Review #30: "Now in Spooky-Vision!"

[a.k.a. "The Medicating of the Dead II"]


My thoughts exactly, Charlie.

Title: The Zombie Hunters
Artist: Jenny Romanchuk
Genre: Zombie-Horror
Updates: Weekly-ish
Link: http://thezombiehunters.com

"Dr. Haus! Dr. Haus!"

"Ugghh, receptionist boy," I muttered as the world seemed to swim around me, "Tell me this is a bad dream."

"What are you talking about?"

"Something about brain-dead druggies being a metaphor for mindless zombies, and my humble office being overrun with them?"

"You stuck yourself with a needle full of morphine!"

"I did?" I stared for awhile at the empty syringe that I was still holding for some reason, "Oh yeah, I was gonna use it on them, but then I only had one of these and there were so many bad guys. Y'know 'waste not, want not' and all that."

"You're lucky I managed to drag you into the pharmacy, the nurses are either gone or looking for a quick fix with the rest of those druggies by now."

"Do we have more drugs in here?"

"Enough to make a small, liberal-arts college campus start 'Robo-tripping' for days, but not even this supply will hold out forever against that many druggies once they burst through that door!"

I glanced towards the door to the pharmacy that the receptionist boy gestured at, hearing progressively louder pounding on the door. Either that, or some rich kid with a pimped-out ride was showing off his massive bass system in the parking lot again. If I didn't think of something fast, I was going to have to argue for days with the insurance people about whether or not this event was covered...oh, and the possibility of being bitten by brain-dead druggies also sounded bad.

The Zombie Hunters brings us into a desolate wasteland where zombies roam the Earth and one last band of surviving humans tries to...okay, you've heard this story before, haven't you?

Yeah, that's pretty much how the story has progressed to so far, with a cast of characters that has been sorta developing over 90 pages of escaping from zombies. They run up to a roof, make an ill-fated attempt to cross a power line, hit the ground, and then continue running. Also, Charlie might be a half-zombie, or something.

One thing you can definitely say while digging through the archives of The Zombie Hunters is that even the earlier strips have a sort of cinematic flair to them. Though it seems that Ms. Romanchuk takes this a bit too literally as every other page for the first 13 strips displays some sort of "opening credits" sequence. While it might look nice in a movie or a Flash animation, in the webcomic format it just becomes annoying very quickly.

Around strip 50, it's almost like we have a brief interlude from the doom and gloom feel of the earlier strips as Jenny (the hatted one) and Sammie (the blue haired girl...wait, is that natural coloring? Who really has blue hair outside of Japanese anime?) crack jokes while their heads shrink and noses disappear.

I think this comic has the same problem as Dead Winter (see below), in that while the art has its interesting quirks, the creator can't decide which direction the story should be going. While Dead Winter has a Quentin Tarantino-esque gunfighter alternating with a Simon Pegg-like everyman (or woman, in that case), TZH goes from dire peril to a light-hearted action sequence with a brick flail and a shovel. However, I gotta say that this is the first webcomic I can think of that has juxtaposed these two scenes.

Perhaps this would be more permissible if we found out why young girls and an old half-zombie dude were sent out together in the first place, and why they couldn't bother to spare a few anti-zombie suits like these guys had. And on a side note, how does one who claims to be hemophobic in her blog entry draw a comic that depicts several pints of blood splattering every which way?

In any case, the comic has some very nice artwork, but the story is still struggling to catch up. One can only hope it doesn't take another 90 pages before we finally figure out what the hell really happened in the world of TZH.

Thinking fast, I pulled out a cell phone and started dialing a number, "I never thought I'd have to call in this favor, but desperate times call for desperate measures."

"Who are you calling, Dr. Haus?"

"My friend at the FDA, he owes me big time." I waited for the call to connect, and then spoke, "Lady, get Mr. Edwards on the line, tell him Dr. Haus needs him to drop the Big Red One right in my office...yes, I know the consequences, but this is a goddamn emergency! Brain-dead druggies are about to bust through that door...look, I'll sign whatever forms you need, just find Mr. Edwards, and tell him to get me the Big Red One!"

To Be Continued...