Broken Frontier

The End of Days is here and we’re all living on borrowed time. But for two dreadnek boys like the Savage Brothers, the Apocalypse is nothing but a party…and an excellent chance to make a buck.

Just when you think that the undead have been done to death, here come two zombie bounty hunters with more balls and buckshot than brains to do them to death some more, and they take either cash or beer as payment. The Savage Brothers is as simple as that, with the end of the world as we know it the only wrinkle. Otis, the big, bald, beefy wheelman, and his wordier but only slightly smarter brother Dale, who often prefers to let his firearms do the talking, are feelin’ fine, though. In fact, the clusterf**k that the world has become is just their element. They are men made for their time, and somewhere Adam Smith is smiling, because where everyone else sees brain-eaters they see dollar signs. And when a shadowy CIA-type hires them and the job turns into a showdown with a talking head in a jar gung-ho for sacrificing a virgin stripper before a legion of the walking dead, they not only see riches, but the chance to become heroes as well.

The Savage Brothers #1 is a great read because writers Andrew Crosby and Johanna Stokes tear right into the story and keep a lead foot on the gas until the last page. Along the way there are a few brush strokes of explication, but nothing so weighty or talky as how the Apocalypse came about or how it spawned zombies. Instead, the blood red skies, a rain of frogs, Atlanta with a terminal case of thunderstorms, and the zombies, of course, tell us all we need to know. This sort of showing instead of telling lets the pacing hum like a Hemi without sacrificing the other elements of good storytelling, such as solid scene structure and drama that builds as the conflict intensifies—both of which make The Savage Brothers #1 read like it’s been written by pros who’ve been in the game for years. The action sequences are thrilling, the humor is an infectious by-product of the characterization, and the conclusion gets us revved-up and primed for issue #2. But while the killer premise, unabashed violence, and, of course, zombies may get us readers to buy a ticket to the show, we’re staying for the credits and waiting for the sequel because of the relationship between Otis and Dale. Deftly, both the writing and the artwork solidifies their bond, their non-verbal reactions saying what only siblings can hear, their dialog natural and snappy as if they’ve been killing zombies since the crib. And though I’m sure that it’s next to impossible to write a zombie story without obligatory shots of random people running and screaming in panic as if they don’t deserve such torment (which they invariably do, being human and all), there’s none of that in The Savage Brothers. Leaving that trite conceit out of this first issue breathes a fresh air into a genre that comics is on the verge of exhausting.

Come from where I come from and you know what it means to call someone "The Truth." A kid rocks the rim like vintage ’88 Jordan, that kid’s The Truth. A kid skateboards like the street’s made of air, that kid’s The Truth. Page through Rumble in La Rambla, then turn your sights to The Savage Brothers, and you instantly know that Rafael Albuquerque is The Truth. While Rumble was slick and shiny, a lush mix of Latin and anime influences, The Savage Brothers sports a rougher, edgier, pimps up zombies down style, the Ale Garza scaled back and the Eduardo Risso cranked up, with helpings of Jock and a dash of Christopher Mitten for flavor. Great company for an up-and-coming artist to be in, but Albuquerque’s work isn’t derivative, however. Rather, he’s synthesized a number of distinct artistic voices into something that’s resolutely his own. His lines are energetic and angular, but economical, as well, making for a "realism at the edges" quality that intensifies seemingly ordinary two- and three-shots in particular and in general draws us into the sorts of panels we’d normally glance by on auto-pilot. And as mentioned above, Albuquerque’s capacity for conveying emotional subtleties locks us into Otis and Dale and makes us feel like we’ve known them for longer than just one issue. But among Albuquerque’s many obvious talents, it’s his framing and timing that seal the deal in The Savage Brothers. He combines a solid, natural sense of how the eye moves through a layout with a bloodhound’s nose for finding the perfect beats in a sequence, and the result for twenty-two pages is an elegant flow from panel to panel and page to page. Like I said, this guy’s The Truth.

The only one real down note is that this is the first issue of a mini-series with only two more to go. The editor who doesn’t greenlight The Savage Brothers as a series toute suite is as brain dead as the zombies that befoul its pages.