BOGUS DEAD
Edited & Published by Jerome Gaynor
Co-Distributed by Alternative Comics
Restored to hideous un-life, driven by a hunger for warm living flesh, the shambling zombie hordes of Jerome Gaynor's Bogus Dead stalk the comic shelves!
Actually, they've been stalking for a while now. Bogus Dead, a comic book anthology featuring zombie-themed short stories from a broad slice of alt and indie comic creators, was originally published in February, 2002. With Halloween around the corner, though, now's a great time to pick it up. (Before it picks you up! Muahahahaha!) Fortunately, it's still widely available, either from online stores like Amazon.com, or directly from Gaynor's site, JeromanEmpire.com.
Like most any anthology, some of the stories entombed within are hits, and some are misses. Whether you think Bogus Dead has a greater share of one or the other depends a lot on personal taste. Between the covers of this book are a fair share of zombies who crave flesh, but there are also--given the book's selection of indie authors--quite a few who also crave things like rhetoric, love, a release from angst, and nice hats. That's bound to turn off more than a few die-hard mainstreamers and hardcore gore-loving zombie fans. As a zombie fan myself, though, I got a big kick out of seeing the living dead presented in so many ways.
Annable's "Revenge," a study in neat little
skull-headed guys... oh, and vengeance. |
Out of the whole rotting mass, I'd have to say my favorite vignette by far is Graham Annable's piece, "Revenge," following a risen corpse on its unbelievably long journey to sunny tropical vengeance. It's crisply drawn, funny, succinct... and tasty. A very strong pair of stories graces the center of the book, with Robyn Chapman's stark--both in art and tone--"No Reply," followed shortly after by Matthew Shultz's "Here, Kitty Kitty," which features gorgeous cartoony artwork, a trigger happy dad, and a disappointed little boy. The final piece, "Salvage Yard," by Dan Zettwoch, is a fantastic way to end a zombie anthology. It's got a little bit of everything a dead head could want and finishes on just the right bleak off-tone chord.
In fact, even though a majority of the comics in Bogus Dead are humorous, most still have that sort of bleak doomed quality to them, which is due in no small part to Gaynor's requirements from the artists. The anthology was an invitation-only affair, and the editor's invite gave four specific rules:
- "All dead humans return from the dead."
- "They desperately crave the flesh of the living!"
- "They can only be stopped by destroying their brains!"
- "We are all doomed!!!"
(The invitation card, reprinted at the beginning of the book, is a hoot in itself, showing what might have happened if Peyo, the creator of the beloved Smurfs, had turned his happy fairy land over to director of the dead George Romero...)
The secret origin to the Night of the Living Dead
revealed by Jeff Wilson! |
Gaynor's own turn--"Parenting in Wartime," the well written tale of a father's last days as he tries to prepare his very young daughter for the horrors to come--is one of a few very plot-strong pieces that feel very much at home in the zombie crypt. Jenny Zervakis's untitled entry similarly feels like a story with meat on its bones, rather than a comic "poem" or short (as many of the pieces do in any indie anthology, including Bogus Dead). The author of her own dark demise in a literal sense, Zervakis crafts a smart and well-balanced story. The down side--depending on how you look at this--is the somewhat amateur-ish art in these comics. The visual storytelling is great, of course, but their styles are not likely to appeal to readers who don't take in a lot of alt comics work. Some of the writing will find a narrower audience than other samples in the book, too. Ted May, for example, has a hand in two pieces, the second of which is a short but sweet zombie "moment" created with Kevin Huizenga. The first, though, titled "The Unliving End," is just too surreal and disjointed to appeal to a lot of traditional zombie lovers. Potayto, potahto.
And, of course, not every fleshy morsel in this book is quite so succulent. A bit of a disappointment was the entry from James Kochalka (Ignatz award-winning popular pioneer of journal comics). This is probably due to how my expectations were fueled by the way his peers, like Todd Webb & Tom Hart (zombies with nice hats, see above), gave the theme a good whack; it seemed like Kochalka didn't really want to do a zombie comic. The art in his brief vignette was nice, but the piece had barely anything to do with the topic at hand. Of course, there again, it suits Kochalka the journal comic artist to take the course he did. Readers, take my disappointment with a grain of salt. (Ha! Salt! Get it? You know, salt stops voodoo zombies? Oh, forget it...)
Jeremy Wabiszczewicz's "Dust in the Mouth"
has such a cool beginning...
then it just ends. |
Bogus Dead is also full of experiments. Some of them work, like Ariel Bordeaux's winding panel-less "My undead body is, like, SO embarrassing!!!," which uses a double page spread to show her own journey through life, death, afterlife, and redemption. Some work pretty well, but get a little confusing, like Mr. Mike's four-columned tables-turning tale that took me a couple minutes to get used to before I realized what he was doing. And some, of course, look a bit like rejects from Frankenstein's lab, including "Food" by Danno, which actually has a pretty clever story to it, but is killed by the muddy artwork and terrible captioning.
All told, though, I found a lot more to like in Bogus Dead than not. There are a lot of undead-inspired chuckles, some creepy moments, lots of gore and a great variety of artwork, much of it stellar. If you chafe at the sight of the art found in cartoony indie comics or xeroxed mini-comics, this may not be the book for you. But if you're willing to give it a shot, knowing that not all the pieces may be your cup of blood, you'll definitely get a toothy grin or three from Bogus Dead
--Chris Watkins
10/25/02
