After a promising start to The Other Dead, we are now treated to something a little less exciting with this interesting take on the zombie apocalypse. It’s still early in the series and the concept is still fresh but it’s starting to meander a bit by issue #3.

Official Description from IDW:
The zombie animal infection spreads across Louisiana, as Tommy and Azrael struggle to survive and President Obama is forced to go toe-to-toe with the un-deadly animals! Join all-star creators Kevin Eastman (TMNT), Joshua Ortega (Gears of War), and Digger T Mesch (Agent 88) for the third installment of the year’s most talked-about new zombie book!

This time round the zombie’s have come in the form of the animal kingdom from writer Joshua Ortega and co-creator Digger T. Mesch and while I’ve never seen this take before the chaos that proceeds understanding is relatively the same. Adding in the mix of a President of the United States, Barack Obama, and his noble effort to do what the previous administration failed to do for New Orleans, feels forced. It quickly turns into an attack by dogs and the President is rushed off into the streets of New Orleans.

While I love the concept of animal zombies I wish I felt more like rooting for the human characters. Outside of the little brother fighting cancer there’s not much for me to like about the rest of this group. Frankly when Mike and Alyssa bite the dust I was rooting for the animals to take more of them down. Maybe that is the intention and if so than mission accomplished. Az by definition is or will be leader of this group and his notion that him and his friends caused this to happen with their magic ritual feels as forced as the President’s introduction into this scenario.

To top it all off there is another massive hurricane headed to New Orleans and by the end of the issue will take this story in a new direction. One can only hope that it makes it more interesting as well. Also by issue’s end Obama gets even more hands on with the main story of our survivors and it sets up to be an interesting partnership. The best part of this issue is Qing Ping Mui’s art and his detailed renderings of the animal zombies and their attacks. Gruesome and horrific which is really the heart of this book. Zombies animals and gore win the day here and the story certainly needs them.

The Other Dead has promise but this issues simply doesn’t showcase it. It’s a lot of set-up which barely moves the story forward from issue #2 and it’s been much of the same since the animals first attacked. If you like the unusual concept, give the book a try, because, the zombie gore is worth at least the first three issues. I only hope we can start to care about the main characters and strip the Obama stunt down to it’s base ingredient and make an ass-kicking, zombie killing POTUS.

2/5