Brains: A Zombie Memoir - Robin Becker

Jack Barnes is just another victim of a zombie apocalypse, or maybe not. Even if he shuffles like a zombie, moans inarticulately like a zombie, and wants to eat brains like a zombie, Jack still thinks like he did when he was alive. Unfortunately, given he was an English lit professor, he thinks in overwrought terms, thinking of himself as a spokesperson for his kind, when he's not comparing his situation to popular culture, which he tends to sneer at.

Barnes travels to Chicago, with the idea of meeting Howard Stein, credited as the guy who created the virus that caused all this. Surely his creator will recognize how monumental a zombie who can think and write is! In what he surely sees as a promising development, Jack encounters other zombies who retained different skills, forming a makeshift family of sorts. Joan, a nurse who's retained those instincts and can sew zombies up as their bodies degrade. Guts is a fast zombie. Ros (short for Rosencrantz, as Jack dubbed him) can speak.

(Although the book is fairly inconsistent about what zombies are capable of in general. Even though Jack remembers how to start a car, he can't make his body do it. Neither can Ros. But Jack and another zombie figure out how to start and sail a ship later on, and the group figures out how to put on waterproof gear before hiding in the bottom of Lake Michigan.) 

I imagine you need a character with Jack's inflated sense of self-importance to drive the script. A guy who alternately thinks of himself as a Moses, or a civil rights leader, or a new Adam when he brings along a pregnant woman he bit. I can't imagine any of the others, if they had been the one to retain that level of cognition, deciding the thing to do is find the guy who created the virus and convince him the undead are some new race that needs to be accorded equal rights. Maybe Ros or Joan would try to find Stein and see if he had a cure (other than a bullet in the head), but I doubt it.

So Jack's personality is essential to how things play out, the urge to make some great mark, to leave a record. Hence his memoir. That said, reading his delusions of grandeur can get tedious. I rolled my eyes a few times, thinking this guy needed to get over himself. Maybe it's supposed to be funny, his earnest writing about how proud he feels of Guts, scampering off to bite someone's ankle, or discussing how the undead are really the next evolutionary step, then rambling about brains for a paragraph.

Occasionally he sees the way his body is decaying and he can't bear to look, or he thinks about his wife (who he ate) and misses her deeply. Maybe it's meant to be him making the best of his situation. He got bit, he turned, nothing he can do about that. So, put a positive spin on it. The cold doesn't bother him! He doesn't need to breathe! Zombies could be a net positive for the planet, helping dispose of the people nobody wants around!

'"You shot my friend," Ros gurgled.

Annabelle looked up. "Dude, you can't talk," she said.

"Says who?" Ros said. Annabelle looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders and attempted a grin. A dollop of my cheek fell off at the dimple. Joan would have to repair that when we got back.'

A Little Turnover in June

Well, I was expecting a drop-off in the books I'd buy from the solicitations for June, and there is the possibility of that. Certainly it feels like the circle of publishers is continuing to shrink, but I found a couple of things I might buy, which is something, at least.

What's new? There's another It's Jeff book from Marvel, Brand New Jeff Week, although the Gurihiru team isn't listened as the only art team, which may be a caution. DC is releasing a new book, The Deadman. I find Deadman sort of interesting, but I can't really tell from the solicit whether W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo's meditation on life, death, and everything else is going to be up my alley.

Mad Cave has the first issue of Junk Punch, by Paul Tobin and Carlos Olivares (with a back-up story by Colleen Coover), about a world where people have all sorts of strange compulsions. The main character's, as you may guess, is hitting people in the groin. Is that going to help her solve a string of other compulsion-related crimes? Actually, I'm more curious if this compulsion strictly relates to male genitalia, or she just hits anyone in the groin, regardless of the equipment.

What's ending? Ahoy says the final issue of Babs: The Black Road South will be out in June, but given issue 3 didn't show up this month I suspect that will not be the case. If you think of it as a one-shot, It's Jeff! would also be ending in June.

And the rest: Batgirl has Cass investigating a murder, but also she's missing memories. Fantastic Four has Reed and Johnny traveling back in time to stop an alien who decided it would be easier to conquer Earth in the past. Marc Spector: Moon Knight and Generation X-23 are both on their fifth issues. Moon Knight's doing a focus on the Asgardian drug dealer Achilles Fairchild, while Laura's still attacking the X-Facility. Moonstar has Dani either saving her parents or the world, which definitely feels like one of those things where whatever choice she makes, she'll second-guess it.

