Village Comics are two for two. Let’s get post-post-apocalyptic.

What happens after the zombie plague, and a vaccine has been found?

Zed #1

Writer/Creator: Caleb Thusat

Art/Letters/Cover: Katrina Kunstmann

Published by Village Comics

Two in a row from Village Comics and writer Caleb Thusat and artist Katrina Kunstmann, this time it’s a post-apocalypse tale, or post-post-apocalypse. The zombie virus has come, and there is a vaccine that will help those who aren’t infected. The titular Zed is the result of testing for the vaccine. Unlike other zombies, he maintains the ability to think and feel, for the most part. In the proximity of other zombies, the hunger can overwhelm him. Zed, along with his mortician buddy Bill (because when you need someone to fix up a dead body, you need a mortician) set out to find Zed’s childhood friend Sam, the Dr who created, the vaccine and made Zed into whatever it is, that he is now.

Like Alter-Life, in some ways, this is a story about second chances. In Alter-Life, the protagonist was perhaps wasting his potential, and after a tragedy, is given another chance to do more. In Zed, he was happy with what he was doing (and if not happy, at least content with his life and work), and when the virus hit, he wanted to do something useful, something to help. In both stories, tragedy (an accident and an apocalyptic virus) change the lives of the main characters and they realize they can do more than they had been up to that point. And more importantly, they can do more for others. There is something quite affirming in that. If perhaps you feel as though you are now in a situation that would have unimaginable to you, where the desire to go on is lost, and things don’t make sense, maybe the best thing you can do is go forward. If not for yourself but for the others you can help.

Thusat sets the world up enough that we can understand where we are in the world at the time of the story, without bogging things down too much. Zed and Bill are a good buddy team to travel this world with. The art by Katrina Kunstmann, feels different from Alter-Life, part of that is that things feel a little more finished, the other part may be that this book is not in color. Zed is black and white with some gray-tones, but it fits this world, the same way that the slightly more sketchy and unfinished colors of Alter-Life fits with the mindset of the main character in that story. It’s great to see two books from the same team that feel and look different enough to easily stand on their own, and interesting to see the parallels between them. Keep an eye on these two.

Zed is available from Village Comics on their website.

-Kris