Betty & Veronica #1 (2014 Halloween ComicFest Exclusive Mini-Comic) (Family Comic Friday Extra)

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his year, the Archie Comics group released 2 mini-comics for Halloween ComicFest. The first is Afterlife with Archie #1. It’s a reprint of the series premier of the same name. In that comic, Jughead’s dog Hot dog is hit by a car and killed. Not wanting to let him go, he seeks out Sabrina the Teenage Witch to bring him back to life. The result is a zombie dog that bites Jughead and then starts a rampant zombie apocalypse. This book is bloody, gorey, and not you typical Archie Comic. In fact, I believe that it got a rating of Teen or Teen+. So, if your child receives this book in their trick-or-treat goody bag, use extreme caution before letting them read it.

  Now, if your child were to trick-or-treat at our house, they’d get a different kind of Archie Comic. This book stars Archie’s girlfriend’s Betty and Veronica. This story also involves zombies but in a much tamer way. The girls decide to have a sleepover on Halloween watching scary movies. Knowing that Archie, Reggie, and Jug will try to scare them, Betty and Veronica turn the tables on the guys by dressing up as zombies. It’s one of the better Archie freebies that I have read in a while with a pretty funny story and with the exception of characters in make-up, it’s not gory. Nor do any characters use incantations to raise the dead.

I was really surprised that Archie Comics released this book as I had read that Betty & Veronica were to be discontinued early next year. Maybe that was a rumor. Anyway, I find it odd to advertise something that you’re going to cancel within a couple of months. Maybe this is a way  to drum up interest in Riverdale’s beauties.

Worth Consuming

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Steampunk Halloween 2013 (#3)

Great Cover, Bad Comic...

Can you consider something to be a Halloween special if it doesn’t pertain in any way to Halloween? Maybe; but I think it’s a stretch. Does having a band of zombies in the plot constitute a Halloween story? No, not really. So explain to me how a comic book that takes place on a deserted isle, set sometime around the 1700s, starring a shipwrecked crew along with a young girl and her robot that looks an awful look like Legolas from LOTR is a Halloween special?

 This book was a major disappointment. If the story I talked about was just one of several stories contained in a Halloween special, I could make allowances. I’ve read many a Christmas themed special that has one or two stories that take place during winter but do not involve any sort of festive spirit. But this special has only 1 story and it’s not really all that scary and doesn’t even have candy in it!

The worst thing about this book was how excited I was about it. Look at the cover- there’s a Christopher Lee looking vampire being discovered by Holmes, Watson, and a robot cop! That’s what I was expecting in this book. Why, even the pin-up at the back of the book that’s of Steampunk Ghostbusters would’ve been better suited for this special than the story I got.

Lastly, the story itself was weak. The art was a quasi-manga style work. It wasn’t bad but it was lacking depth. Then you’ve got the crew who turn into zombies for some reason. There’s mention of a lord of the undead but you’re not even sure if that’s really what’s behind the zombie attack or did some of the crew drink some bad grog? And then there’s our heroine who makes an ambiguous statement to one of the crew members that ‘mother would’ve been proud.” Where these two brother and sister? Was the girl older than she looked and this boy’s mother only he didn’t know?  It’s left very vague and I hate it when books end like that.

If I didn’t get this out or a grab bag or bargain bin, I think I would’ve written the company to demand my money back. This just isn’t such a great comic. There are 2 more specials in this series. Based on my disappointment, I’m not even sure I’d pursue them and I’d seriously consider passing them up if found in a dollar box.

So much of this book could’ve worked. Why it didn’t is beyond me.

Not Worth Consuming.

Rating: 3 out of 10 stars.

When Will You Rise: Stories to End the World by Mira Grant

When I last experienced the Newsflesh zombie wasteland created by Mira Grant, I lamented the fact that she had published another short story set in the same universe by couldn’t access it because I don’t do eBooks. Well imagine my joy when the other day I found this “exclusive eBook” resting on the shelves at my local library in bound hardback form. Of course I snatched that baby up while making several patrons give me dirty looks as I squealed in delight. 

When Will You Rise is a collection of two short stories or novellas, depending on how you want to define them. The first story, ‘Countdown’ is the prequel to the Newsflesh trilogy. It shows how the two viruses that will become the Kellis-Amberlee zombie virus were created. The tale also provides a glimpse at what the Masons life was like before they became blogging sensations as well a glimpse into the quandary the CDC and other government agencies found themselves in as reports of the dead coming to life were coming true.