Is Ted OK? is having a big reveal in issue 5, setting up the finale, where we will finally learn whether Ted is in fact, OK. Meanwhile, D'orc is contending with a lava dragon and a fortune teller. 

The First Wives Club (1996)

Elise (Goldie Hawn), Brenda (Bette Midler), and Annie (Diane Keaton) were old college friends who reunite after another friend commits suicide in apparent depression over her ex-husband marrying a much younger woman. Something the trio can relate to, as all three of their husbands - played by Victor Garber, Dan Hedaya and Stephen Collins, respectively - likewise threw them over for younger women. So they decide to get revenge on the guys who used them up and spit them out for a newer model.

I think I got curious to watch this after it came up in someone's retrospective on Diane Keaton after she passed away. And I think Keaton gets the best role of the three leads. Brenda seems to mostly be dealing with things by trying to maintain the connection with her teenage son, and keeps worrying about her weight. Midler kind of defaults to sarcastic all the time. Elsie is confronting the lack of roles for women in Hollywood once they reach 40, basically fighting mortality in service of her ego. She's bitter (understandably), but in an entitled way. She's owed the starring role in the hot young director's new film (the director played by young Timothy Olyphant, was not expecting him.) 

Annie, meanwhile, is this overly cheerful, stammering Polyanna who makes excuses for everyone and tries to get everyone to get along. Not the free spirit types Keaton often played so much as someone willfully ignoring reality in favor of, not so much a more pleasant alternative as a blander one. Then, every so often, she snaps. You get a glimpse of it in her therapy session, where she resists her doc's orders to hit her with the foam bat, but once she goes for it, hits her three times in rapid succession. She's a bundle of energy and expression, locked down tight by years of trying to coddle her husband's insecurities.

Sometimes it breaks free in quieter ways, when Elise and Brenda convince her to sing aloud. Sometimes it's explosive, like when she gets tired of the other two attacking her for trying not to take sides in their argument and shrieks that they're both selfish and storms out.

No wonder her ex-husband turned what was supposed to be him asking for divorce into one last roll in the sack, then asking for the divorce. She must be dynamite in bed.

*beaten to death*

Ouch, jeez, I'm just kidding. I did expect I'd laugh more than I actually did, though I didn't know going in it kicked off with a suicide. There were a couple of scenes - their trip to a lesbian bar to enlist Annie's daughter in their plan - but it's not so much a movie that makes you laugh as one where you grin at a good one-liner. But it also has a lot to get done in 100 minutes. Establish each woman's current situation, get them together, get them started on revenge (while periodically returning to developments in their individual lives), the part where things hit the rocks between them, the reconciliation, the eventual turning of their plan to a higher purpose.

Maybe I was too invested in them pulling off their plan to laugh at their failures along the way. 

What I Bought 3/21/2026

I'd like to congratulate Afroman for beating the bullshit defamation charges filed against him by all those cops. If they didn't want to be immortalized in a bunch of music videos mocking them for looking for "kidnapping victims" in the pockets of a man's coat, maybe they shouldn't have done it in the first place. Also, "Lemon Pound Cake" made me laugh so hard the back of my skull hurt.

D'Orc #1, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (color artist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - The remains of another harvest festival gone awry.

So we got a medieval fantasy land split between light and dark, which as the map helpfully included on the inside cover shows are basically reversed mirrors. The land of light has an island on the northwest coast called "Heaven's Spleen," the dark lands have an island in the southeast shaped very similarly called "The Goblin's Teet." I thought it was spelled, "teat", but maybe the point is goblins are bad spellers?

The stretch of land in-between is called The Scar, and the two sides fight there constantly, making it a no man's land inhabited only by the title character. Whose name is not actually "D'orc", but we never learn what he's called, because as soon as he makes the mistake of explaining his parentage to two parties, but sides try to destroy him. Which suits his bloodthirsty talking shield just fine, but D'orc (sorry, kid) really just wanted some food.

So it's off to a tavern, where he gets involved in another brawl, this time trying to defend a poor chicken waiter from two fighters from each side. In the process, he loses control, does a Captain America with his shield and - decapitates the chicken. Whoops. The actual decapitation is off-panel, but we see the aftermath, although Bean's still is not going for realism, so it's not graphic or particularly horrifying. It's not even graphic in the way, say, Skottie Young's art can be.

