Graveyard of Empires #2 – Review

By: Mark Sable (writer), Paul Azaceta (artist), Matt Wilson (colors) & Thomas Mauer (letters)

The Story: Zombies attack during the present day Afghanistan conflict.

What’s Good: In the first issue, Sable and Azaceta laid a lot of groundwork by showing us who these various Marines are as people.  Let’s just say that they weren’t all buddy-buddy.  That foundation paid off in this issue as the Marines were all trapped within their firebase as the shambling hordes descend upon them.  Now those tensions among them can start to fester as their social and military structure breaks down around their ears.

Then layered on top of this are the local Afghans.  They’d kinda like to come inside the base where it’s “safe” too.  Lots of interesting angles on that.  For sure you could point out how the Afghans were suddenly pretty happy to have Marines around when the shit hits the fan.  But, you also know that some of these folks aren’t going to have “survival of the group” at the top of their lists.

This tension illustrates one of the wonderful things about Romero-zombies for dramatic storytelling: Because they’re slow and lumbering, the humans have time to breath and relax a little bit, allowing tensions to rise up in a way that isn’t as easy with the trend towards “the infected” zombies that have come into vogue.  It’s hard to have human interest when the “zombies” run faster than you do.

The art is really nice.  Paul Azaceta doesn’t have an awkward panel in the entire issue, which is saying a lot when there are surely over 100 panels in the issue.  I also love how he knows when to have detail and when to get a little more vague with the characters as in one scene of a Marine shooting up zombies from a distance.  No need to go nuts drawing those zombies.  They’re far away, but we know what they are.  Good characters, nice acting, nice depth.  It has it all.  And the colors by Matt Wilson are really nice too.  For the most part it is a pretty drab book, but its nice to see a colorist who isn’t trying to foist primary colors on us when they wouldn’t be appropriate.

Graveyard of Empires #1 – Review

By: Mark Sable (writer), Paul Azaceta (art), Matt Wilson (colors) & Thomas Mauer (letters)

The Story: A zombie outbreak during the present day Afghan war.

What’s Good: Good zombie stories aren’t really about zombies.  Zombies are just a cool narrative device to do things like confine a bunch of people in a desperate environment and see what happens.  Who’s actually a nice guy?  Who will sacrifice others to save their own skin?  Who’s a bigot?  Who will take advantage of the situation to achieve a position of authority?  Who will abuse authority?

What’s great about this issue is that Sable and Azaceta set up the human element so well.  The zombies don’t even appear until the final pages, but before then we have a very frank look at a bunch of Marines based in present day Afghanistan.  The typical old saying about war (“long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror”) is very true in this issue.  They’re dealing with a nasty insurgency who is willing to use unwilling civilians as suicide bombers, language barriers with the local officials, local customs that they aren’t familiar with…it’s just a wholly foreign world and the creators beat that into your head.  These Marines don’t always even know who the enemy is and that causes a LOT of stress.  They also show us the boring down time: cleaning weapons, lifting weights, getting tattoos, looking at porn, wrestling, etc.

Unthinkable #2 – Review

By Mark Sable  (writer), Julian Totino (pencils, inks), Juan Manuel Tumburus (colors)

The Story: Alan Ripley tries to put a band-aid over the bullet hole as the insane ideas he concocted about doomsday scenarios come to fruition. He and the remaining members of the think-tank try to prevent a new terrorist attack but find themselves irrevocably caught in the web of the perpetrators they had tried to snare.

What’s Good: The story has a lot of fuel to it and moves along at a pace that matches its explosiveness. Both writer and artists do their job in delivering us the goods. Mark Sable does a good job of instilling the sense of chaos that has gripped his created world into the reader; andJulian Totino’s art captures this degraded sense of chaotic reality. The overall tone provided in this book is strong and consistent.

What’s Not So Good: The fact  that this issue had a weak and confusing plot and this helped  to confirm my initial theory about this series, which is,  that it relies on sensationalism. The terrorist attacks that are the setting– and really, the pull for this series– are a little cheap in the sense that Sable just takes every fear, prediction, warning, and danger we’ve experienced since 9/11 and throws them into the story with no clear idea for direction or meaning. Its like a Michael Bay independent, art comic book.

Conclusion: Being that this issue is half way through the whole series, I’m willing to give Sable the benefit of the doubt that he will tell us a good story here and that he has a clear exist strategy to wrap up this tale. In the end, this series serves as a good representation of comics being good without having to rely on the supernatural or the super-powered.

Grade: B-

-Rob G.