Aliens Vs. Zombies #3 - Zenescope Entertainment

ALIENS VS. ZOMBIES No. 3, September 2015

Chock full of the Undead, as any good zombie comic book should be, this third instalment of the five-issue mini-series by “Zenescope Entertainment” not only manages to keep its meagre readership happy on account of numerous cadavers stalking the streets looking for flesh to feast upon. But also rather successfully manages to take a leaf out of Robert Kirkman’s magnum opus “The Walking Dead” by having some of the narrative’s humans truly be the real monsters of the magazine.

For although Joe Brusha clearly portrays the carnivorous corpses as this title’s main ever-present threat, especially to the likes of alien navigator Tammy who is trapped and surrounded inside the remains of her crashed spacecraft. It is actually the conniving criminal Tavon, a man willing to do anything for the extra-terrestrial’s “priceless” gear, who perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly turns ‘traitor’ and becomes the Pennsylvania-based publisher’s main villain of the piece. In fact the characterisation of the shotgun-carrying bully is so splendidly written that it’s genuinely hard not to dislike the selfish greedy gang leader even before he betrays the ‘frog-faced’ Cromm and threatens to kill young Destiny, unless Balgar and Tak surrender to him.

Impressively this periodical also manages to find the time within its twenty-three pages to both ‘flesh-out’ a bit more detail behind Captain Nova’s determination to eradicate the universe of the “interstellar [zombie] virus” and provide any “Aliens Vs. Zombies” fans with some pulse-pounding ‘Evel Knievel’ antics as Melissa and Colt ride through a horde of brain-hungry living corpses on motorbikes en route to Center City’s cemetery; “Hey Colt… Follow my lead. And try to keep up.”

All of this action and drama is wonderfully drawn by Vincenzo Riccardi, with the comic artist’s Undead, whether they be white-eyed humans, multiple-armed, squid-headed Martians or fork-tongued lizardmen, proving to be the highlight of the book. Admittedly some of the penciller’s panels are a little disappointingly inconsistent whenever they feature the rather doe-eyed adolescent Destiny. However these minor aberrations are easily forgiveable once the action starts back up and the story’s combatants either bloodily pummel their ghoulish foes to death with baseball bats or gorily eviscerate them with stunningly sharp swords.

The variant cover art of "ALIENS VS. ZOMBIES" No. 3 by Giuseppe Cafaro and Brett Smith