Scott's Take: DCceased Unkillables by Tom Taylor

DCeased Unkillables by Tom Taylor and artist Karl Mostert and others is part sequel and part parallel story spinning out of the original DCeased. Parts of the story take place at the same time as the events of the original series so this story contains spoilers for what happened in the original series and parts take place immediately after. DCeased Unkillables features mostly characters who were not present in the original one. There are two teams that joined together to fight the infected and survive. Here the villains and heroes have to team up and fight together to stay alive. 

 

The first team features villains such as Deathstroke, Bane, Cheetah, Deadshot and more. The second team features Gotham survivors and heroes, Red Hood (the 2^nd robin who is now an adult so he goes by a different name), Batgirl (Cassandra Cain, who is one of the Batgirls---yes, there are several Batgirls now for those non comic book readers) and Jim Gordon. The teams have to unite to fight the undead, but things are more extensive and complicated that that. 

 

The action, humor, and horror elements are as good here as in the original series. The artwork is by a different artist who I personally find is not as good. The interior art is less colorful than on the cover and at points in the story faces are not depicted well, which can take away from the moments because it is distracting.

 

 This read contains only three issues, but is selling at the same list price as the original series with far more content, so this is considerably less bang for your buck if you are buying it. This story also features plenty of choices that require horror movie logic by characters that are considered tactical geniuses, but make basic common sense errors. As like in the original series, there is a lot of death and gore for adult readers for so one should not let a kid near this story. 

 

If you loved the original series, you should enjoy this one. There should be two more trades coming out this year for this universe. Dceased: Dead Planet which features the surviving members of the Justice League which includes children and sidekicks of the original team returning to Earth. This book is a sequel to DCeased.   

Additionally, a prequel to parts of DCeased titled DCeased: Hope at World’s End is also coming out later this year. The read takes place during the war between the original Justice League vs The Infected during the events of DCeased (it had a large time skip between one of the issues of about a year) which features the original Justice League trying to win the war that they lost against the infected and rescue the surviving humans of the world. So, there is plenty of DCeased universe material that DC comics plans to publish for fans of this elseworlds series. I look forward to reading both when my local library gets them later this year.

 

DCceased Unkillables

Tom Taylor

https://www.tomtaylormade.com/

Artist Karl Mostert

https://www.dccomics.com/talent/karl-mostert

DC Comics

https://www.dccomics.com/comics/dceased-the-unkillables-2020/dceased-unkillables-1

August 2020

ISBN# 978-1-77950-393-0

Hardback (also available in eBook format)

144 Pages

 

My reading copy came from the Park Forest Branch of the Dallas Public Library System. 

 

Scott Tipple ©2021

Scott's Take: DCeased by Tom Taylor

DCeased by Tom Taylor is a great Elseworlds tale that is not for the faint of heart. This Elseworld tale is about what happens when the DC heroes fail to save the day. It is a zombie apocalypse with 600 million people infected already. The virus infects people through techno-organic means. Anyone who is looking at a screen of any kind connected to wifi is immediately infected by the virus. This means that everyone, including multiple heroes and villains, infected in the blink of an eye with no warning at all. There apparently was not a patient zero as millions were infected simultaneously.

It is too late to save the day. All that remains is to save what is left and try to survive.  This book collects the first six issues of the miniseries along with one tie in. This universe is pretty much the e same as the current DC rebirth universe except the Super Sons (Batman and Superman) are in their late teens for story reasons). The main characters are Superman, Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Harley Quinn and others long familiar to readers.

The characterization of the characters is incredibly good and the story is filled with violence, humor, and more. This is a dark read with horror overtones as multiple fan favorite characters are infected and killed throughout the series. Many big name characters fall to the virus early at the beginning of the series and even more fall to the virus as things continue to escalate. The artwork is great and at times pretty terrifying.  A cool part of the series is showing what happens when heroes unleash their full strength on the infected. The ending leaves the miniseries in a good place to start a direct sequel series.  

The tie in issue focuses on Mister Terrific. He is the third smartest person in the world and is trying and failing to find a way to stop the virus. He is assisted by various D-list heroes that he hopes have not fallen to the virus.

Summer 2020 there will be another miniseries set during this apocalypse from the viewpoint of the bad guys. This series, from their perspective, will feature the anti-heroes and villains of the DC universe. The title of the new miniseries,  DCeased- Unkillables, sees a team led by the former Robin named Red Hood. He is the black sheep of the family and is better at being a killer than being a hero. He, like the rest of the antiheroes and villians, are better suited to deal with the world as it is in this time, than the heroes are as they are constrained by their moral codes and messy respect for the law.

My review copy came from the Skyline Branch of the Dallas Public Library System.

Scott A. Tipple ©2020