Xombie Ate My Brain

Xombie #1
Author: James Farr
Artist: Nate Lovett
Publisher: Devil's Due

Lets face it, there are a lot of zombie books out there these days. A LOT of zombie books. Generally I view this as a good thing.I am not sure when zombies became cool again but I do remember being made fun of for liking Romero's Living Dead movies. Like most things in life, I got over it (after a few years of therapy, but lets not go there right now). Luckily for me, horror books are cool again and it is once again safe for the living dead to walk the streets with no fear of ridicule.

As cool as some of these books are I think we may be hitting the upper limit for the number of zombie books on the market. Image has walking zombies, IDW has Shaun, heck, Marvel even has a whole universe of the living dead. Because of all these titles I wasn't all that excited to see a new book called Xombie from Devil's Due. I thought it was going to be just one more story of mindless flesh-eating art. I was wrong.

Once I saw the art I could see that this book was going for a different feel. Due to a lack of a better term I will say that the artwork is influenced by anime. In this case it works and manages to give the book a slightly lighter feel than most others on this topic. Not to say that this is a funny book, but it has a lighter tone which actually makes the dark seem that much darker.

The story is going in a new direction that I hadn't seen used before. Within the first few pages we have one zombie that knows how to use a gun. I can honestly say that I don't remember ever seeing that before. Later we get to see a zombie named Dirge talk. Not just a few words while drooling and threatening you, but we get whole sentences. And he does it with attitude. Who knew, but turns out I like zombies with attitude.

Then we get another twist thrown at us and we have humans and zombies working together. Someone call The Enquirer. I'm not sure the world is ready for this. Then again, maybe we are. I admit, they got me. I am completely hooked on this one. I know that the first issue hasn't hit the streets, but please tell me that this is a monthly book. I can't wait until the next issue comes out. Give this title a chance. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

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