The only thing that this story was missing I thought was the missed opportunity to discover who the real parents of Shaun and George were and what they were like. We get to see what they’re future adoptive parents were like before the Rising but I think it would’ve been interesting to see if what their real folks were like. I think it could’ve been an interesting experiment in nature vs. nurture seeing how George and Shaun’s parents went about their lives. Did Shaun real father have a reckless swagger? Was George’s mother intuitive and a little punk like her? Were any of their parents from West Virginia? These are some interesting questions Grant could’ve explored while painting a picture of how the world fell into zombie chaos. 

The second story; 'Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box,' isn’t set in the Newsflesh universe. In that tale, a group of friends learn that they may have unwittingly become both the destroyers and saviors of the human race. It’s an eerie tale left slightly open at the end. I think it ended way to short as I wanted to know more about what happens next. Maybe Grant will return to this scenario sometime in the near future.

This couple of tales were awesome. Grants has a clear writing style that is easy to follow. She makes her characters real and easy to know, if not understand, very quickly. That’s why I was left yelling “NOOOOOOO!” when The Box ended much too soon. I had grown to care about those 6 friends in just 30 short pages and I wanted to know more about their lives and how they were going to survive the apocalypse they accidently created. 

I am also hoping that more Newsflesh tales will be in the works. There is plenty of material that’s been left untouched that Grant could explore for her readers. She’s got a new trilogy that’s in the works and I look forward to reading those books when they become available but I hope she’s a little like Stephen King or Dean Koontz, who like to write several projects at a time. That way a new book set in this zombie apocalypse can come out sooner than later. 

Worth Consuming.

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

“Feed” by Mira Grant, Book I of the Newsflesh Trilogy

Our local library has this thing called the “Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” program. They take books, wrap them so as you can’t see them and then they paste the first sentence of the book on top of the package. It’s to encourage people to read and discover books and subjects that might be out of their comfort zone or that folks might just overlook entirely.

My first sentence was as follows:

“Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-six years: with an idiot- in the case, my brother Shaun- deciding it would be a good idea to go out and poke a zombie with a stick and to see what happens.”

I thought the sentence was fully as hell and I was totally intrigued. I like zombie comics, but I’m not really a fan of horror films or fiction. I like horror comics too! But, deep down I am a wuss. But, the first sentence was funny and I thought that I might just have the next Shaun of the Dead in my hands. I was sorta right.

  This book involves a pair of twins named Georgia, our narrator and her brother- the idiot, named Shaun. In this post zombie apocalyptic world, bloggers and online reporting has replaced the traditional news. With the constant threat of outbreaks and rampant fear, it makes sense that people writing about what they see out their windows would become newsworthy. When the twins get hired to go on the road with a up and coming Presidential candidate, the duo of reporters get more than they bargained for, as their presence has just uncovered a massive conspiracy.

  The book started off a little slow. I got a little nervous, because the twins start off the book poking a zombie with a stick and then fleeing from a horde of undead Californians. My head was saying that this is a typical zombie work like the multitude that’s flooded the market in recent years. Yet, my instincts said to keep reading on and I am glad I did.

   By the time the siblings get home and have to undergo an unthinkable number of blood tests and then a sterilizing ritual that doesn’t just kill the zombie virus, but just about any bacteria good or bad on the human body, I’ve realized that author Mira Grant just hasn’t written a book, she’s created an entire world. With the history of the virus to how society survives in an oft isolated manner to the new political system developed “after the end times”, it’s easy to see this as a real possibility in the event of zombie devastation.

  Look, I know zombies aren’t real. But, this book made me realize that the zombie “virus”  doesn’t just attack bodies once dead. This microscopic bug that turns a corpse into the undead is in everybody. All living beings over a certain weight are infected. It’s white blood cells that’s keeping folks from turning into walking Petry dishes of hot death. I never understood why someone alive could turn into a zombie if bitten. It’s because the virus is in everyone and so a little extra germ causes a massive infection.

  It’s like Typhoid Mary, she was a walking germ factory, but she never got sick- she just made people sick. But,  I bet if she had been injected by someone else’s typhoid cells, she would’ve shown symptoms as well. I don’t think we’ll be fighting zombies any day now, but there are terrible viruses and bacteria out their waiting to mutate and rear its ugly head and I think if that kind of outbreak happens, we could be seeing quarantines scenes like those out of a George Romero film.

I really loved the book. It did take a while to get going and once it did, I couldn’t stop- literally like a live host being converted after a bite! Yes, I cheated and had to read ahead a little as the suspense was killing me. There are two more books in this series and I will be heading to my library tomorrow to pick up the next book. I can even see this series becoming a trilogy of films or maybe even a TV series on like SyFy. And I would watch it! Faithfully!

Thank you, Orange County Public Library. You opened me up to not just a great book, but to a brave new world that I wouldn’t want to live in, but I definitely wouldn’t mind observing from afar.

Worth Consuming

Rating 8.5 out of 10 stars.