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Published by: Image Comics
Released on: Dec. 03, 2014
Writer: Mark Kidwell
Artist: Kyle Charles
Cover artist: Nat Jones
Purchase at Amazon
Click HERE for last issue's write-up.
In the unforgiving winter conditions up in frozen province of Alberta, the twin brothers and their two lady friends are holding up in a cottage to survive the cold night. But they picked the wrong cottage, and the owner is about to let them know it. He so happens to be the lone survivor of the gang that held up the concrete plant and has proven how sick he is with the body of a Mountie he killed. The Mountie of course followed him, all rotted and festering, and that means he's outside the cottage too. The kids have a chance against the robber but not the dead Mountie; nor the other walking corpses who have become his followers along the way.
On the meanwhile side, Black Falls' number one deputy gets the incapacitated sheriff out of town along with a nurse and the Mountie's widow, apparently for another tale down the road, as theirs doesn't go anywhere further. So…back to the cottage then. The robber is getting the best of the young American draft dodgers and their lady friends, making good on his promise to start killing them, but his plans get cut short. Seems the zombies have quite an interest in him, but then so does one of the twins. It's just a matter of who gets who first, really. You know they're all going to die. This is a '68 title; expect everyone to die eventually. But the zombies don't get them all, as the other love-struck twin sees to that.
The comic is a fun read, even if it is lower on the list for best '68 stories, just not as engaging. Kyle Charles' artwork is a major factor in that fun, with his messy violence and putrid zombies looking even better with the great coloring Jay Fotos always provides. A detail in the art that helps with the feel of the book is the black and uneven panel borders, maybe representing death and the unknown. Or maybe its just used to make the colors stand out and look more intense.
Mark Kidwell's latest four-issue zombie apocalypse series comes to a close, with the promise of a new Jungle Jim one-shot coming in early 2015. This series, busted into two 2-issue stories related only by the zombies eating everyone, wasn't nearly as entertaining as every single series that preceded it. Maybe it's due to North America being the focus of the end of the world, and we've been getting feed North American zombie infestation tales for decades. The international aspect combined with the Vietnam War era is what makes Kidwell's books stand out, so bringing it back to the States and even Canada makes the tale more generic. Or maybe this reader really wanted The Zodiac story alluded to at the end of the Rule of War series and has a bias going.
