’68 Homefront #4 Review

By Edward on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014

Well, here it is; the final chapter of the current ’68 series. ’68 Homefront #4 has a lot to round up – and hopefully tease a future title – so how does it manage to do this all in one issue?

The official description from Image:

Trapped in a snow bound cabin somewhere outside Black Falls, Canada, a group of terrified survivors must battle more than the blizzard outside to keep their pulses. A maniacal, gun-toting mountain man, an undead Mountie, and a mob of shambling, rotting, reanimated corpses all want inside. As Vietnam-era draft cards burn, horror mounts…and blood will stain the snow.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Homefront #4 focuses on the small cast introduced last issue and, well, there’s no real reason to care about them here. This issue has some obvious set pieces and more or less ignores the zombie threat for the first half of the issue. By this point in the series, can we stop trying to be surprised by zombies? It’s been firmly established. In short, it tries to go out with a bang, but it feels more like a whimper.

I guess I’m trying to say the writing feels very lack luster. Mark Kidwell tries to add suspense, thrills and general shoot outs – but what has this got to do with anything? Just like the pointless sexy and 60’s cliche’s seen in the first 2 issues, Kidwell has obviously seen plenty of 60’s shows and movies – everything is more or less realistic but it written one-dimensionally. Also, there are a few zombies. And for the ending? Yeah, it doesn’t deliver any sort of satisfaction; if it wasn’t for “the end” at the bottom, I’d be waiting for issue 5 to be suddenly announced…

Visually, the title does fair better. Kyle Charles is a little sketchy, but his pencils do the work in and there aren’t any specific panels that stand out as poor. Throw in some soft shades from Jay Fotos and it isn’t a bad issue by nature. It definately looks the part, even if the writing leaves little exciting to look at.

All in all, this is a somewhat dissapointing end to the series. When you’ve read this, re-read the first issue and try and connect the dots.