Customer Reviews

Death Falcon vs. The Zombie Slug Lords

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"Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords" is a very good read made in the tradition of the old Mexican wrestling films. The team of Daniel Boyd and William Bitner deliver a fast paced, engaging, story with great unforgettable anti-hero characters. It's very entertaining and includes some very important social commentary about the drug problems and corruption that plagues many cities and communities today. Brendan and Brian Fraim's dark, stark artwork blends perfectly with Bitner's vivid, descriptive writing and brings the story and characters to life. Comic book lover or not I highly recommend picking up a copy of "Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords" and strapping yourself in for a crude, raunchy, zombie busting, good time!

"Death Falcon Zero vs. the Zombie Slug Lords" is the thinking man's pro wrestlers vs. flesh eating zombie book. Not only are we repeatedly treated to swinging neckbreakers applied to reanimated corpses and baseball bats crashing into many a maggot encrusted dome, but all of the surreal carnage is delivered to us with page turning political intrigue. Death Falcon Zero, the book's title character, is given a temporary reprieve from prison (a la Snake Plissken in "Escape from New York") to stop a meth induced and politically connected plague of zombies from overrunning West Virginia. To do this, he has to reunite his disgraced six man tag team, called the Grapes of Wrath. Shaking off ring rust is hard enough when you're pitted against your garden variety grapplers, but when you have to go up against hordes of lumbering ghouls, it's deadly. "Death Falcon Zero vs. the Zombie Slug Lords" fleshes out the indie wrestler bios only hinted at by screaming pre-match interviews, grand entrances, lucha masks and ring attire. As WWE Films continues to give us unimaginative potboilers like "The Marine" and "Behind Enemy Lines," one can hope that Vince McMahon and his Hollywood division pick up DFZVTZSL and use it as a blueprint for future offerings.

I haven't read a graphic novel since I was a kid. After years of watching the extreme tag team of Boyd and Bitner battle evil in the ring, I was anxious to read their new book, Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords. I eagerly dove into the novel quickly finding I couldn't put it down! With more twists and turns than a West Virginia country road, this story is designed to thrill and entertain. Within the first few pages I found myself on the West Side of Charleston, West Virginia, in the dark twisted world of corrupt government officials, psycho professional wrestlers and drug-induced zombies. It wasn't long after reading the first few chapters that I began developing a strange uncanny connection to the main characters. They appear to be cocky dynamic antihero's simply flawed misfits with a gritty real world appeal. To me, these little imperfections are what make these characters so appealing. Brilliantly written, I found the cutting edge story of zombies plagued by meth quite compelling. In my opinion the corruption, desperation, and devastation surrounding the meth epidemic is rarely given attention by the media and should be explored more often. Bitner and Boyd creatively weave these dark elements with imaginative care and understanding into a well-crafted humorous novel. The artwork adds another layer of genius that blew me away. Black and white graphics throughout the novel are phenomenal, reminiscent of Marvel Comics silver age. Genuine illustrations, with lifelike details, create dynamic energy between the characters. I can easily see the novel as a film someday.

First off, i am not a comic book or science fiction person, whatsoever. I became interested in this book because of its setting on the West Side of Charleston, WV, where I had lived my entire life until earlier this year. I was pleasantly surprised by the readability and entertainment value this book provided. The story-line was enough to keep my attention throughout, and the action put it over the top.

Once you start reading, it is easy to see how the story-line developed. Drugs have turned many people in today's society into zombies in many ways, and there just doesn't seem to be an answer to counteract them. This backdrop gives you a book that anyone who has ever turned on the evening news and watched a story on drug dealers can relate to. Enter a common man superhero and his team of colorful sidekicks and you have a weekend read of excitement.

I would recommend the book to anyone, but not the tight spandex and wrestling boots... only a special bread can pull off that look!

"DF vs ZSL" was an excellent read and I highly recommend it to both comic book lovers and non. The realism of these characters alone is worth picking the book up. Whether you are a fan of the hero or villian, you find yourself rooting for the Grapes of Wrath. There is a little of both in each character and they definitely do not disappoint. There is wrestling, zombies, corrupt politics, drugs and sex....what more could you ask for?

WARNING: ONCE YOU START READING, YOU MAY NOT WANT TO PUT IT DOWN. I think I read the entire book in two sittings. Hey...I had to sleep!

Great writing - wonderful illustrations. The story is modern and timely in a world filled with conflict. The lead characters are just big enough to expand the imagination, yet real enough to want them on your side. The villians are hard and usurping while the heroes are even harder, yet somehow very personal. Moving professional wrestling into the streets is genius - adding the lure of undead makes this graphic novel a 'one-of-a-kind-don't-miss-this' happening. This work dehumanizes the bad guys in the style of a Goya painting, while making the good guys your best friends. The male leads are powerful and determined while the lead female character, Casey Gunner is like Barbie with GI Joe skills - very hot.

