2 out of 5

Really, as a reading experience, this is one star.  But I’m bumping it up a notch for the art and the pretty duffin’ sweet coloring job committed by IDW via Ronda Pattison.  I believe Zombie War first had its outlet via Tundra, back in the time when Eastman was still putting out his Heavy Metal stuff like Melting Pot.  It’s definitely of that era – all blood and guts and cheesy exploitation – but it’s less concerned with a plot than some of his other work (accepting that Eastman has, ahem, never been the best writer) and definitely all about splashing a zombie idea onto the page.  The story is fairly non-existent, but an alien, taking revenge on humans for some space trash that affected his life rather severely, sends some reciprocal junk to Earth which crashes in the Arlington cemetery and re-animates the dead.  All of ’em.  Eastman and Skulan’s ‘unique’ take on the zombie was… war zombies… and I guess they talk and are totally single-mindedly blood-thirsty (definitely driven killers and not just mindless eaters), but on the whole, a zombie’s a zombie.  And these are zombies.  A review elsewhere described the compressed story – Miller-esque mini-panels with the Eastman (and Laird) touch of interestingly staggered framing – as a plus, and while page by page I sort of agree (which is why a flip-through prompted me to buy the book), the complete lack of scene transitions or true character introductions (when there’s apparently a character we’re supposed to care about) renders the narrative stupid when you’re reading, totally apparent as just a break between splash pages.

Which are awesome old-school horror-fests.  And the Eastman / Talbot art throughout more than satisfies visually.  God bless that thick inking and those jagged panel borders.  Ronda’s new coloring is interesting – by going with a sort of mottled, faded palette, it keeps the book looking sort of dirty and old, matching the feel of the overall tale.

This was originally a 64-page one-shot, and I guess I wish IDW had kept it as such.  It’s more fun to zip through than to read; I mean, I’m not really anxious for part two.  But had it been kept all together, it might’ve held a place on my shelf as another trashy art piece from Eastman and crew.