Broken Frontier

It’s not completely unexpected. Zombies are a big deal in webcomics now, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see them popping up all over the place.

The webcomic begins with the cast of Weekgeeks emerging from the woods bruised, bloody, and in one case, bitten. Barricading themselves into a log cabin, the geeky roleplayers soon find themselves the best suited for survival against an undead attack. But things are not what they seem, and soon the cast of characters are picked off one by one, until it all culminating in a horrifically effective twist ending – followed by an obligatory second twist which puts the entire story back into the regular Weregeeks continuity, one hundred percent zombie free.    

Even if the Weregeeks creators are just going through the motions, they’ve succeeded in making some very terrifying scenes. The level of violence is just right for a zombie movie – over-the-top but not exceedingly in-your-face. Sometimes there are not much more on the strips but the characters and pure shadows all around, making the atmosphere extremely effective and more than a little ominous. This is to say nothing of the first aforementioned ending, with both a twist and style worthy of Steve Niles.

With all that said, I wouldn’t have minded seeing the Weregeeks spend more time in this storyline. Usually letting the audience’s imagination fill in the blanks is an effective way of telling the story, but there’s just too precious little content in this storyline. Most likely, the creator didn’t want to get too wrapped up in the zombie drama for the regular readers to get tired of the novelty – but I still think they could have packed more zombie goodness into this double-twisted ghost story.

Overall, the recent arc of Alina Pete’s Weregeeks is a good short for anyone either looking for leftover Halloween chills or still in the mood for some fear mixed with a healthy dose of humor. Weregeeks is normally a great webcomic which blends fantasy with reality, and this latest arc doesn’t disappoint – even if it could have used some more “BRAINS!”