Читать книгу The Zombie Book - Nick Redfern - Страница 56

In a world in which all things of a zombie nature are becoming ever more dominating, the biggest challenge facing filmmakers, Hollywood studios, script-writers, and authors is not so much just to come up with ideas, but to create and weave story-lines that are actually fresh, rather than yawn-inspiring. Certainly, one only has to take a mere glimpse at the large amount of both literary and on-screen productions of the undead variety to realize that tedious repetition, overwhelming sterility, and far less than inspiring scripts are, today, the definitive name of the game. We have seen it all, and we have heard it all, time and time again. Fortunately, however, that is not always the case. Take for example, Chris Ryall and Drew Moss’ graphic-novel series The Colonized.

For Ryall and Moss, your average zombie apocalypse-style scenario is simply not nearly good enough—and although that may not be such a positive thing for the characters who are fighting for their very lives, for the readers it is very good news. While it is one thing to have to face a full-on maniacal assault from hordes of flesh-devouring recently deceased, it is an entirely different matter to insert nothing less than visiting aliens from a faraway world into the story, too. But, this is exactly what our intrepid duo of Ryall and Moss does—and in a fashion that works very well, it must be stressed. Add to the undead and the extraterrestrials a cast of survivalist fruitcakes, gun-toting, small town gangs, and a slightly sinister government agent lurking in the shadows, and you have a great story unfolding before your very eyes.

It is most refreshing, too, to see a high degree of thinking outside the box taking place. There is a nice touch about how the aliens themselves—or their unearthly biology, at least—have an impact on the nature and effects of the zombie virus. Sly and wry humor abounds. And we even get treated to the freakishly fun sight of not just human zombies, but the animals of the undead, too. Of course, the fact that Colonized is set in small-town USA means we are talking farm animals. Or, perhaps, Barn of the Dead would be far more apt. Have you ever seen a pig, a chicken, or a horse wildly racing and raging around like the fast-running infected of 28 Days Later? To be sure, it’s not a pretty sight, to say the very least. But it is highly entertaining.

As is always the case when fiction and zombies cross paths, things finally reach their bloody finale, and it all too quickly becomes a case of do or die—and that goes for the humans and the aliens alike. Even the dead do all they can to avoid death—for a second time, naturally. In finality, Colonized is a decidedly surreal, alternative, and fun take on a topic that brings something very welcome and important to the table of the reanimated and the cannibalistic: it is called originality.