"Killogy #1" Comic Review
Written by James Ferguson
Published by IDW Publishing
Written and Illustrated by Alan Robert
2012, 32 Pages
Comic Released in October 2012
Review:
Let me throw out a few names for you. Frank Vincent. Brea Grant. Marky Ramone. What do these three people have in common outside of being famous? Not all that much really. Vincent and Grant are actors, but they've been in entirely different things. Ramone was the drummer for that little punk band you might have heard of. The three of them are now thrown together in the latest project from Alan Robert. They're not hitting movie theaters or even the television screen anytime soon. Instead they're in Killogy from IDW Publishing. Yes, the comic was casted.
Killogy starts off like a bottle episode of a TV show. Vincent, Grant, and Ramone are in the same jail cell for various reasons. We don't get the specifics on why they're there, but Vincent gives a telling story about some details that would get him a pair of cement shoes if they ever got out to the wrong people. It's clear that they don't really get along, but the world outside of their cell is changing. The dead are walking and not only that, severed heads are floating. It's a creepy place and these guys are stuck behind bars without anything to defend themselves. On the plus side, no one can get in. On the other hand, they can't get out, which means they'll probably starve to death soon.
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While Killogy is a zombie comic in a sea of the undead, it definitely stands out. The fact that even cutting off a zombie's head doesn't actually kill them is a bit different, but that noggin then floating in the air biting at you is new.
As with his previous work, Robert is not only creating and writing Killogy, he's also illustrating and lettering the book. He's taking creator-owned to a new level here. What's impressive on the art front is how completely different this looks from Crawl to Me, the last comic that he made. That book had a very unique style that was very frenetic with a lot of stuff going on. It was a great effect. Killogy looks like an entirely unique book...which it is. If I didn't know that the same guy did both books, I would have never thought that.
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That's not to say that the art here is bad. That's the farthest thing from the truth. Robert's work here is like an old poster for an exploitation flick that you'd find buried in your creepy uncle's attic. It has all the makings of a grindhouse look, with dark outlines and intense shadows. The colors are tuned to make the blood really pop on the page. There are some panels that are only in shadow, showing the characters in silhouettes with the only color being the blood red that's splattering around. It looks awesome.
Robert earned a lot of good faith from me after I read Crawl to Me, which had an ending that I'm still reeling from. I'm confident that he's going to put his own spin on the zombie genre and make this stand out. The idea of casting his comic characters is a new one and I don't think that just any artist can pull it off. It's tough to nail the likeness of people that anyone can just look up on Google and see a picture of. Robert's characters not only look like the actors portraying them, but they act and feel the way they should as well. It's a movie in a comic and it works very well.
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