ZeroKiller #1

Dark Horse Comics

Writer: Arvid Nelson

Pencils: Matt Camp

Colors: Dave Stewart

TESTSUOOOOOOO!!!!!!

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a bald guy in a wife-beater. More importantly, it’s a gritty new series from Dark Horse about a loner bounty hunter named Zero. ZeroKiller, set in 2007, takes place in an alternate timeline where most of civilization was destroyed in a 1973 nuclear holocaust. New York is 1/3 underwater, a violent Venice where street gangs rule like warlords.

The Obligatory Warning: Bloody, execution style violence. I have to say, I didn’t expect this from the free comic book day preview issue…

Arvid Nelson, writer of Rex Mundi, has engineered another ambitious parallel history. Where Rex Mundi is set in a Europe torn between chaotic sorcery and medieval order, ZeroKiller is set in a surrealistic nightmare-land where brutality reigns and black helicopters drop from the sky to shanghai the unfortunate to god-knows-where. It’s a gripping vision of what could have been, though an unsettling execution scene diverts attention from the series’ promising aspects.

Zero, the titular protagonist, elicits the reader’s attention, and a little of their sympathy. Back story details about Zero’s tumultuous past could have been presented more subtly, but the reader does want to learn more about this hero with Jet Li’s moves and a devil-may-care attitude.

Matt Camp’s highly detailed style gives ZeroKiller an emotional nuance unusual to post-apocalyptic action. The facial expressions are so good, in fact, that they bear a good deal of the story’s weight. The detail is similarly excellent for backgrounds, settings, army helicopters, and whatever else Camp draws.

Worth the money? If you can take violence, give this one a shot.