News From the Fallout
Private Otis Fallows didn’t have to think. All he had to do was follow the orders from General McCoy, head of the Gaines Army Base in Southern Nevada. The General was overseeing a nuclear test and ordered his men to investigate the fallout from it. When they did, that’s when the people closest to it started… changing. It’s also when Otis got the hell out and made it all the way to a small diner on the outskirts of Las Vegas. This is where he, and the unlucky people inside are going to make their stand against whatever the hell emerged from that fallout to kill them all.
When I say that Chris Condon is a competent writer, I don’t mean that to imply competence itself is a bad thing. The news suggests we could use a whole lot more of it in the world these days, but I digress. It’s just that, based on what I’ve read from him, his ability appears to top out at “competent” and not much here changes my mind. “News From the Fallout” is essentially a zombie story (from outer spaaaaaace…) that ticks off all the usual boxes – frightened military man, evil military officer, regular people holing up in a building, crazy grizzled guy who’s seen this all before – without doing much new with them. I’ll give Condon credit for delivering an ending with more thematic relevance to our time than I was expecting, but that’s it.
What does distinguish this from the other comics I’ve read from the writer is the art from Jeffrey Alan Love. He draws this miniseries in a stylized black-and-white fashion that depicts most of the cast in shadow and gives the surroundings an appreciably creepy and haunted vibe. It’s very distinctive work, and the most memorable part of the story, even if Love’s style does make it hard for his characters to emote, or for the reader to tell them apart at times. While by no means a bad comic, “News From the Fallout” has the feel of the kind of oddball curio you’d expect to find while rooting through a half-off bin at a con and feeling that the price was right after you’d read it.