Updates for next week may be scarce, as I’ll be moving this weekend. For now, I’ll leave you with a few final zombie reviews, and hopefully will be back as soon as can be!

First up, The Zombie Hunters, which I first heard about by way of the Ferrett. He is a fellow who likes zombie movies, and this makes him a hell of a lot better prepared to talk about this sort of things than myself, and his review of the strip covers things well.

So, instead, I’m going to focus on the opening pages of the comic. Specifically, the first twenty pages, which manage to feel like they were straight out of a movie, wherein the pages alternate between a few moments in time – glimpses of the characters the story is about, as they wander through this apparently deserted town, clearly ready for danger – and stark credits of the strip’s creators and contributors, white text on a black background. The tension keeps rising and rising, until the zombies pop up, we hit the title page, and it launches out into the action, and the energy just doesn’t stop.

I’m impressed by this. Really impressed. It would be very, very easy to employ a set-up like this and have it feel forced, or frustrating. But the sense of pacing in this strip is fantastic, and we instead have me feeling a rising sense of drama through the first handful of pages, instantly pulling me in. And if it can do that in the opening sequence alone, that is awfully promising for whatever else may come.

Next up, Little Terrors. The premise is a nice one – zombies and other horrors appear to have mostly wiped out humanity (at least in the area in which the story takes place.) Our protagonist, Jacob, is a young boy who has woken up, pretty much without any memories, and discovered that despite looking similar to the zombies, he isn’t like them. He then runs into a pack of other young kids, all of whom have found themselves similarly changed into iconic monsters – with a werewolf, cyclops, frankenstein, ghost, etc.

There is an element of humor to the situation, but it seems to be a drama at its heart – and one that is really starting to come into its own. The art has vastly improved since the story began, which is easy to notice – but all the other elements have begun to come together as well, with a smoother layout, more elaborate plot, and more concise writing.

Finally, I was prowling the Wotch’s totally awesome links page, and came across Dead Winter. The strip currently only has twenty-six pages to its name, but that doesn’t stop it from winning me over. Hell, it did so in under ten.

I blame the cast, who are pretty much all instantly awesome, from our hero Lizzie and her lovable attitude (along with her complete inability to notice when she is surrounded by zombies), to the altogether badass individual known as Black Monday Blues.

Also, the art, which is amazing and vibrant and alive. (Unlike the zombies.)

Perhaps the story as well, as I’m already interested in finding out how her boyfriend knew about the zombie invasion, why he has to leave her behind, and what will happen when she inevitably kicks ass, survives the zombies, and confronts him over his dastardly behavior.

Aw, hell, just go take a look.