Broken Frontier

After the absolute thrill ride that was the first big battle sequence of Zipper (issue #3), writer Tom Waltz and artist Casey Maloney (the duo behind Children of the Graves ) pull out all the stops in an attempt to top themselves with this, the big-big brawl to end them all, a fight to the death between Zipper and his allies and the otherworldly “hunters”.  There’s a  touch of steady progression on the militant religious folk and their closing in on our extra-dimensional hero, but overall, this issue is pure action, action, action, non-stop and cinematic.  Think the movie version of Howard the Duck with better dialogue, expert pacing, and if the thing didn’t butcher an already-established concept, oh, and if Howard were a kick-ass dude in leather wielding barbed Ghost Rider chains.  Voila!  You got Zipper.

There’s little I haven’t already said in praise of this book, though here’s a point I’ll focus on after reading issue #5: Waltz’s smashing good use of action-issues and then action-lite issues, flipping between slow character-building set-ups and giant-sized brouhahas in literally issue-to-issue alternate turns.  Usually, comic writers tend to try and squeeze some sort of action into each and every issue, but what with the number of large panels and splash pages necessary to pull off even the most minor of comic book scraps (no one wants to sacrifice the visual flair), this generates a feeling of too-little spread across too-much, a sense of being cheated out of hard earned money month after month with too-quick reads that don’t seem accomplished or entertaining in certain essential ways.  Zipper avoids this pitfall by offering solid issues of dramatic build-up, character interaction, thematic exploration, and then follows those with a solid 22 pages of explosive bif bam pow loveliness.

In this way, the action-y issues prove satisfyingly action-packed, the fights lasting long enough and offering a range in interaction, rhythm, and choreography to feel sincerely fulfilling, no matter how breakneck the pages are turned.  The non-action issues then read like novellas, dense and wordy but always leading to cliffhanger final moments that make the effort expended, in retrospect, seem effortless.  Zipper #5 continues this gratifying trend, moving from the script-heavy #4 into a full-length final showdown with one of the major baddies of the book.  Waltz writes it with the same fanciful movement between characters that made #3 (the last all-action ish) so bloody marvelous.  Maloney gets to draw lots of big panels and splashes, and proves evenly adept with churning out a slew of super-dynamic smaller moments that thrill as much as the spotlight shots.

Waltz seems to have saved the most difficult bit of Zipper for the next and last issue: the would-be ex-hivemind independent alien vs. the free-minded militant religious zealot humans.  I’m intrigued to see where the story ultimately leads for the finale: only one issue to go and likely we’ll get more with Zipper’s home other-dimensional colony, plus the confrontation, at long last, with the old crazy preacher millionaire dude, and have it all come together in 22 pages.  That sounds like maybe it won’t come together, but Waltz actually did this very same thing with the aforesaid Children of the Grave, pulling together pretty much everything introduced throughout the mini in the final issue, having saved everything for last.  I expect no less from him and Maloney now on Zipper.

Maybe y’all are waiting for the trade, and if you are, start saving those dollars now, because this here is still the surprise sci-fi hit of last year and this year.  You want to read this.  So read it!