Last time, we saw G.I. Zombie ride and subsequently crash a disease-carrying missile into a town. What sort of damage did he cause? Is it good?
Star Spangled War Stories Featuring GI Zombie #3 (DC Comics)
G.I. Zombie crash lands the missile right into a local animal hospital in Sutterville, Tennessee and the virus/disease carried on the missile infects all of the animals in the place. From there, they start biting the people, who then start biting other people and a full-scale zombie outbreak hits the area. If our hero and the army don’t contain this quickly, America could be in a lot of trouble.
Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed with G.I. Zombie #3. Not that the story is bad; we get to see our title character deal with a huge zombie outbreak, try to figure out how to contain it, and scheme for a cure — which makes for an interesting story, especially when he interacts with the survivors.
It mostly has to do with the pacing of the story. The comic is on fast forward for most of the book, speeding through scene after scene. It honestly doesn’t allow for much development of the cast or for us to really focus too much on the carnage and chaos taking place. This results in a lot of awkward and disjointed transitions from page to page, which can result in you turning back a page to see if you accidentally missed something in between. Frankly, between the zombie outbreak and checking in on the other military characters, there is enough material for this to be spread into two issues or at least one oversized issue. The limited amount of pages just didn’t help.
The rest of the writing fares better. There isn’t too much characterization going on in the book, but we do get to see some more into the personality of the woman that Cameron is keeping an eye on while she’s undercover. The dialogue and narration are pretty good overall, and there are some tiny bits of humor and emotion here that I did find effective. How is the horror element of the book, considering a zombie outbreak is taking place? It’s handled as well as it can be, despite the brief scenes of its depiction, with some creepy imagery and some effective shots of just how big and chaotic the whole ordeal is.
The artwork by Scott Hampton is solid. The characters look fine and the Hampton does a fantastic job depicting the zombies, who are still mostly human looking and exhibit a nice transitional, “just infected” look. The only real weak part is that there are a lot of blank white or dull looking backgrounds. It doesn’t take too much away from the book, but is noticeable at points.
It was on that movie I saw a few nights ago.
Is It Good?
Star Spangled War Stories Featuring GI Zombie #3 has a solid story coupled with some very effective artwork, but is unfortunately pulled down too much by the terrible pacing and story flow. Hopefully, the next issue will read much better than this issue.
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