The Savage Brothers #1 (of 3)

Written by Andrew Cosby and Johanna Stokes

Art by Rafael Albuquerque

Covers by Rafael Albuquerque or Dave Johnson

 

Of all the different genres of comic books, the genre that seems most overcrowded these days is that of the zombie comic (But wait, what about the superhero genre, you say? There are only a million zombie comics out there, but there's a gazillion superhero comics. Well, "superhero" doesn't really count as a genre in comics anymore, seeing as how, for better or worse, it accounts for the vast majority of the comic industry's output).

 

Seemingly every week someone new jumps into the fold with a new zombie comic, and it's hard to even know who to blame. Is it Robert Kirkman's fault, for giving us such an awesome book in Walking Dead? Is it the Bush administration's fault for its adventurous foreign policy (Since everyone knows zombie stories traditionally follow war, in both comics and film)? Is it the zombies' own fault, for being so much damn fun to draw?

 

Whatever the reason, zombies have become so plentiful on the comic book shelves these days that if you're going to even bother doing a zombie comic, you damn well better have a clever take on the genre to justify your book's existence, something to distinguish it from the other books about the living dead out there.

 

Well, Andrew Cosby and Johanna Stokes have just such a clever take in their new Boom Studios series, The Savage Brothers. The brothers are two hard-working, hard-drinking good old boys ("Dreadneks," according to the cover text) who are trying to make a living after the world's ended and most everyone on it seems to have died.

 

Big, burly, bearded Otis and slim, longhaired Dale tool about the apocalypse in their pickup truck marked Savage Brothers Salvage, filling a rather unique niche in the new order. They're basically zombie hitmen, hired by people to track down their loved ones and put a bullet in their brains, so they'll quit lumbering around and lay down and die like normal folk. This is particularly attractive to the religious minded, as they'd prefer to think their loved ones will be waiting for them in heaven, instead of wandering around the city looking for living flesh to feast upon.

 

Cosby and Stokes' post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested earth looks and feels like so many others, yet it boasts a refreshing, lived-in vibe. While so much of the zombie genre, in film and comics, centers on the early days of the end of days, this writing team imagines a world where those who are still alive essentially get on with their lives. For example, when the brothers stop and ask for directions, a nonplussed gas station attendant deadpans, "It's just past the lake of fire…just follow the fault line. Ya can't miss it."

 

While our heroes are simply two guys doing their jobs, late in the first issue it appears that they're going to get a chance to do something a little more altruistic, as they stumble upon a head in a jar that is about to sacrifice a live "virgin stripper" to a horde of hungry zombies. ("Virgin stripper, huh?" Dale says, "Must be another sign of the apocalypse.")

 

Bringing the story to life is artist Rafael Albuquerque, who has a certain amount of flair for drawing both the dead and the living. So often in zombie comics, it's the walking corpses that get all the artistic attention, but Albuquerque does a fine job of "acting" through his art in terms of his leads' expressions, and he gives the entire undertaking a propulsive momentum.

 

Just when I thought the zombie genre was dead for sure, someone has to go and produce a book proving there's still some life in it yet.

 

Rating - 7