Zenescope - Omnibusted #66: Zombies - The Cursed

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Brains.

One is a genius, the other's insane, and they both taste like chicken. What's in your head, Voodoo Child?

Mmm...; chicken and Cranberries....

I wish I could stop making these random music references, but I'm not the one who's so far away, and thanks to the coffee I drank yesterday afternoon, there'll be No Sleep 'til Brooklyn.

At least that last one didn't have anything to do with zombies, right?

By the time this is published (or maybe even as I'm writing it), Just the Ticket will have passed another unprecedented milestone of thirty thousand views for the month. In the interest of keeping the Countdown to One Thousand Posts at as gradual a pace as possible, I'll be putting the final view tally on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn at the beginning of October instead of in a Time Drops, Anime Spotlight, Omnibusted/Retrospective, or other post, so as to save space for my milestone project. But thank you all in advance for keeping this passion of mine evolving from a shambling gait to turbo status. Shameless plugs!

Speaking of shameless plugs, I'm happy to announce (I know I'm late to the results, but I'll take any sign that disproves a societal apocalypse) that robots did not win America's Got Talent. It was a heavy metal guitar genius named Nene Royal. She even got to duet with Linkin Park, and it was fucking awesome, just like all of you.

The other shameless plug is that from the second season onward, To Your Eternity had the Nokkers take on zombie-like qualities, and Season Three dealt with people living out of time, which kind of makes this a theme week because of what I'm reviewing today.

Unleashed Tie-In

Zombies: The Cursed

As with the other short miniseries that tie into Unleashed, Zombies: The Cursed was compiled with another three-issue series (it's obvious which one) in the Zombies & Demons Trade Paperback.

The cover is by Stjepan Šejić, and is also the A Cover for Grimm Universe #5. Why Masumi (the Demon slayer) is on the Zombies side of the cover and what Samantha has to do with anything are questions I can't answer at the moment, but I do know that Elijah isn't on the cover because he isn't a woman in a skintight costume, and sexy covers are what sell Zenescope comics (even though the interior content can be pretty good most of the time). There's no bonus material in Zombies & Demons, but like with Vampires & Werewolves, the credits and Table Of Contents background makes use of those #1A mural covers by Anthony Spay and Ivan Nunes that I mentioned in my Hunters review a few weeks ago.

So, I get my answers about Samantha (including why she isn't in the Sanctum at the end of the Timelost short) immediately. She's been out, blasting through the Zombie hordes and her stamina meter, looking for Elijah.

Not to devalue the man, but he's just a man with muscles. How can he be the best Zombie-killer on Earth when the two women trying to find him can fly and shoot magic lasers from their hands? Hell, Sela could probably just nuke them all with the Gold and cure the curse forever; we've seen it work on spiritual infections before. The Gold might even work on Vampires. And Werewolves. Maybe Demons, too.

But magic is unreliable, I guess, which is why Samantha is playing a Survivaton wherever the fuck she is instead of going straight to New Orleans, where Elijah is.

In modern day, Elijah visits a bokor (who looks like the necromancer from the Christmas Edition and Realm Knights One-Shot, but can't be the same character because that one was killed and this takes place after those events) in search of a ring with immense importance, if not immense power.

In the past, we see Elijah as a slave on the Fontaine plantation, romantically involved with the Master's daughter, Cassidy. But it's short-lived as the couple are caught by Fontaine and Elijah rebels, fleeing with Cassidy and having his first encounter with the undead (here raised by Haitian magic instead of being the viral version known to modern viewers).

While Elijah in the present steals the ring from a descendant of his who runs some kind of hostess café (and she later discovers who he is, but doesn't know the difference between antebellum and post-war), the flashback continues with him and Cassidy on the run from Fontaine and his Haitian house-boy's Zombies, and shows his first encounter with the Hunters. It's a beautiful but chaotic double-spread that fades up from Elijah in sepiatone into full color where the Hunters are arriving to kick undead ass.

From then into the next page, the flashback is in full color as Elijah keeps fighting off the growing mob of the Cursed, alongside Roman, but seemingly fails to protect Cassidy.

Into the present, the descendant finds Elijah having dug a hole, but won't get the answers she wants just yet, as the dead are beginning to rise.

And it's Cassidy.

Which we know because her hair hasn't completely rotted yet, unlike the rest of her. I thought it was silly, but apparently hair takes longer to decompose than the rest of the body, so it's realistic?

Cassidy being a Zombie also means that Zenescope is combining the voodoo origins of the undead with their cinematic lore, because one of the cliffhangers of Part 2 suggested (and the flashback here showed) that she was killed by Zombies, and therefore received their curse, with the only means of freeing one being decapitation or destruction of the brain.

As for why Elijah wanted the ring so badly, it turns out that it was Fontaine's, allowing him to raise and control the dead (though neither he nor the Haitian were ever drawn wearing it until this issue), and Elijah wanted to use the ring to raise Cassidy and free her from the curse.

Problem is, every other Zombie in the graveyard was also raised. So the issue turns into an Evil Dead movie for a bit while Elijah fights with a shotgun and razor whip to protect his descendant until Samantha finally shows up to save the day. It's pretty badass and serves more as a redemptive moment for him than a typical action climax (saving his bloodline, in contrast to the events of the flashback, where Cassidy was killed and he had to entrust his infant son and his dead master's ring to Sela, whom he barely knew). It's not devoid of action, but the action was clearly less important than the story being told, and that was different enough that I could notice it and appreciate it.

Samantha being the Guardian Of the Nexus but beholden to her own weariness and reluctant optimism (and to Sela) has gotten old, and will continue to age like a dolphin milk and grape soda cocktail in Death Valley, but her banter with Elijah is kind of somberly cute, and I'm disappointed that more wasn't done with them once the Being was dealt with.

Stay Tuned because I'm going on hiatus this October to get my milestone project finished.

And as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

6

Omnibuster,

Out.