I've just finished reading "Death Falcon Zero vs. the Zombie Slug Lords". I'm not going to lie. At first I was eager to read the graphic novel, but I had certain set expectations and a couple of pages in my eagerness was replaced by anxiety (wait, not a good way to start a review, but hold on a bit!) the tight-fisted reign of those expectations dissolving into a messy goo, much like the gooey innards of the Slug Lord Zombies which had yet to appear on the pages as I was only on Chapter One in which we find Death Falcon Zero being released from prison with a carrot promise of probation if he succeeds in his given mission, reminding of Carpenter's "Escape from New York" Snake, only not, because Death Falcon Zero is no fancified, Hollywood glossed Kurt Russell. In fact, he's kind of repulsive. If, through our neighborhood of shoulder-to-shoulder Mary Poppins developments, homeless despair, hooker entrepreneurship and flats for cranky, hungry, low maintenance artists/musicians/authors (like our building), I was strolling down to Publix for our daily gallon of fat free, USDA organic milk, and Death Falcon Zero opened his 1966 black GTO passenger door to offer me a ride, I would run away.

OK, uhm, let's try a different approach. If I was a careworn Wendy, and Tinkerbell showed up in wrestling boots to excitedly announce, "Troma punk yet lives! It lives in you!" I'd sigh, "Tink, I'm too far gone, long removed from my days of delighting in Troma punk. The Bush years, Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington becoming queen of the internet have ransacked my faith in the innocent delights of I can't even remember what because it's been so long, after all I've been a mom for eleven years and have had to live through the horrors of Disney, which I managed to avoid as a child but couldn't spare my son as his uncle gave him all his Disney VHS tapes, and even before that I was just plain so traumatized by the collapse of culture that I couldn't appreciate the ravaging of its remnants. Tink, no, my Troma years are long behind me, even though I'm depraved enough to keep unquitting tobacco and have, on the occasion, had a cigarette within thirty minutes of stepping off my yoga mat. Please, leave me to iPod downloads of Krishna Das and my blueberry tea, because I can never sleep and I must yet try again tonight and not be bothered with that "Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords" graphic novel you seem so intent on shoving at me. Please, I beg you, leave me in peace. If Peter Pan lives, he has joined the industry of Caribbean Pirates and conceals the loss of his ability to fly with mega-money special effects."

But Tink did not leave me in peace. And so it is now dawn, which means I stayed up all night reading "Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords", which is not even a Troma film, is it. But the streamlined sensibility of the text in combination with the graphics makes me feel as though I've watched a film, and that film turned out to be a lot of fun and had me wondering to the end where it was going and how it would end. My imagination cut loose, freed from the skeptic boa constrictor that strangles creativity's wellsprings with lashes of better judgment, my film was black and white, in the manner of Luis Bunuel, but filled with zombies running amuck through the punch bowls and ballrooms of the less-than-discretely charmed. My perspective had so altered, several chapters in, that every time the plot flung a pebble in my teeth, I'd think, "What would Troma do?" and resolution was magically, immediately had. Yes! The movie in my head would breeze along, and the me in my head kept eating popcorn and turning to my husband in my head and saying, "Isn't this just perfect? Isn't this great?"

The year is 1974, and that fact in itself takes some adjusting, back to a time of music on rubber platters and 8 mm films. West Side, in Charleston, West Virginia has been besieged by zombies. The defunct wrestling team, The Grapes of Wrath, marshaled to combat them, two question marks dripping blood and assorted yuck on the urban wasteland beg answers to who is creating the zombies and for what purpose? Will The Grapes of Wrath team members, each marked with alienating super-foibles, win the good fight or be sucked into the zombie world that invites flesh-eating freedom from daily cares?

But hold, there's more! The novel was designed with an ulterior purpose, by Bitner and Boyd, both themselves late-blooming wrestling pros, and Daniel Boyd a West Virginia State University communications' professor who "forged the first student film industry in West Virginia".

From the PR sheet: "This is just one more creative outlet from the mad scientist team at State's communications department and media studies program that cooks up ideas to get students thinking about new outlets for their storytelling skills," Boyd said. "As with all our output, we bring in industry masters and link them with students who work with them throughout the entire process."

It works. They may have been talking about the hands-on experience of students involved in the fruition of the novel, but the magic in this book is in slamming to the mat the living dead sludging the reader's psyche, inviting and allowing one to Make Your Own Damn Movie (as Troma says). Yes, you can! In your head! Where it all begins! You've everything it takes to read a world between the lines and let the film unwind on your inner projectionist's screen, and just maybe slay the sinister Zombie Lords who have long been purchasing claim to creative privilege, denying your right to dream and pursue your own quest in the medium of your choice in the physical realm.