Five Must-Read Comics This Fall

Cody Tromler Cody Tromler
Contributor
October 31st, 2015

A comic loving guy from Omaha, Nebraska. Also host of Dan Dashly Discusses, the internet's 2,368th most popular youtube comic review show.

Five Must-Read Comics This Fall
Comics
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No. 2: Daybreak

From Daybreak

Credit: Drawn & Quarterly

What It's About

Daybreak is a rather unique take on comics as a medium, putting the reader in the role of the main character during a zombie apocalypse. You are taken from one hectic survival situation to another as you slowly gain and lose allies in a harsh and unforgiving world. While you can't make any decisions as the main character, the way the world and characters interact with you really makes you feel the hopelessness and bleakness of this ruined world.

From Daybreak

Credit: Drawn & Quarterly

Why You Should Read It

Zombie media has ironically reached the same state of living death that its monsters have: the endless deluge of comics, movies, video games and books on the subject have rendered the subject boring. Comics like The Walking Dead have desensitized readers to the horrors that animated corpses would present in real life. That is why Daybreak is a breath of fresh air to any fans of the undead, putting you right in the action.

Brian Ralph (author of Cave-In and Reggie-12) proves he is the mast of his craft by never letting you forget that this is all happening to you. Ralph accomplishes this with some extremely simple yet effective tools, the first of which being the fact that the book simple opens up with someone finding you. No backstory, no introduction — just you being found by a kind one armed boy.

The book makes sure not to slow the pace down either, leaving all of the finer, less important details up to your overactive imagination. By letting us fill in the blanks about what happened, Ralph prevents us from questioning our status as the main character, essentially thrusting it upon us, leaving us with no option but to accept it. The next piece of brilliance comes from never giving us a true glimpse of the zombies. By making the threat mysterious, Ralph gives us a true sense of not fully understanding what is going on with the world around us. This is scary in and of itself, but it is just another thing that we are forced to think about, instead of who we are and where we came from.

Finally and most important is the eerie ambience that Ralph's art lends to this book. His deceptively simple character designs allow for great movement and energy, while his more detailed set pieces bring the world to life. From a color standpoint, making everything a dull, dreary brown adds to the soul crushing world that we've been thrown into. It's a world without happiness, and seemingly without life, and the art reflects that. The book manages to engage us the entire time by keeping us on our toes, a great strategy for a book in a played-out genre; and the understated, almost ambiguous, ending leaves you wondering what is next for us, the main character in the world of Daybreak.

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