George A. Romero Empire of the Dead #1
Marvel Comics 2014
Written by Alex Maleev
Colours by Matt Holingsworth
Alright master of the zombie genre has teamed up with Marvel to tell yet another chapter to his ongoing Night of the Living Dead franchise. Personally i could not be any happier to be reading this right now I mean c’mon! He is the master who started the zombie craze as we know it and there are few who can equal what he’s done.
Well it seems Manhattan is the land of living and the dead. Penny Jones has been sent to study the men who work below all the while on the look out for an intelligent zombie (one who can play chess for example). It seems that some have a basic memory of things they used to do, sweeping up or hanging laundry for example but she’s on the lookout for a special one.
Now the men who work the lower levels don’t just collect zombies no they also round up rats so that the lower class can meat on the table. I mean it’s said that they don’t know it’s rat but seriously meat is meat so long as you’ve no idea where it comes from, besides i’m sure it tastes like chicken lol. Now i’m not sure about this obvious class difference but hey those that survive survive and those that have the money, power and mass weapons well they are the ones in charge.
So far he’s managed to assemble and interesting array of characters some of whom are not exactly what they appear to be. The zombies that have been captured are used for sport much like lions in the ancient Roman arena’s were. I think it’s interesting that we seem to go backwards to times such as that when there is a catastrophic world changing story. I mean really no one tries to work on the power to support small towns or to really educate the young so that they can move forward instead of regressing or is this our baseline humanity on display? It’s an interesting thought one way or the other.
There is also one other thing that happens here and I have got to say it nicely ties this into a previous movie. Where a woman finds her way to a house where she finds six other survivors and they board it up the best they can but to no avail in the end. I remember that movie and it’s nice to see how they tying that to this. I like the sense of continuity and for whatever reason it keeps this world alive longer.
Alex’s interior artwork is well suited for this type of story. It’s dark,moody and creepy and with his style he’s able to capture all that beautifully. His work really is the perfect compliment to Romero’s words and together they make a horror classic relevant again.
