an intriguing psychological / sociological study and makes me wonder what I and my friends and family would do if we suddenly found ourselves in the same boat (I don't imagine I'd fair too well in a zombie apocalypse, sadly....).

The gore-minimizing black-and-white art's a nice fit (though I prefer Moore's style over Adlard's) and I give the writing in this series credit for making me voluntarily consume a zombie story that's not parody (Shaun of the Dead = *squee*).   It surprises me that I actually (sorta) look forward to seeing what happens to these poor folks next.

I think the popular television adaptation will remain untested by me for now, though, as I don't need to see all that blood and guts in full color or "live" action....  :-P

Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites

by Evan Dorkin (story) and Jill Thompson (art), 180 pages

A group of neighborhood dogs (and one cat) find their lazy days hanging out in each other's yards disturbed by one supernatural mystery after another.  A haunted dog house is easy enough to handle with the help of a Wise Dog; but as the situation gets progressively darker and more deadly, the gang realizes they'll have to learn some magic, themselves, if they want to survive long enough to save their neighborhood.

At first glance this may look like it's for kids, but don't be fooled.  Cute, quirky talking animals solving often supernatural crime?  Sure.  However, the forces they're up against include evil witches, involuntary werewolves, zombie roadkill, graveyard golems, and, just to keep things real, serial animal-torturers.  Creative and dark and funny and sad, this.  I hope there's another one soon, because I want to know what's behind the upsurge in dark magic as much as the endearing principals do.

American Vampire: Volume 1

by Scott Snyder and Stephen King (story) and Rafael Albuquerque (art), 193 pages

Skinner Sweet's a vampire, but he's not a sparkly pretty boy or a brooding aristocrat--he's a murdering bandit on America's frontier who happens to get turned on his way to trial.  Flash forward a few decades to the roaring twenties as Pearl Jones, an aspiring young actress, finds herself on the menu at an elite Hollywood party after ignoring the warning of her scruffy, obnoxious new neighbor.  As the narrative weaves back and forth in history we see how these stories converge and part and then slash their way forward.

I like the idea of making vampires scary again, but this is a little gruesome and hokey for my taste and not quite as original as it seems to think it is if you break it down.  The art's ok but I am not a fan of all-out horror and this is definitely more than just tinged.  I don't know if I'll read the next one or not.  If you're a Stephen King fan, you'll probably like this, though (I failed to notice his name on it till I sat down to read it--so observant, am I).  Skinner is an interesting amoral anti-hero / mentor and it's nice to see a female character take physical and emotional charge of her own situation (though she still manages to be a damsel in distress, which is less cool).  Not my cup of tea, this, but your more-monstrous-than-moody vampire mileage may vary.

Joe the Barbarian: The Deluxe Edition

by Grant Morrison (story) and Sean Murphy (art), 210 pages

When diabetic high-schooler Joe misses his afternoon sugar spike, he goes into hypoglycemic shock and starts hallucinating that his home is a fantasy world under siege, his action figures and other toys have come to life (or death, as they do not all fair well in battle), and his pet rat is as big as he is, wears armor, and can talk. Can Joe reach the fridge and a can of soda and come back to his right mind before it's too late? And is he just hallucinating?

Aw, man, I really wanted to like this book. It's an Eisner nominee, has a nifty concept, and some occasionally great art. But the writing just doesn't work for me and the artwork, while good, is very dark and the narrative / panel flow can be confusing.

I'm not sure if it's because there's no narration and everything relies on dialogue (internal or external) to tell the story, but the plot seems to jump randomly from idea to idea, scene to scene, without any discernible transitions and a bit too much repetition. It also frustrates me that the characters and vocabulary for the fantasy world seems to be padded out with flowery terms, phrases, and titles that don't actually mean anything and feel like they're just thrown in to take the place of actual world-building. Granted, the hero is (possibly) hallucinating, so it could make perfect sense that so much doesn't make any at all; but it's not consistently random, either, so the reader's not sure which bits matter and which bits don't.

On the visual front, the artist often goes with black, instead of the usual white, for the background color behind and between the panels. This wouldn't be a negative if he had more white or light inside the panels to balance it out; but the art it so black-heavy and filled with color (and most of it dark) that there's not enough contrast and my eyes have a hard time picking out what's going on. That, combined with the somewhat choppy story, makes it hard to sense where the panels begin and end and how they connect, so following them in the right order isn't as natural as it should be. This is only made more difficult by the occasionally awkward panel layout, which sometimes jumps the book's seam with no clue to the reader that that's the case until suddenly the story makes no sense and you have to go back up and figure out where your eyes took a wrong turn.

Now, to be fair, I'm used to reading manga, which is black and white (and grey, with screentones), so I'm accustomed to contrast being rather more pronounced. But I've read other color graphic novels from this side of the world and had no problems (Locke and Key, for instance), so I don't think it's entirely me. I do like many aspects of the art, though. The attention to detail inside the house, in particular, is pretty awesome. It may be a bit too Tardis-like in its outside-compared-to-inside physics, which I did find distracting, but the interesting perspective choices and the period details (furniture, decor, oh so eighties!) draw you in and make you take your time. I do like me some realism.

Somebody else needs to read this and tell me if I was just super cranky and impatient when I read it and it's actually a brilliant representation of what the brain's capable of when it's gone haywire--or if it really is as frustratingly almost-but-not-what-it-could-have-been as I thought.

Locke & Key: Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft

by Joe Hill (story) and Gabriel Rodriguez (art), 158 pages

When their guidance-counselor father is inexplicably murdered by a student, the three Locke children and their mother move back East to live with their paternal uncle in the home their father grew up in. But Keyhouse has its own secrets and may not be quite the refuge they'd hoped for....

*shudder*

This Eisner-nominated series would be perfect Halloween reading. As Robert Crais states in the introduction, retreating to a town called "Lovecraft" after a personal tragedy is probably not the wisest of decisions. Not for the faint of heart, this, as the bullets and axes and other unpleasantly murderous implements are wielded early and often (though thankfully usually just off-panel). But if you can handle the bloody results, the scary story of a tightly-knit family under siege from an enemy most of them don't even realize is there will suck you in and keep you rooting for them. Unfortunately, their troubles have probably only just begun....

Hellboy: Volume 1: Seed of Destruction; Wake the Devil

by Mike Mignola (with John Byrne), 285 pages

Toward the end of the second world war, the Nazis threw their leftover resources into researching the occult to discover new powers that might help them achieve global domination. Unfortunately for them, not only were some of their researchers more interested in their own nefarious agendas, but the sarcastic little horned power they brought forth decided to work for the other side.

The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) gets called in to investigate a couple of cases that lead back to the events surrounding their poster boy's entrance into this world. Imprisoned (for good reason) gods, vampire lords, poison frog zombies, and a still-not-completely-"dead" Russian advisor pit forces against Hellboy's stone hand and bad attitude.

Having only seen the movies, I felt it was high time Hellboy and I were properly introduced. These very pretty hardcover editions collect some of the major thematically-linked Hellboy stories (two in this first volume), though not necessarily in their original publication order. I'm such an obsessive completionist that I'd prefer to read them the way they first came out, but they nevertheless work well here as the related plots flow fairly smoothly from one to the other and give you sufficient background on the mythos and the title character.