“Dead Life” #1

Titan Comic’s release of “Dead Life” #1 translates this series for the first time into English, bring all the tragedy of its super natural zombie apocalypse to American reads. Read on for the rest of our review, but be warned, there are both zombies, and spoliers ahead.

Written by Jean-Charles Gaudin
Illustrated by Joan Urgell
Colored by Mambba
Translated by Marc Bourbon-Crook
When young Steven finds a cursed chalice in his grandfather’s attic, he has no idea that his innocent game is about to unleash an undead nightmare!

The Walking Dead meets Supernatural in a tragic apocalypse, illustrated with bloody energy by Joan Urgell (Rebels: These Free and Independent States)!

“Dead Life” #1 is part of the Statix Press imprint at Titan comics, an effort to bring European comics to an American audience. As someone who has read some, but not a to of European comics, it is always interesting to see the differences in books that come from another culture. Like reading a different language, there are some things about “Dead Life” #1 that speak to the differences in comic book grammar between Europe and our American comic industry. And while those differences didn’t always work for me in this issue, they were very interesting to see.

“Dead Life” #1 is structured a bit weirdly. It’s an extra long issue, but it spends the first ten pages or so with the main character and his family, before the zombies are even introduced. And then, all that time that we spent with these characters, getting to know them, learning about how they interact with one another, learning their marriage problems and everything under the sun, is just kind of thrown out the window, as every single member of the main character’s family is murdered except for him.

I don’t know if this was done on purpose, as a kind of subversion of traditional storytelling, making the reader become comfortable with some characters before quickly and brutally removing them from the story. But, in this case, it doesn’t quite work. Part of this is that the only person left, the main character, is the one that is given the least personality throughout the issue. The only thing we do get to know about him is that he likes to flirt with the cute florist while his wife is in the store next door, which doesn’t make him an especially likable character. Also, as much time as this story spends with the characters in the opening, it is only enough time to know the facts of their lives, not enough to create a powerful bond so that their deaths have any real kind of meaning. It feels like the issue spends both too much, and not enough time with the family.

This is then followed by the main character spending much of the issue trying to escape from his from the zombies, and he runs into another survivor, who proceeds to give one of the most awkward info dumps of backstory that I’ve read in a long time. And, on top of that, it’s back story that the issue doesn’t even feel like it totally needs. Maybe I’m just not used to an issue being this long, but if feels like “Dead Life” #1 had a lower page count, it might actually work a bit better.

The art is also very interesting structurally. The panel layouts of pages in this issue are tightly packed, most pages hold at least eight panels. These panels are, for the most part scrunched together, with very little variation in size, though the shape does change somewhat. But that’s not to say that the issue follows a kind of nine or eight panel grid, or anything that focused. Instead the panels are slotted together like Tetris pieces. This, along with the story itself, makes the pacing of the story a little odd. There are no points here where the story pauses, where it takes a breath for some of the shocking events taking place to have an impact. Instead, because of the page layouts and number of panels, the book moves at the same pace throughout, no matter how shocking the events are that happen in the story.

But despite my issues with some of the pacing of the book, the art still looks good. The zombies, with their greying skin and pitch-black eyes, covered in either their own or someone else’s blood, all look the perfect amount of disgusting and scary. And when the action kicks off, the way that motion and in particular, violence are portrayed, look really good. On top of that, the backgrounds are consistently beautifully detailed. Most of the issue takes place on a road, winding through a forest. The way the trees, the darkness of the forest and the canopy are all portrayed bring a great level of detail to the issue.

Unfortunately, so much of this issue has huge word balloons that cover up so much of the art. I’m not sure whether this was a result of the translation from French into English, if for some reason this increased the word count in such a way that the dialogue had to be so expansive. But, especially in the beginning of the issue, before most of the characters end up dying, so much of the page is covered up by dialogue, and there are so many tiny panels, and there is so many actions happening, the whole issue just feels kind of claustrophobic.

It feels like I’ve spent a lot of this review being pretty negative, and I guess that’s because I have. There was a lot of “Dead Life” #1 that didn’t work for me. But, I would still say that it’s interesting to read. There is something about reading a book that comes from a different culture, even if it isn’t something that I was entirely a fan of, that is really interesting. Though I’m sure as an introduction to European comics, this wouldn’t be the best place to start. But, for people interested in a more European look at comics, this might be something worth picking up.

Final Verdict: 6.0 – Pacing issues and some strange story choices make “Dead Life” #1 a bit of a rough first issue.