REVIEW: Slab #5

In keeping with the current craze over at Double Take, Slab is another book based on the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.Â Sadly, I have not seen this movie, so whatever hidden details the copious amount of creators managed to sneak in was lost. Meaning that the entire nostalgia factor had no effect, which leaves every bit of entertainment up to the creators; and believe me there were plenty of those. For 23 pages, this book had three writers, three-line artists, and FIVE colorists. Why? I have no clue, and unfortunately even 11 creators could not bring this book up above two stars for me.

I mean, not all of this book was awful. The art was actually really good, especially the coloring. So at least this book had that going for it. There was some decent flow and pacing from panel to panel, and there was a ton of movement.

However, the writing was just… bloated. Both in the story and the dialogue. For some reason the editorial team thought that there was no problem having aliens, zombies, and government conspiracies all in the same book. I hate sounding like a Plot Nazi, so let me change gears. I would suggest that instead of throwing up all of the details everywhere, and all at once, trickle information on a need to know basis. The same goes for the dialogue. No one wants to read 15 straight pages, in a comic book, of an intricate pseudo-biology lecture, which involves the pathology of a fictional zombie virus. It is superfluous.

I am going to end the review here, before I start being mean for no reason. To recap, the art was amazing, but the writing needs a ton of work; from both the editorial team and the writing team. It was a little over the top to have 11 creators for a 23 page comic book, but who am I to limit creative teamwork? I would not suggest buying this book unless you are a die-hard Night of the Living Dead or Double Take fan. Slab #5 gets 2 out of 5 stars.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

(W) Brian Finkelstein (A) Marco Cosentino (CA) Chun Lo

Author Profile

Dylan Hicks

I just graduated from MSUD with my BAS in Mathematics. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, and our two cats. I work full time for NTIA-ITS as a Computer Scientist. All I really do is engineer mathematical models and write code all day. I took up this second job at Comic Crusaders as a way to become more involved with the comic book community. Since I was a child I have loved comics. I grew up reading Spider-Man, Shi, New Mutants, Spider Woman, and Gen13. As I got older, however, my tastes started to shift from almost exclusively Marvel to various independent labels. Now I read a huge variety of comics: Valiant, Black Mask, Aspen, Avatar, Image, Dynamite, Boom, Aftershock, etc.. If anyone wants to know, my favorite publisher, hands down, is Valiant.
I am also working on writing a few comic books myself. I have about 4 ideas in the fire, but only 1 of them is really getting anywhere; I have 6 of the 10 books finished. In addition to writing, I am also a practicing colorist. If you want to checkout any of my writing samples, or coloring samples, please check out my DeviantArt and let me know what you think.
dirtgrubdylan.deviantart.com.
Some more about me? I love black metal and video games. I usually spend most of my time hanging out with my girlfriend. We have been together for 6 years, so at this point she is basically my best friend. But when I am not with her, I get together with my friends to drink some beer and play some Magic, the Gathering. And, as pretentious as this is, I am also working on starting my own engineering firm. So that involves me reading a lot of textbooks on Mathematics and Computer Science.
So yeah, if you have made it this far thank you very much! I am crazy excited to start my career in writing. Let's see what I can do with this.