Story:
Art:
Written by Steven Grant
Art by Phil Xavier
Published by Avatar Press
Price: $9.95
Contains: The original three-issue miniseries
My Verdict: Man, this is some tasty grit.
Meet Eric Sharpe. He's a police detective on the trail of a bizarre killer that's wasting people in particularly brutal ways. But--wait for it--things aren't what they seem. Sure the killer's a very shapely woman who knows her way around a shotgun, but Sharpe's going to find himself on the receiving end of something potentially worse than a shotgun blast. The world for Sharpe is about to change as well as how he views it: not in terms of black and white, but in flesh--rotted and relatively unspoiled.
Okay, up front: the enemy that only Our Hero can see has been done before. It was called They Live. However, that particular Carpenter cheesefest isn't all that similar when you get right down to it, and besides this is Steven Grant--They Live doesn't have the prerequisite third and fourth testicles to keep up with this mess. Anything you thought you knew quickly gets tossed out the window of a moving car.
The reason is simple: Grant is harsh as hell, and rightfully so. Where some writers would be content with simply taking out nasty zombiesque creatures, Grant has a protagonist wonder aloud if the creatures ever truly lose consciousness while smashing the current target into putty. Assisting admirably is Xavier's artwork, which provides just the right level of violence and mayhem. The only way it could have been better was if it were in color--but that's just because I'm a sucker for a great deal of tasty technicolor gore.
This volume is slim--it's only collecting three issues, but considering the extensive introduction written by Grant and explaining where all this madness came from, the ten bucks is a pretty decent cover price. The only thing that it's sorely in need of is some hint as to when or if another story arc of Mortal Souls is ever going to happen. Because when you leave the book, the artwork on the inside back cover won't slake that thirst.
Quote: "Yeah, I guess we're done talking."
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