I don’t have high expectations for zombie stories. The motif of the human flesh of the living dead is so common in pop culture that you cannot expect too much of the authors who use it. It is difficult to create a unique work in this niche, but it is enough to show a bit of creative cleverness for the end result to be satisfactory. You can set the story in its original reality, modify the narrative method, have fun with the combination of horror and comedy, focus on deepening the relationship between the characters, turning towards the drama, or opt for a pure form to present the most visually interesting clashes with zombies. There are many ways to tell an interesting zombie story, but when too many are tried at once, none of them has a positive effect. This is also what happened with the comicDCeased. Undead in the DC world .
Zombies with superpowers
Stories of the zombie apocalypse usually focus on a handful of survivors trying to survive the overwhelming plague of the living dead. In DCeased, the threat is of a different nature – incredibly powerful superheroes and supervillains whose powers pose a threat to the whole of Earth if, after being infected, they spiral out of control.
The biggest complaint I have about this series is the lack of a clear direction to go in. It might seem like a Justice League zombie story should just be pure entertainment filled with fanservice for fans of the DC universe and scenes that don’t have to make much sense just to look good. Unfortunately, the creators lacked a sense in the implementation of this assumption.
Lots of ideas, no idea
Tom Taylor, the author of the great Injustice , this time definitely exaggerated with the exploitation of elements of the presented world. To get a good understanding of DCeased’s drawbacks , it’s best to start at the end. On the last pages of the album is an original outline of the script that Taylor outlined to the publisher. Reading it clearly shows that the screenwriter had a lot of ideas in his head, but he did not manage to select and develop the best, or turn them into an engaging comic book.
The writer of the script could not help but squeeze in episodic appearances of various characters wherever he could. Of course, the world of DC Comics is not only Batrodzina and the Justice League and their opponents, so cameo is most welcome. However, you have to choose a limited number of main characters so as not to make the story small. And if you are introducing John Constantine’s stories and other characters related to magic in the middle, it would be good if they had any significant impact on the plot, and their plots did not break off after one notebook completely detached from the main events.
Another culpable mistake is unbearable exposure. From the very first pages, we are dealing with frames full of boring and pathetic “off” narratives. In addition, the author bombards the reader with an unbearable amount of technoblot about the Anti-Life Equation that Darkseid is looking for, which is the cause of the outbreak in the comic book. I can understand the desire to embed the zombies in the DC lore , but it was done in an extremely rigid and uninteresting way. Not to mention the inconsistency with regard to the intelligence of the undead and the speed of infection symptoms.
Tom Taylor apparently couldn’t make a decision about the tone in which he wanted to present this story. Attempts to combine the epic scale of events with an intimate drama and occasional comedy cutscenes (mainly performed by Oliver Queen) result in the creation of a genre-like stopper.
Aesthetic dryness
The graphic layer, for which Trevor Hairsine and Stefano Gaudiano are mainly responsible, stand at a decent level of superhero comics, but they do not impress with absolutely nothing. However, the shortcomings of the text are so great that cartoonists have no chance to cover them. If it were a simple, even banal story focusing on action, it would be enough to illustrate it in an interesting way and a comic book would be pleasant to read. Frames with Cyborg visible through a hole in the head or with zombied Atlanteans and Kraken look great. Unfortunately, such images are exceptions, and most of the scenes are presented in a not very interesting way. It should be noted, however, that the Taylor script does not give the illustrators too many opportunities to go all out, and the intrusive narrative further overwhelms the drawings.
You had one job…
It would seem that the task facing the developers is simple. It was enough to create an easy-to-read story using the zombie and DC superhero theme, focusing only on action and bloody aesthetics. Unfortunately, in short, Tom Taylor overcame it, and the cartoonists did not take the opportunity to go crazy. As a result, we got a boring story illustrated in an average way.