Which is fine, the chicken's only sort of dead. Why the shield having a soul trapped inside it makes it a "death shield", and this allows the chicken's headless body to move while its spirit floats nearby? Not sure. I guess because Bean says so. He really wanted the visual of a headless chicken running around? I suspect that'll be D'orc's situation soon enough.

The gist seems to be, D'orc would just like to live his life, staying out of the either/or battles of the two sides. Or better yet, the two sides could stop being so bent on destroying each other and stop fighting. But everybody hates a centrist, so both sides are going to kill him. And he's likely going to get increasingly frustrated, or desperate, and destroy both sides just to survive. Maybe he'll meet someone that will ask his real name along the way?

Sunday Splash Page #419

"Feed Trough," in Prez (2015) #3, by Mark Russell (writer), Ben Caldwell (penciler), Mark Morales (inker), Jeremy Lawson (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

The original Prez, a DC series about the United States' first teenage president, came out in 1973. Created by Captain America co-creater Joe Simon, it ran 4 issues, and from what I can tell, was about as accurate a representation of teens in the U.S. as you would expect from someone who had been writing comics for over 30 years by that point. Which is to say, not very. Ed Brubaker and Eric Shanower did a one-shot in the mid-90s under the Vertigo imprint, about Prez Rickard supposedly emerging during the '96 election, after two decades off the radar.

Then, in 2015, as part of one of DC's various post-New 52 branding exercises (DC You?), we got Prez, by Mark Russell and Ben Caldwell. Rather than set it in the present day, Russell sets the series in 2036, where Beth Ross is a 19-year-old working at a Li'l Doggies House of Corndogs in Oregon, and trying raise money to treat her father for some initially unknown illness, which turns out to be the deadly cat flu.

Beth goes viral when she accidentally dunks her pony tail in the deep fryer while filming a training video about proper grill cleaning. This doesn't help her raise the $4 million dollars her dad needs for nanotech treatment but, in a world where people can vote through social media, Beth wins Ohio in the 2036 Presidential election after a popular online personality touts her. To be clear, Beth is too busy trying to pay bills and visit her dad to ever run. The guy just gets the video extra exposure, and his followers decide to vote for this person they've heard of, rather than either of the lame-ass, middle-aged white men the two major parties are running.

The least believable part is that the other candidates are only middle-aged, rather than octogenarians.

As a result of Beth's win, no candidate gets enough electoral votes, so it goes to the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. This sets off a furious, hilarious and deeply pathetic scramble by each candidate to promise various spending projects and perks in return for a state's support. One side offers Ohio NASA. Texas' rep in turn demands 2 NASAs, plus a football stadium. In an attempt at extortion, states start voting for Beth, without keeping track of how many of them are doing so, and she gets elected. The system works - you over like a speed bag.

Beth isn't even sworn in until issue 3 (although it seems like Russell intended this to go longer than six issues), and spends most of issue 4 trying to pick a Cabinet (including a Neil Degrasse Tyson stand-in) and staff. Prez Rickard shows up as an aged, outcast Senator, offering to be her VP on the grounds the major powers won't try to kill her if they risk him becoming President as a result. Which doesn't stop random, gun-toting guys in hunting vests and American flag hats from taking their shot, literally.

I would give Russell credit for predicting the January 2020 insurrection, but white Americans waving guns around like fucking idiots whenever they feel the slightest bit aggrieved is, in the words of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, not a prediction Meat-man, it's a fact of life. Likewise, the U.S. having armed sentry robots stationed around the world that are controlled by guys in beanbag chairs treating it as Call of Duty, getting yelled at by their boss for getting crumbs on the keyboard, feels less like satire or a prediction, than simply reality.

Morales has a loose enough style to pull off the exaggeration (or attempted exaggeration) of the story. Panels are filled with what I think are holographic pop-ups that, for example, offer a patient in the hospital more info about cat flu, if they pay a subscription fee, of course. The major antagonists are various CEOs, faces always hidden by glowing cartoon logos. Like Pharmaduke, or "Jack Smiles", who is always a big gold smiley face as he proclaims they run things, or he parachutes in to tell his employees the product they sell is time, because they make sure the consumer doesn't have to wait as long for stuff they could buy any number of other places. Or the news debate program - hosted by the blonde with the ludicrous hair in the upper left, or another one just like her - which has updated results on who the viewers think is winning, with the losers' face being covered by the flag as the outro music starts.

There's also a subplot about a self-aware killbot - developed in the notion it will save money if they can fire all those guys in the beanbag chairs - that doesn't like the things it has done, changes its name to Tina, and finds religion. Morales makes Tina appear both large enough to be menacing, but with an expressive digital face and body language.

