DCeased: Unkillables

After the success of “DCeased,” a generally alright superhero zombie story, it was expected that a spinoff like this would be forthcoming.  What I didn’t expect was for “Unkillables” to be more entertaining than its progenitor.  It may be eighty pages shorter, but that makes for a tighter pace overall as writer Tom Taylor crams the story with plenty of creative violence, humor, and surprises.  Starting with Deathstroke’s startling role in all of this as he and his daughter eventually join up with Vandal Savage and his island hideaway where he, Lady Shiva, Bane, Captain Cold, Mirror Master, the Creeper, and Solomon Grundy plan to wait out this current apocalypse.  This isn’t the former caveman’s first extinction event after all.  Meanwhile, over in Gotham, Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain, and Commissioner Gordon have managed to survive the carnage and have made it all the way to Bludhaven.  There they encounter a group of children who have managed to survive and are planning on making their last stand.

I know this doesn’t sound like a setup that’s ripe for comedy, but there are plenty of good laughs strewn throughout “Unkillables.”  From how the Creeper runs with Savage’s “tree lobster” analogy, to seeing the villains train the kids, to Deathstroke’s last words to Jason, Taylor takes every opportunity he can to lighten the mood.  This approach doesn’t work against the story because the ways in which the things get worse for the cast are usually inventive, gory, or a combination of the two.  It does help that the artist for this miniseries, Karl Mostert, is really quite good.  His work reminds me of a less squiggly Frank Quitely, but with the same attention to detail and composition.  Though there are some parts that feel a little predictable the attention to detail in the story and art really won me over.  This definitely raises my expectations for “DCeased:  Dead Earth,” except that’s mainly because I want to see what kind of role the survivors of this series have to play in it.