Comics Review: YEAR ZERO, VOLUME ONE Trade Paperback

YEAR ZERO, VOLUME ONE (AWA/Upshot, October 2020) Trade paperback, 144 pages. Writer: Benjamin Percy. Artist: Ramon Rosanas. Colorist: Lee Loughridge. Letterer: Sal Cipriano. Cover Artist: Kaare Andrews.

After so many years, I still enjoy the occasional zombie movie, television show, book, or comic. They serve as entertaining escapism. Not many stories scare me anymore, especially after I was permanently scarred by viewing George Romero’s classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD at the tender age of seventeen. The night after seeing it, I slept hardly at all with one eye open and ears listening for every floorboard creak. Today, even that fails to frighten after so much zombie exposure. I also wasn’t frightened by Benjamin Percy’s YEAR ZERO. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to dip their toe into zombie waters but is hesitant to do so. 

I’d call this a noble experiment. Percy wanted to stray from the conventional zombie story that focuses on a single setting and/or group of individuals. Percy paints a portrait of a zombie apocalypse on a huger canvas, across a global scale. The story jump-cuts from location to location and follows one character in each setting as they try to stay alive - - - from a polar research station that may be the origin of the virus to Mexico City to Kabul to Burnsville, Minnesota to Tokyo.

My favorite individuals are young Daniel Martinez in Mexico who partners with the same cartel that murdered his parents (with revenge on his mind) and B.J. Hool in Minnesota, an overweight pop culture geek who saw the writing on the wall and secured himself within a safe bunker (but he may regret giving in to his lonely impulses).  Zombies, of course, play an important role in each of the individual scenarios with one exception. In the tale of Saga Watanabe, the Yakuza assassin/hitman they serve as window dressing and are not essential to his story.

  The same device that makes this saga stand apart from all other zombie fare is what makes it seem a slow read, and less frightening. Each issue focused on all five individuals, detailing just three or four pages of their story at a time. The constant start/stop of these vignettes served to pull readers out of the story instead of engaging their interest.

  

However, there is conflict and resolution in each of these stories, although perhaps not as final as some would prefer. But I’m used to zombie tales that end with temporary survival and leave things open, as YEAR ZERO does. Volume Two is grinding out right now. 

 

 With a five-issue mini-series to work with and five characters, Percy could just have easily told this as five one-shots, focusing on the full story of just one character per issue. I think YEAR ZERO would have more impact that way. 

Still, these characters are interesting and the global setting is a welcome change. I don’t regret reading this, and I plan to follow the next series. I’d recommend picking this up in trade paperback as the best way to read the series, perhaps at one sitting. I read them in the individual issues, with a month between readings, which may have affected my impressions. My Rating: THREE AND ONE-HALF STARS out of a possible FIVE STARS.

 P.S. My favorite cover is Issue #5, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with any of the five individual stories.