Russell writes Beth as sarcastic, yet idealistic. Bright, but unfamiliar with how things are typically done in politics, which Russell (via Rickard), paints as a positive. Beth owes no favors for getting this far, so she doesn't have to give a Cabinet post to some incompetent dickhead because he campaigned for her.  Some of the outcomes are silly in the optimism, not so much Beth shutting down all the armed sentries and visiting other countries to apologize, but that many of the countries (though not Iran) accept the apology without say, demanding reparations.

Also, her end run around the CEOs and their pocket Senators is. . .to rely on someone even richer to help out? A guy who built a powerful computer, that has written every conceivable story in every language (we're shown the Oscars at one point, and he's credited as writer for 4 of the five nominated films.) Counting on a benevolent trillionaire doesn't seem any likelier to produce a positive outcome than relying on billionaires has. Maybe that was going to come back to bite Beth subsequently, but the book never got a second arc.

Saturday Splash Page #221

"Dark Light," in The Ray (vol. 2) #3, by Christopher Priest (writer), Howard Porter (penciler), Robert Jones (inker), Pat Garrahy (colorist), Ken Bruzenak (letterer)

About 2 years after his mini-series ended, and after he'd gotten some play in that era's Justice League titles, The Ray got an ongoing series. It lasted 28 issues, counting the Zero Hour tie-in #0, Christopher Priest the writer, Howard Porter the penciler for most of the first half of the series, Jason Armstrong illustrating most of the second half.

Jack C. Harris' mini-series was about moving beyond adolescence, growing and coming into your own, with Ray accepting his powers and symbolically shutting the door on the home where he'd spent his entire life up to that point. Priest carries that forward, but with more emphasis on the reality of being a "grown-up" versus the illusion.

Ray's an adult now! He gets to live in his own place! Earn his own money! Date the girl that was his childhood best friend! Hang out with his birth father! Be a superhero!

Except it's not such a great time. The only apartment he can get has no fridge, and comes with an ugly industrial sculpture bolted to the floor. He works at a fast food chicken restaurant. He has almost no furniture, because he spent his money on a souped-up laptop and a cardboard standee of Superman. Jenny, who was not only accepting, but encouraging of Ray embracing his powers, no longer seems to have time for him. Eventually there's a young woman he meets first in the future, then the present, then her future self travels back to his present to avert a bad future. There may have been at least one other brief romantic interest, but if so, the character made zero impact.

Happy Terrill turns out to be not just a congenital liar, as he's still deceiving Ray and Ray's mother - Ray thinks she died in childbirth, she thinks Ray was stillborn - but a domineering, frankly, abusive prick. When he thinks Ray isn't taking his powers seriously, Happy somehow makes Ray think he stole his powers, then dumps him in Chernobyl. Later, when Ray seems to have adjusted to not having powers, Happy disguises himself as a robber and jams a shotgun in Ray's face to terrorize him. It's like Happy took all his parenting techniques from Silver Age Superman.

I was entirely OK when it appeared Happy was killed by Death Masque, the game program Ray designed as a training tool, which subsequently slipped his control and eventually conquered a country. Unfortunately, Priest revealed Happy wasn't dead near the end of the series, which might have been with some notion of reconciliation, as part of a larger thing Priest was doing about family, but I wasn't really having it. If there was some chance Happy could fix all his mistakes, maybe, but he hadn't demonstrated that level of competence in anything, so everyone's really just better off if he's dead.

Ray's superheroing doesn't go so great either. Obviously the issues with Death Masque, which hang over the book throughout. Especially when one of the Justice League squads - I don't know which, that Triumph character was leading it, straight to the dollar bin I assume -  refuses to help, so Ray turns to Vandal Savage for some reason I'm sure was addressed in another book. Priest tried to acknowledge developments in Justice League comics that might impact Ray, but as I didn't buy those comics or care about them, it just ends up being confusing. Ray was gone for months because of what? Long-distance space travel time dilation? Huh?

His team-up with Superboy almost results in Ray killing Superboy, then almost dying against Brimstone because Ray exhausted all his power. Black Canary takes advantage of his school boy crush to get him to help her chase a crook through a dimensional doorway to another world, which later results in Ray having to fight Lobo, then time-traveling and messing up certain details of his father's life. The better half of Dr. Polaris contacts Ray to warn him about the return of the Light Entity, but when Ray can't make heads or trails of the warning, and neither can anyone else, he busts out Emerson. Which backfires when Polaris retakes control. Neron approaches Ray, initially as a woman, and after revealing his true form, Ray's more freaked out he kissed a guy than that the devil is bargaining for his soul.

