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Published by: IDW Publishing
Released on: Mar. 12, 2014
Writers: Kevin Eastman & Tom Skulan
Artists: Kevin Eastman & Eric Talbot
Cover artists: Kevin Eastman & Eric Talbot
Purchase at Amazon
IDW reprinted the 1992 two-issue mini-series originally published by Fantaco/Tundra, which came out long before zombies became so entwined in pop culture as it is currently, and they added color to the pages. That was in 2013. Now in 2014, if you missed the reprinting of the two books, you can get it as a single 67-page issue.
The plot is a pretty simple one: a zombie infection is ravaging the earth and no one knows why. People are eaten alive and torn to shreds, becoming zombies themselves. But this time, the zombies are smart and cunning warriors in an army made up of dead soldiers from every war fought throughout history. They can talk too, and they have potty mouths. Things seem hopeless for the human protagonists, but one pilot named Jina takes things into her own hands.
An unidentified flying object has been spotted in the skies, and she breaks off from her group of fighter planes to pursues the UFO. She successfully shoots the thing down, and she also succeeds in causing her own plane to go down with it. The occupant of the spaceship, a tentacled alien, confesses to having caused the carnage as payback for what the Earth unknowingly did to his home planet. It seems a life-searching satellite-droid found his planet, but its intrusion into their atmosphere caused the destruction of his world and he wanted payback. But he changed his tune after being shot down and threatened with death, and vows to help Jina stop the assault.
It's a fun story, and told in a way that avoids the monotony that zombie stories sometimes have, using television broadcasts to lay down the story and the details, while showing all the carnage as it happens in complete bloody and bone-ripping detail. The art work is cartoonish but by no means unfitting. There is certainly no shortage of gore and the newly-colored pages do highlight that nicely. The 2-page spreads that fill a number of pages are cluttered and chock full of imagery to look at, but in all honesty they are so busy it's tough to really appreciate all the little details. Some people might call it heresy to tinker with adding color to something intended to be black-and-white, but in this case it does help to break up the artwork a bit. It helps to make it easier to process those moments when things are so chaotic and cluttered.
Did it need to be reprinted and colorized? No, it really isn't that great of a comic. It's entertaining, but if you've read it in one form or another over the years, it doesn't warrant a second reading. Older readers may remember when this came out back in the day, and it really isn't any better now than it was back then. A quick story that is forgettable, but enjoyable enough while in the middle of it.
