DCeased: Dead Planet Review (Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine)

It’s five years after the zombie apocalypse and, because it’s the last book in the series, the disembodied head of Cyborg has conveniently found a cure to the undead version of the Anti-Life Equation! Lured back to Earth by Cyborg’s intergalactic distress signal, the surviving heroes prepare to save the world - but standing in their way is an Amazo army for the 1% and Trigon, who’s emerging from the fiery pits to wipe out the remains of humanity and start life all over again. Could… could the heroes somehow save the day against impossible odds? Duh…

DCeased: Dead Planet predictably closes out what turned out to be an unimpressive pseudo-horror series. There were two storylines running in parallel in this book - the search for the cure before the Amazo army came online, and preparing to take on Trigon - neither of which were that interesting, and a third that got teased - zombie Darkseid unleashed - that was introduced and then got dropped immediately, never to be revisited, and that was the storyline I wanted to read more of!

I guess it’s cool that Tom Taylor gave the Vertigo crowd their time in the sun this time around - Constantine, Swamp Thing, et al. played big parts in this book - and it’s fun to see less well-known characters cameo here and there, like Doctor Fate and Metron. And Taylor shows once again why Jon and Damian are a better Superman and Batman than their dads ever were.

I don’t hate Trevor Hairsine’s artwork but I’m definitely not a fan. All the characters look stretched out and too similar and his Penguin is the worst I’ve ever seen - he’s tall, thin, even hipster-looking. Trigon looks cool, even if it’s pretty much a basic devil design, as did undead Plastic Man.

Mostly though the book has too many characters doing too many things, rushing towards a messy, convoluted and unsurprising finale. Characters “die” (of course none of it will stick even if this wasn’t a novelty series) and, no matter how unlikely Taylor tries to make victory for the heroes seem, it all works out for almost everyone in the end regardless. Ho hum. I was sitting on another chair dozing off, I was so far from the edge of my seat.

I suppose DCeased was a creative mash-up of DC superheroes and zombies, it just didn’t make for all that compelling reading. And so, with Dead Planet, DCeased ends with a load of flashy nonsense, much like it started. I don’t know who this series was for, but it wasn’t for me!