Graphic Book Review: Zombie World Winter’s Dregs
Zombos Says: Very Good
Summertime fun getting you down? Can't wait for the colder days, darker days, more depressing sunless days? Want to bury all sand-loving, beach-going, family members and significant others up to their necks close to the water's edge at low tide? Fret no more. Don't get mad, suicidal, or homicidal; instead, pick up Zombie World: Winter's Dregs and Other Stories from Dark Horse, and bring back your sanity with its two-hundred and forty pages packed with apocalyptic carnage.
These four stories, originally appearing in the Zombie World comic book series, bring us closer to those undead we all crave. Think surviving the glump at the gasoline pump is hard, try dealing with ravenous hordes of commuters who want to fill up on you. With writers and artists like Bob Fingerman, Kelley Jones, Tommy Lee Edwards, Pat Mills, J. Deadstock (how apropos), Gordon Rennie and Gary Erskine, you can feel secure in knowing that your hard-earned greenbacks are being well spent.
The title story, Winter's Dregs, kicks off the mayhem in a fast-paced panel by panel exchange between central characters caught up in their daily lives–and deaths. In a city overrun by rats, when people dying in reverse shakes up the routine run to Starbucks, cry havoc and let loose the zombies. Each page is drawn in a heavy, EC horror comics, over-inked style, bleeding black into the surroundings, the characters, and the action. The murky colors create a sense of constant dread which lets up only after you reach the last panel. The story takes time to set up its characters first, then introduces zombies in a subway smackdown after the mayor orders a full-scale assault on brazen rats vexing his administration. Involved dialog and social interactions sustain the buildup to zero hour, fleshing out the people whose mundane paths intertwine with the staggering undead in this day in the life–and death–of a city.
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