Comic Book Review: PLAGUE of the LIVING DEAD #1-6, SPECIAL #1

Published by Avatar and created by John Russo (one of the two names behind the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD film), PLAGUE OF THE LIVING DEAD #1-6 is a sequel of sorts to Russo and George A. Romero's NOTLD (1968). Russo has written several sequels to the Romero film to capitalize on the name for a few bucks and nothing feels more truncated than this here series.

The story begins a few years after the original outbreak in '68 and everything seems to be normal other than the fact that many of our troops are being sent over to the war and people at home are protesting. This is where this story takes place as we see a group of three soldiers, who have been witnessed to a covert military operation in which zombie soldiers were used to fight the war, risk death and court marshal to get home to their wives and girlfriends when they hear that the zombie outbreak has happened again in their home town. At the same time their loved ones are planning a huge protest in the middle of no where when they are attacked by a horde of zombies. Now both groups try to fight their way into town where they believe they will be safe from the zombie apocalypse.

Sounds like an interesting story except that they stretch what should have been at 1-2 issue series into 6 (on average) 11page issues just to make people buy more issues. There just isn't any story in this tale of zombie mayhem. The story actually starts in PLAGUE OF THE LIVING DEAD SPECIAL #1 before going into the regular limited series but even that issue really doesn't add anything. There is a lot of zombie violence and nudity in the comic (in every issue) which is saying something if that's all you're looking for in a comic book but there are far superior zombie comics out there then to waste your time on this one (i.e. THE WALKING DEAD).

The series was a sequential adaptation by Mike Wolfer (based on Russo's story), pencils by Dheeraj Verma, inks by Lalit, and color by Andrew Dalhouse. Although there is great artwork for the covers there are way too many to both with trying to collect (unless you're a die hard fan).