Zombie Tales: This Bites is the fourth TPB volume of BOOM!’s ongoing series of zombie vignettes. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering if your house is zombie-proof while eating a hamburger at your kitchen table, this collection should probably be in your collection of books. This is 110 pages of putrified flesh and head shots in 12 vignettes and a cover gallery. Each story (with the exception of two) is written and illustrated by a different group of people.
This collection was hit and mostly miss for me. I found a few completely uninteresting, one I had no idea what the hell was going on, and another, while it brought up an interesting idea of using zombies as cannon fodder in war, I’m still lost on how you get them to hold weapons and go after a certain group of people. However, the hits were really big hits for me.
Zombie, Come Home made me laugh so hard at the end, I seriously choked. Neptune’s trident, that last page, I want it as a poster! Out of the 12, this one was the best and the only funny one out of the entire lot. There’s very little dialogue, but it had me interested start to finish. The story it tells just tickled my warped little mind.
The two-part story by Kim Krizan was also an interesting read. With the tables turned and the zombies on the top of the food chain, we kind of have to think about how we treat everything around us (not to mention each other). With the exception of the ending (it’s BCE not BC - I’m a budding art historian, sue me) with the zombies being nuclear blasted into the past, it was a solid commentary on humanity. Which is what a successful zombie story does, in my opinion. You know, besides the gross out factor.
The ending story was perfectly placed. You go through 12 stories of dehumanizing zombies, then blam! There’s a cure and those who were once zombies are now human again. Maybe. That whole craving brains thing still seems to be there. So, it’s more like Louis in Anne Rice’s vampire books; they eat animal brains when they’re feeling frisky. How can you go back after that experience?
If you’re a big time zombie fan, and you don’t already have the individual issues, this is a TPB worth picking up. For everyone else, go into this one like any other anthology - you’re going to like some and you’re not going to like others.
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