4 out of 5

I’m picky about my comics. Perhaps… more than I should be, as a comic book “fan.” I think I probably judge a lot of modern books too harshly, but I can’t help but see overarching structural touches – elevator pitches forced into ongoings; publishing mandates that put things into trade paperback pacing; attempts to find the newest spin on an old idea that’s only got its newness going for it; or “challenging” ideas that require me to put quotes around them. I think the issue may be that I’m picky about writing, and though I love that comics are no longer the walled garden they were in ages past, the medium has also lost some purity in some senses – a bigger conversation there about how I’m rose garden-ing the past – while also acknowledging that it’s really hard to tell a story that sticks out on crowded shelves.

But to that latter point – is it? In some ways, it’s simple: just tell a good story. It doesn’t have to be new. You don’t have to give me digestible trade paperback arcs. Of course, good is subjective; dialogue that sounds good to me may be trash to your ears, and hacky action for me may make the book for you, and so on.

All that said, you can still satisfy this picky reader when writing a modern book. And on a zombie title no less.

Some of Tate Brombal’s Everything Dead & Dying doesn’t necessarily work. The main character’s past with his father is thematically important, but I think adds a bit of exposition / conceptual burden to the story’s first chapter that ultimately isn’t necessary. And there are some genre stereotypes – a mad scientist type; horny teens – who feel a bit too narrow for the otherwise layered story Tate tells. But these are minor notes – a few pages in an otherwise masterful five-issue tragedy, one where the remaining characters speak with such truth in their voices that you can hear them, feel them as soon as their on page, assisted by Jacob Phillips’ perfect character acting, the mood-setting colors from Pip Martin, and Aditya Bidikar’s confident but out-of-the-way lettering.

‘Everything’ is a zombie tale with a simple tweak that is not an elevator pitch because the tweak shifts the entire emotional arc of the story; it is not just a surface level plotz on top of stuff you’ve read before: a dead-don’t-die flu starts to overtake the planet, and survivor Jack finds out that as long as you keep the zombies fed… they tend to go about their day. Allowing him, in his overrun hometown, to spend his apocalypse feeding the residents so that they continually (mindlessly) repeat the actions of their last few days.

This, on its own, is fascinating, and for a man like Jack who’s lived a life of quite repressed emotions, offers rich opportunities for dissection and exploration. This holds true for the whole tale, allowing Brombal to structure things half-in / half-out of Jack’s dreams, where he overlays his past life, when everyone was nice and alive, with the present reality of blooded bodies, growling and meandering the streets; meaning we can spend pages on exposition / lead-in sequences before we ever get to the drama and action, and it’s still compelling as hell.

But there is drama, when some pesky outsiders wander into Jack’s town, and don’t quite get why someone would be keeping these dead fed…

Zombie tales can be mean on their characters; Everything is very mean, but not mean-spirited. It is logical. Shit happens; people are people. It can be a painful read, and is effective in that regard without delaying some inevitables – Tate does not draw out the pain. That “reality” makes it almost especially powerful, as it slots in with how easily things change, and how that compounds with the way Jack tends to not deal with the problems in his – but obviously, through his actions, has been putting so much effort into that not dealing.

I love this book. And kudos to the design team of Dylan Todd and Courtney Menard: the full bleed logo and the slightly degrading back cover photo tell a story on their own, alongside the general look and feel of the comic.