Porter's work in less exaggerated than Quesada's. He tones down Ray's frankly ridiculous hair and Jenny stops looking like her skirts and suits are going to tear apart if she breaths too deeply. But he and Garrahy don't have the same knack (interest?) in playing with contrast in how they depict Ray's powers or appearance. He still looks similar when powered up, but there's less flair to it, less exaggeration for effect. Ray's not suddenly turning into a little bowl-cut version of himself while interacting with the Light Entity.

Though Priest doesn't entirely forgo embarrassing Ray for comedy's sake. Ray has to kick Lobo out of a space station bar to get Canary medical treatment, and on his initial approach, Lobo simply tears the top off Ray's helmet, taps his cigar ashes on Ray's head, then slams the helmet closed again. Ray gets attacked by Happy while still a little power-drunk from contact with the Entity, and after getting knocked into a clothing shop, emerges wearing a sun hat and a body-length green dress with polka dots. Porter's art has the pacing and body language to sell those moments, despite the times where you can feel his work veering into that '90 Image style of too much cross-hatching or characters gritting an impossible number of teeth.

It's strange, a big part of the series revolves around family. Ray's strained relationship with Happy, especially when he thinks Happy's dead. Ray trying to covertly kindle a relationship (not romantic!) with his mother, by pretending he wants to earn money mowing her lawn. (His mother assumes he's the result of some affair Happy had.) Death Masque is like a jealous child, especially once Vandal Savage starts sniffing around. It turns out Ray has a brother who is both older and younger than him, who comes into play in the last-third of the series. Ray's cousin Dean pops up occasionally, dealing out sage "wisdom."

I'm not sure what the goal is, given Priest also seems to be making the point, as an adult, Ray has to solve his own problems. Ray ultimately stops Death Masque, and settles down the Light Entity. He has to protect his mother and his younger/older sibling. He has to find their dad. He has to recognize Vandal Savage is a scumbag who was never going to help Ray, but instead groom Ray into something Savage could use. That fits with the notion of adulthood that, at a certain point, you have to take ownership of your life, but as far as the "family" aspect, I'm less sure. It's caring about his family that makes Ray stop whining about not being able to beat Death Masque, and just knuckle down and do it to save their lives?

What I Bought 3/18/2026

I did, in fact find a lot of books at the sale last week. Reviews of those start next week! Plus three movies, which I won't get around to reviewing for months yet. Still have all the movies I got at Christmas, plus Pluto's actually let me back in to a limited extent without an account, so I'm trying to finish off the films I had on my watch list before they change their minds. Plus I'll visit my dad sometime in the next month so, that'll be more old movies to review.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #2, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Just another, ordinary, "getting the shit kicked out of him," day for Moon Knight.

Moon Knight and Zodiac are tearing through the Agence Byzantine guys, while Mr. Fear and Mr. Smith look on. Pramanik seems to be having a lot of fun with the layouts. One page that all the panels are of Moon Knight tearins through guys, the panels contained with the outline of his arm pulping a guy's face, with Rosenberg using bright red for the outline of the victim and the borders.

Fear's ready to get out of there, but Smith simply asks him to hand over a box with a set of sharpened dentures and starts telling a story of his childhood. And the reveal is, it's Bushman. You know, the guy whose face Marc cut off 20 years ago (our time.) I was under the impression he was dead but not no more he ain't.

Meanwhile, Marc's gone from pulping idiots in red outfits to trying to strangle Zodiac. Zodiac runs, still spouting nonsense about being determined to make Moon Knight all he can be. Then Bushman steps in, and before he can fight Moon Knight, Zodiac's found the control room, and pumps the room full of fear gas, encouraging Moon Knight to cut Bushman's face off - again. Well, that'd be rather trite, wouldn't it? Oh you fixed your face, I'll trash it again the same way. A little too Punisher and Jigsaw, innit it?

Actually, I'd wonder why Zodiac doesn't target Punisher, but I assume Frank's too straightforward and clinical in his killing for Zodiac to take an interest in him. Frank just shoots them or blows them up and goes on to the next. To the extent there's artistry, as Zodiac might define it, it lies in the sheer relentless attrition the Punisher inflicts.

Or Zodiac's really a punk that knows Frank would just blow his head off at first sight.