[Comic Review] DCeased Event (2019-20??)

 

DCeased

DCeased

1. DCeased
2. Un-Kill-Ables
3. Hope at World's End
4. Dead Planet

Official Blurb

What happens to the World’s Greatest Heroes if the world ends? Six hundred million people. That's how many fall victim when a mysterious techno-organic virus is unleashed on Earth. Six hundred million infected. Six hundred million turned into mindless, rampaging killers bent on death and destruction. And that's just the beginning. Cities. Nations. Undersea Kingdoms and Paradise Islands. One by one, they fall to the monstrous hordes. Now only Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League stand between Earth and utter annihilation. But for how long? Nothing they've ever faced has prepared them for an onslaught of this magnitude. Nothing they've ever seen can match the scale of the tragedy and terror that have been unleashed. As heroes and villains, gods and monsters are wiped out, only one question remains: What happens to the World's Greatest Heroes if the world ends?

New York Times bestselling writer Tom Taylor (Injustice) joins artists Trevor Hairsine (Red Hood and the Outlaws) and Stefano Guadiano (The Walking Dead) to unleash an all-new vision of the DC Universe's darkest hour in DCeased. But be warned: the horror is contagious...

: My Take :

Once upon a time there was a fad that permeated all media, and comics were no more immune than the characters in those stories. Zombies were everywhere. Films, TV, Comics, Video Games, Tabletop Games... just everywhere. At the height of this fad there was a comic called Marvel Zombies that tracked an outbreak of a zombie virus in the Marvel Universe. It was insanely popular, like everything zombie was at the time, and it was not long until DC did their own take on the idea, Blackest Night.

Blackest Night was a mega cross over event that was a more DC themed take than just "zombie plague but with infected super powered people". It revolved around the a Black Lantern Core and it was really good. Not original like Marvel Zombies, I mean everyone knew it was a "lets do one of those zombie stories as well" type thing, but that didn't stop Blackest Night being extremely good.

So it was a huge surprise to many DC readers to learn that there was a brand new take on a super powered Zombie War coming from DC. I mean the Fad was over and zombies were back to their normal background level of immense popularity, and it wasn't like Blackest Night was some kind of failure. It was hugely successful. Still here we are. Sorta the same thing. Again.

The basic idea of the Zombie event has not changed much from Marvel Zombies. This is a book to see the heroes you are so used to being in control, cracking jokes and winning, instead get totally annihilated and gruesomely put down. Villains become heroes and Heroes find their morals can't hold and act like villains. Like Blackest Night though this story is deeply infused with DC Lore. Marvel Zombies was just a zombie plague (kinda), while this story is linked to one of DCs longest running villain through lines. The Anti-Life Equation.

Like the film 28 Days Later this story is not actually zombies, but something more interesting for DC fans. This gives the writers freedom to do things that would be impossible in a typical zombie story. Also, while Marvels Zombies and Blackest Night were pitch black and repressively dark, alla The Walking Dead, for this was the style at the time, this story dose not fail to forget that at the heart of every great DC Soup Tale... is Hope. Though like all good stories of hope, that hope needs to be crushed until it's just a flickering ember.

Anyone who reads big cross over events know what to expect. So many characters are in this and many have really great roles. Others die super fast for shock or story reasons and others are delegated to background drawings, that become a kind of Where's Wally? type thing which plays out on double page spreads. I am not sure these kind of events, though big and epic, are really the best place for new soup readers to jump in. The power of these cross overs is the reader knowing about all these characters, knowing them intimately, and then seeing them in alternative situations they are not normally in. Obviously these characters are very well known and this comic is not so detailed a character study as something like Kingdom Come that someone with a passing familiarity will not have footing. Still, like all cross overs, this is a story for fans.

There are some really awesome moments in this story. Some of the very coolest characters once again show you why they are the coolest and it is awesome. The entire event took 4 years and like all universe altering events that become super popular it is now a numbered Earth in the DC Multiverse were more stories are being told in that same setting. So while the entire story wraps up, aside from a few massive loose ends, you can expect a new story soon called DCeased: War of the Undead Gods an 8 part series that will end sometime in the 1st 3-5 months of '23. What I am getting at here, is that I would not post this event, if it did not have an ending. In fact I do not even read mass events like this until they are complete, as they literally take 4-6 years to come out.

I loved this event and it is probably my favourite DC event in a long time.

He spoke of improbabilities with certainty, and we just.... *believed* what he said. His true power flows from within us all. Rising us higher than what seems possible.