Customer Reviews

Escape Of The Living Dead Volume 1

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is three years after the events portrayed in Night Of The Living Dead. The plague brought a lot of hardship but people are rebuilding their lives. It is then that it is discovered that a rogue government man has been studying the zombies and still has some active. They pull a raid on his lab in the country and try to put a stop to his work.

But the mad scientist was already transporting some zombies to another facility. When thieves break into this truck the zombies are released and their horror begins again. It is in the outskirts of a small town where things come together as a handfull of people discover the zombies are back. They need to fight them off, survive, and get the word out before things get totally out of hand.

There has been a new resurgence of zombie tales in books, movies and comics. This is one of the best I have seen in comics (right up there with The Walking Dead). There was some similarity with Romero's Land of the Dead in that we keep focusing on a specific zombie but otherwise this is fresh and new. The art is pretty good and consistent while the plotting is steady and inevitable. If you are a fan of the original Night of the Living Dead then you will have to check out this sequel from one of its creators.

Zombie comics seem like they are all over the place nowadays but only one of them can boast being written by the co-creator of the original Night of the Living Dead film, John Russo. That book is "Escape of the Living Dead" from Avatar Press and it's a must have for any zombie fan. "Escape" is really a pre-Dawn of the Dead sequel to the original film, set in 1971, just three years after the original zombie outbreak. The story also returns to its roots being set in Pennsylvania.

The Zombie outbreak seems to have been defeated although we learn that at some point the government began to capture and contain the zombies, rather than kill them, much to the frustration of local law enforcement who can only speculate as to the reasons behind the government's interest in the undead. A small outbreak at a medical facility leads local cops to Doctor Melrose who claims to have developed a serum to cure the zombie plague but, just before he dies, says the secret is with his son.

Away from this action, a couple of local biker thugs set their sights on a semi-truck they believe to be loaded with electronics. They devise a plan to hijack the truck and steal the goods, only when the truck is opened it's not Hi-Fi systems and TVs they find, but a trailer full of hungry undead.

Meanwhile Henry Brinkman runs a local roadhouse that is just opening for the day when the zombies attack. His daughter Sally narrowly escapes the flesh-eaters as she and her father take refuge in the saloon, hoping that help will arrive. Instead, three more outlaw bikers including the leader Bearcat decide to crash the party and take Sally for their own. Now Henry finds himself in desperate straits, trying to keep himself alive and find his kidnapped daughter.

What I really enjoyed about "Escape of the Living Dead" was it truly captured the spirit of the original "Dead" film. It maintained a small scale, centering on this small community, just as the first film did. In other words it stayed with a formula that works. This graphic novel is truly GRAPHIC! Characters are torn apart and eaten alive in visceral fashion. It's not a book for the squeamish, that's for sure! Credit penciller Dheeraj Verma and inker Lalit for delivering the goods in exquisitely gory detail! I also have to give praise to Avatar Press for not filling the book with sketch pages, pinups, and other fluff, this is 120 pages of pure story and art. Avatar continues to be one of the leaders in horror comics.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

Buy the 'return of the living dead: resurrected' version instead, it is the new version and is more complete. This is the best of the best when it comes to zombie comics (except for the night of the living dead series!). John Russo Gives it : 5/5 !

Between the original 'Night of the Living Dead' and 'Dawn of the Dead' there was a stretch of ten years. Certainly it would be hard to gauge what sort of timeline there really is in Romero's zombieverse or even if each of the movies are really meant to be taken as all taking place in the same realm-there are some slight variations in each movie.

This graphic novel takes place three years after the orginial Night of the Living Dead and caries on, for certain, from that story. Same geography as the movie: western Pennsylvania, and everyone has essentially recovered from the zombie invasion, which was suppressed, according to this story.

We discover that a lab buried out in the sticks has a doctor running experiments on the walking dead, perhaps with government approval to do so. The local police discover it and eliminate the zombie threat there, but others are already on the loose and are building up their ranks. No one wants to bring in the National Guard for fear that the government is indeed involved and might not be so helpful this time around.

