Director George A. Romero has turned his talents to the
comic book field once again but this time it’s as a sequel (or continuation if
that’s better for you) to his Night of
The Living Dead (with some echoes of the other films in). Empire
of the Dead: Act One is the collected first five issues of the ongoing
series which depicts a future in which humanity survives in a world of the
undead but there is something new brewing under the streets ready to burst out.
Penny Jones is a doctor looking to find a new way for the
undead, or Stinkers, to exist. She
thinks the key lies with Paul Barnum, a cop who also runs a gladiator style
stinker vs. stinker entertainment for the rich and the poor. Barnum tells her a story about a former
police officer by the name of Xavier who was bitten by a zombie and turned and next
thing you know an undead Xavier shows up.
The strange thing is Xavier doesn’t want to kill anyone; instead she has
no appetite for the human flesh at all.
Jones theorizes that Xavier may be a new step in the evolution of the
undead and takes Xavier under her supervision to get to the bottom of
this. Paul has his hands filled with the
gladiator games and Mayor Chandrake, who has made their surviving the
apocalypse possible. Chandrake is also
the figure-head behind a cabal of a different kind of undead – vampires, that
rule behind the scenes as the rich and privileged. Chandrake also has Jones under his thumb as
he has a stake in seeing her succeed with her experiment with Xavier but
everything changes when Xavier escapes her captors in order to help other
stinkers realize their full potential, which may lead to some major conflicts
for everyone and the future of humans, stinkers, and vampires.
Romero plays with many themes from his Dead films mainly the
evolution of the zombie first seen in Day
of the Dead (1985) with character of Bub and later with Big Daddy in Land of the Dead (2005). Xavier is the latest addition as she doesn’t
eat flesh and she communicates with other zombies and at one point takes a
human child as a friend. There are also
a lot of parallels with Land of the Dead in
that this story is also mostly confined in a “protected” city and there is a
gladiator-style arena that entertains the masses. This story has more political themes flowing
through the story to give it a more grandiose atmosphere and to expand the
world (this is an ongoing series). Romero
does an excellent job with pacing the story and implementing the vampire elements
to the zombie themes he’s already a firm hand at. This is an excellent extension of his
universe and to help fans to get even more invested in the characters Penny
Jones is actually a relative of Barbra and Johnny from the original film and
Romero goes into more detail on what happened to Barbra when she was dragged
out of the farm house by her undead-Johnny.
This is an excellent series of which Romero is at home in
this medium. The book is illustrated by
Alex Maleev who makes the perfect companion for Romero’s style of writing and
will not disappoint readers. Included
in the graphic novel are a collection of alternate covers from the series to
allow fans to be able to see the covers without having to pay for each of them.
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