Zombies, they are all around us, on TV, in movies, and in comics. It has been theorized that one of the reasons for zombies being so popular these days (besides the obvious disenfranchisement of so much of the population and the dehumanization that our modern-day culture has forced upon us by egregiously-bad (and totally oppressively self-serving decisions like Citizen United) is that, well, it is cool to shoot the crap out of them. Seriously, think about it, we can no longer randomly shoot up Germans, the Japanese, or even Russians. It has somehow become politically incorrect to randomly make Muslims or Islam the go-to enemies, and sure there are always Italian mobsters, but they tend to not travel in a massive hoard. So what is left? Aliens, and well, zombies.
The thing about zombies is that they have no real history. When you screw with iconic monsters and creatures of the night, you arouse the ire of hardcore fans, but zombies, they have been in the public consciousness for such a relative short period of times, that you can totally re-imaging them to suite your own muse, and that is precisely what Marshall Loveless has done with his visceral, and thoroughly engaging comic ODM (One Dead Man). In this book there are not roving masses of flesh-eating, brain-slurping, rotting corpses stumbling (or running) through the streets of nearly empty cities feasting on the living. As the title sets up, there is just a single dead man. There are, however vampire, and werewolves, so there is that.
Truthfully, even with the second issue just out (thanks in part to a successfully run Kickstarter project), we are still not entirely certain precisely what is going on in this tale of an undead firefighter who has somehow stumbled from his “normal” world into one that is full of those creepy, disturbing things that haunt our sleepless nighttime hours. Loveless informed us that the ODM story arc will span some 20 issues. In the first issue we are introduced to our Dead man, and become aware of his plight. With the second issue our single dead man happens to cross paths with a vampire coven.
As stgated, Loveless’ art is stark and realistic and the sharp B&W renderings he lays down as he crafts his tale are compelling and visceral. Truly, this is a very intriguing book that is playing around with some interesting themes, and we totally enjoy that it isn’t all zombie stories that we’ve seen before. It is always good when a creator takes up a well-trod path, only to veer off on the path least taken. While it is true that Loveless is something of a newcomer to the field of comics, (his only previously published work is — wait for it — another zombie tale that appeared in the Main Enterprises comic *PPFSZT, a story entitled Zombies of the Apocalypse), so yes, he does apparently know a little bit about zombies.
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Robert J. Sodaro has been reviewing comicbooks for some 30 years. During that time, his reviews and articles have appeared in numerous print publications, as well as on the web. Subscribe to receive regular comicbook articles and reviews.