We are introduced to Henry Brinkman and his daughter Sally, who both must find a way to survive the first couple of days of this new terror. A group of bikers are brought into the story as well; they are a bunch of lowlifes who are looking out only for themselves. When the troubles start, they only care about trying to save their own worthless hides, even if it means sacrificing others around them. They typify a lot of the characters that are in many of the Romero Dead works-callous, unwilling to work together, and basically symbols of why the undead are often less offensive than living human beings.

This story is volume one of this new saga and was fairly fun to read. Quick and fairly well drawn, I enjoyed the gruesome subject matter. What I would like to see more of is character development. This is just the first installment so there is plenty of chances to really flesh out a few of the characters, along with Henry and Sally, but at this point we are simply moving from one action sequence to the next, with plenty of blood and guts to show for it. I am not knocking that, but I am hoping that the story becomes more than just one attack scene following another and I can actually gain some interest in seeing how certain characters do develop and grow with the overall story arc.

I would use two examples as comparisons. Kirkman's 'Walking Dead' series is an outstanding graphic approach to a zombie invasion. Deep, rich characters carry us forward throughout all five volumes (volume six is coming soon). On the other hand, 'Zombies!:Feast' is a simple gorefest with barely any characters that are worth paying attention to, because they are all simple and mostly lack any depth. With that type of story it all boils down to how well it is drawn and how gross it can get. That has some merits when you are talking about zombies but it is imminently forgettable stuff. This work has the potential to swing more towards Kirkman's stuff, but I will have to reserve judgement on that until I see at least volume two and what happens with our two main characters...and some of the other edge characters.

It definitely seems that zombies are very high on the modern day popularity list. I honestly can't even remember off the top of my head how many zombie novels, comic books and graphic novels have sprung up over the last few years, so it's nice to see a new graphic novel that is set in the Night of the Living Dead universe.

Set 3 years after Night of the Living Dead, Escape chronicles small-town pennsylvania once again when it is discovered the a medical research lab is housing zombies. It is revealed to us that the government actually began a capture and containment program during the dreaded "Summer of '68", in hopes of studying the outbreak and attempting to find a cure. However, all Hell breaks loose when a group of bikers attempt to hijack a truck which, to their deadly surprise, contains a horde of zombies that were in transit. From there, the small-town Pennsylvania setting is once again beset by horrors beyond imagination.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this graphic novel...it was an easy, one-sitting read. The story shared many characteristics with Land of the Dead, in that we had a "hero" zombie, as well as having a horde of zombies that were far smarter than they were during the "Summer of '68". The art is excellent, and the gore is definitely over the top...the artist seemed to have a thing for exploding zombie heads. The book successfully manages to capture the same horror we experienced during Night of the Living Dead, and the small-town setting bring back much familiarity.

My only complaints are that the art, while very good, can actually mislead the reader at times. For example, in the beginning of the book we have a mother and daughter who look so identical you can't even tell which is older and which is younger, let alone which is supposed to be the mother. You'd think they were identical twin sisters at first glance! Secondly, the story had continuity issue or two...one character in the beginning of the book is completely torn to shreds by the zombies, so much so that she was reduced to nothing but a grotesque pile...yet later on in the book she comes shambling in as a zombie without a bite mark to show for it. I think that the author was so much into his great story that he forgot some of the previous events he had penned earlier in the book. And we also learn in this book that zombies apparently don't like heads...every victim in the book has their head left behing perfectly intact...something that I found rather comical, sense every other part (even the bones, it seems) were completely devoured.

Ultimately, this was a great read that leads the reader to beleive we will be seeing another sequel in the near future. The story setup is very intriguing, and I would love to see another graphic novel sequel. This was definitely a great idea, and its comforting to know that in the enormous sea of zombie lit, Night of the Living Dead hasn't been forgotten.