Broken Frontier

About a month ago, it seemed like zombies were just the shambling leftovers compared to the vast multitudes that swarmed the Top Webcomic list a year before. The Zombie Hunters and Dead Winter seemed to be getting the whole zombie underground, but just when you thought it was safe to return to the shopping mall, a new zombie webcomics crawls closer to the top spot.

Everyday Decay is a story about living in the undead world. It’s the story of Dorian and Emiko, two lovers who struggle to make it in a world overrun by zombies with nothing but wits and TyTy, a pet Papillion. It’s these two refreshing characters alone which make this comic worth reading in the first place.

Perhaps the hallmark of any good zombie film is good characters – it’s rarely superhuman action starts that survive a zombie holocaust, but instead, plainly Average Joes and Janes like Dorian and Emiko. It’s often their interplay which makes the comic so intensely scary – and even a little bit funny. Like when Dorian – in the doghouse with Emiko after firing a warning shot at TyTy – is locked out of the house and fighting off zombies with knives and volleyball, while a satisfied Emiko watches above with a sniper rifle.

This isn’t to say Everyday Decay is all fun and games. There are plenty of the eerie moments you’d expect from a zombie piece, ranging from the intensely malformed individual zombies to entire freeways packed shoulder-to-shoulder with the approaching living dead. Once Dorian spins out on such a road, and for an instant, his digital clock reads “h:ell”. There’s also a moment where Emiko enters a house to see a person has futilely tried to hang themselves, only to end up one of the living dead, moaning while hanging from the ceiling. Its subtle things like this which makes Everyday Decay a powerful work.

There are a couple minor improvements which need to be made. I don’t really see Emiko or Dorian called by name nearly enough – in fact, the only character references predominantly in the strip is the cute little TyTy. I had to look up the other two names on the Info page. There’s also a few times where the lettering is too far away from the speaking character, crossing with another character’s position or just too awkwardly positioned.

Overall, Everyday Decay is a great comic for anyone looking for a strip equal parts Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead. With both engaging characters and a emotional whallop, Everyday Decay is one shambling mound of decay you won’t want to forget any time soon.