Broken Frontier

Zombies for Christmas? Time for Scarlet Veronica to get very "naughty", which is not so "nice" for the zombies.

Josh Ruggles and Jason Moody continue their off-the-beaten-path comic book series that combines humor, horror, and in this issue, some holiday spirit of The Nightmare Before Christmas variety. Coming off of their first issue, how does the second one stand up?

Scarlet Veronica puts paid to the zombies and reverts back to just plain Veronica. Her nightmare isn’t over yet, however, as she finds herself face to face with the Grim Reaper (or "Mr. Death" as he prefers to be called). Mr. Death has some bad news for Veronica – she’s supposed to be dead! But, then again, zombies aren’t supposed to exist either but right now there’s a herd of them headed for the Raimiesville mall and only Veronica’s undead alter ego can stop them… or can she?

After a solid first issue writer Ruggles does slip up a little bit here. Some of the lines of dialogue get a bit repetitive and the characters have a bad habit of going into what I refer to as "info dump mode". This is somewhat counter-balanced by the sheer silliness of calling the Grim Reaper "Mr. Death", along with the fact that, for some strange reason, I hear his lines in my head spoken in the voice of David Hyde Pierce. The pace also picks up when we get to the mayhem at the mall. It is here that Ruggles shows where his strong points are – in writing quippy dialogue, excellent fight scenes, and sequences that mix horror and humor in appropriately inappropriate measures.

The artwork by Jason Moody also shows that he is starting to get more comfortable around the characters. There is a greater consistency here and one has to love his design for Mr. Death. He crafts the Grim Reaper as a living, flowing shadow and that fluidity comes across perfectly and beautifully on the page. His designs for the Sho’mvet are also quite unique and impressive. Moody also gets to go in for some gore (although not too much) as some of the zombies make a few kills.

While the second issue of this series is a little shakier, being a bit heavy on the expository dialogue, it looks as though issue three should be quite a bit more balanced. Still, with zombies, some new antagonists waiting in the wings, and Mr. Death looking like he’s not going to be taking a holiday this holiday season, the series overall is shaping up quite nicely. With genuinely charming lead characters and more monsters promised to come, it’s a sure bet that readers are already hoping that this four-issue series won’t be the last seen of Scarlet Veronica.