Broken Frontier

The online animated feature moves to the printed page. Join Zoe and her zombie friend Dirge for a decidedly different take on the walking dead.

It’s 2052 and in a post-apocalyptic future mankind is reduced to living in protected citadels and struggling to survive in a zombie-infested world. Disaster looms when the train due to deliver one human settlement’s replacement power core is hijacked before it reaches them, with the attacker appearing to be a sentient zombie… something nobody had believed existed before.

Ten years beforehand however, the daughter of two of the city council members claimed to have been rescued by a talking, benevolent zombie named Dirge when she was lost at sea. Now a teenager, Zoe is the only person in the settlement who has had experience of this kind of undead being before. Can she enlist Dirge’s help in rescuing the stolen power source, defeating the bad guy and saving her people?

Zombies have been everywhere in the comic book world over the last couple of years. We’ve seen zombies as soap opera, iconic characters transformed into zombies, reprinted zombie tales from the 70s, re-imaginings of old zombie characters and various film tie-ins. In short, it’s seemed pretty difficult to imagine how any publisher could launch another zombie series that had something different to offer.

It was a refreshing surprise then to read Xombie and find that my preconceptions that this was probably just another book about the shambling undead were unfounded. Granted, the basic premise is hardly original (post-apocalyptic world over-run by zombies, civilization in tatters, humans forced together against in battle for survival and so on) but with Xombie this is largely irrelevant. It’s the execution of the subject matter that differs and makes it unique.

Xombie has, at first glance, a slightly incongruous style given its theme. Its "animated" look is very different from the normal dark and claustrophobic atmosphere we expect from stories dealing with the walking dead. Nate Lovett’s visuals though are appealing and effective throughout with some very expressive character moments. Who would have thought such a cartoony style would suit a zombie book? And yet it works.

Unlike so many other examples of its genre this first issue does not rely on excessive gore or shock value to tell its story. The reality of the situation is never shied away from (zombie survival lessons in school for example or Dirge’s recycling of other zombies to replace his own failing body parts) but there’s nothing gratuitous or over the top here.

I came to this book without any knowledge of the online animated stories that preceded this first issue. While that may have put me in a disadvantage regarding the characters’ back stories it does give me the advantage of being able to assess how well Xombie caters to a comic book audience that may be encountering this world for the first time. In that regard it’s a strong opening issue. James Farr provides enough back story to be accessible for a newer reader without it ever becoming exposition-heavy. The characters are engaging and the relationship between Dirge and Zoe is one that I look forward to seeing explored in more detail.

Is it possible to have an all-ages zombie comic book? If it is then Xombie fits the bill. I find myself in the quite bizarre position of wanting to use words like "charming" in relation to a comic about a world infested with rotting, walking corpses. But given that Zoe and Dirge’s friendship seems to be the very heart of the book, perhaps "charming" isn’t that inappropriate after all.

Farr and Lovett’s Xombie represents a very successful transition of the property to the printed page and one that will have you eager to check out the character’s online origins.