Comic Review: DCeased: The Unkillables (2020-) #1

DCeased: The Unkillables (2020-) #1

DC Comics

Writer: Tom Taylor

Artist: Karl Mostert

There are people who say we’re overusing the superhero genre. They were saying the same thing about the zombie genre a while ago. “They” are mostly referring to movies, but I couldn’t think of a better intro to this superhero/zombie book. DCeased is one of the bigger surprises from 2019 to me. I love zombies, I love superheroes, and the combination of the two brings me joy. Now DC is back at it with a three-issue mini-series set in the world of DCeased.

Darkseid got his hands on the anti-life equation, but it only brought death. Spread through screens, it infects humans and turns them into zombies. In the original DCeased series, we see heroes fight and fall to the virus, and some even rise again as its victims. In DCeased: The Unkillables #1 we follow Deathstroke and Red Hood at the start of the outbreak and see how they fare against the end of the world.

From the start, I already love the premise of this miniseries. There are so many heroes and villains in the DC universe, it would be almost impossible to have fit them all in the original DCeased series. Now we get this fresh perspective from two characters not part of the big wig group we saw before. I think with the way the story is set up we’re in for a very interesting view of this apocalypse. Jason Todd’s story is street level, with him, Cassandra Cain, and Commissioner Gordon taking the Batmobile on the road. Without giving away too much, Deathstroke has a healing factor, and it plays an important part. Plus, he gets a job offer from Vandal Savage, and it feels like it’ll be bigger in scale, story-wise.

With Red Hood and Deathstroke being our primary protagonists in this issue, there’s some really good action. It starts with Deathstroke fighting infected in a church, and things get wilder from there. The action, and the characters, while in costume look really good in this style. But then there are panels where we just see plain faces out of the masks and they don’t look good. I’m not an artist, and it never really feels right to judge people who can draw, but some of the close-ups don’t look right. On a larger scale, things look great though. Besides that though, I think the larger shots of the landscape and the action are great.

I became a fan of Tom Taylor’s work with the Injustice comics, and I read those long before I ever began playing either of the Injustice video games. He’s a great writer, and I think his stories set in their own universe like this are where he really shines. If you think there’s we’ve seen everything that can happen in this universe that’s not a sequel, you’re wrong. Some might say dead wrong. Besides a few iffy panels, The art is great, and there’s at least one very ass-kicking visual in this first issue. If you like the original series or just any kind of Elseworld-esque stories, this is something you should definitely be reading.