Brains! Full of comics!: Pieces for Mom

I really don't like zombie stories. I can't think of a genre that has been done to death and needlessly resurrected (Punmaster!) more times with increasingly unimaginative results each go round. Whether they are the bland, faceless villains of early video game stages, or a shambling snore in the pages of a comic book, they just seem lazy, both personally and on the part of the creator. I mean, when you're doing a horror comic and the sky's the limit for imaginative monsters, kills and gore, going for the mindless "they-wanna-eat-your-brains" dudes is pretty weak.

Many creators have tried to energize the idea by adding high concept twists, but as with most story tricks they just seem tacked on and end up bringing the stale smell of repetition to the forefront. There's a ghoul at the grocery store! Zombies in Vietnam! The undead walk the moon! I tried to run, but then I just got bored and fell asleep.

However, there have been some successful stories about those that hunger for flesh. The movie 28 Days Later was able to make the stumbly-wumbly non-threats of traditional flicks seem scary and Shawn of the Dead was able to poke fun at the genre's conventions and still provide a worthy amount of violence. And while I've never read it, I hear that Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead is an amazing piece of zom-dram. Anyway, when a zombie property is good, it tends to be exceptionally good. And last week, the master of horror in comics, Steve Niles put out another addition to this tradition with the one-shot, Pieces for Mom: A Tale of the Undead.

It is the story of two brothers who have taken it upon themselves to care for their zombified mother in a world completely lost to shambling brain-eaters. Scavenging food for themselves and fresh meat for their charge, the boys scrape out a miserable but determined existence in a post-apocalyptic blah, blah, blah.
As with most good stories in the genre, the story doesn't waste a great deal of time on the whys or hows of the infestation, explaining things only through the eyes of the boys. While focusing on the small stories in the midst of global catastrophe is nothing especially new, Niles is able to keep things fresh by giving the boys a convincingly young and earnest characterization.


It also doesn't hurt that the art in this book is astounding. Andrew Ritchie's monsters are truly unsettling to behold, from an undead baby chewing at its zombie mom's chest, to some poor abomination hobbling around on the stumps it still has for legs. I've never seen this guy's work before but he strikes me as the type that'll end up becoming a horror-comic staple. In addition to his nauseating tableaus of death and cannibalism, Ritchie's living characters manage to convey a dead-eyed stare often renders them indistinguishable from the zombies. And I say this as praise. The smiles on the human characters in the face of their overwhelmingly bleak landscape is as unsettling as any of the spilled intestines or rotting appendages.

I also have to give a huge shout out Ritchie's colors. He uses an aggressively muted palette and sickly hues straight out the butcher's dumpster to convincingly convey the rapidly decaying world. On top of his thick inks, the color really sells the horror of the undead takeover.

I can't say enough good things about this one. At $3.99 the price tag is a bit steep for a fairly quick one-shot, but the content is strong enough that repeat readings won't leave you feeling like, well, a zombie.

(I really need to work on my endings...)

Also purchased last week:

Testament Vol. 1: Akedah