DCeased: Unkillables is a sequel-ish/companion piece to DCeased that mostly focuses on what the villains were up to during the events of the first book while the heroes were dealing with the deathly-modified Anti-Life Equation - and, surprisingly, it’s actually better than the main book!
The story follows Deathstroke, his daughter Ravager, Red Hood, Batgirl/Cassandra Cain, Jim Gordon, and Ace the Bathound as the fallout from the Anti-Life virus sends them out of Gotham towards an orphanage in Bludhaven. Meanwhile, a buncha villains headed up by Vandal Savage are hiding out on a remote island to wait out the zombie apocalypse before emerging to take over what’s left of the world.
To those who are planning on reading this and don’t want to know specific plot points, I’ll leave you with the verdict that DCeased: Unkillables is a decent superhero/zombie mashup that’s worth a look even if you didn’t love the first volume - and SPOILERS here on out!
It was fairly interesting following Deathstroke’s adventures as he takes out a house of white supremacists in the opening scene and discovers his healing factor makes him impervious to the virus. There’s a lotta silly humour in this one (mostly provided by The Creeper and his “tree lobster” material) which felt a bit much at times though in other scenes it worked well, juxtaposed with the violence. I also liked that Jason insisted on putting Joker’s corpse on the hood of the Batmobile before they left the city!
The story got a bit dull once they were all in the Bludhaven orphanage waiting for things to happen. As well as Tom Taylor writes the villains so that they’re more than simply the one-dimensional baddies they normally appear as, he does overdo it a bit so that they become these sappy friends to the orphans in a predictable turn. Also unsurprising is how the parent characters like Deathstroke and Shiva behave towards their daughters in cliched final scenes.
Karl Mostert’s art was pretty good for the most part but the way he drew characters’ faces was really irksome. Jason Todd in particular looked horrendously ugly, though no character’s face looked normal.
Zombie Wonder Woman proves to be an effective and entertaining foil to the villains (“Unkillables” is a laughably inaccurate name for this group - they are very killable!), though the appearance of a character near her power level at the end was very convenient, particularly as she seems to have been hiding in plain sight the whole time but only chose to reveal herself in the final act!
Similarly contrived is Poison Ivy’s sanctuary in Gotham - how can her garden not be breached? And, if that’s the case, why not continue extending it further out to encompass more and more of the city?
Anyhoodles. Parts of the story are uncreative and stereotypically uninteresting while others are imaginative and entertaining. It’s a mixed bag but DCeased: Unkillables overall isn’t a bad read - a surprisingly fun follow-up to the first book.
No comments:
Post a Comment