New revelations add new complications.
Creative Staff:
Story: Ryan Parrott
Art: Evgeniy Bornyakov
Colors: Juancho
Letterer: Charles Pritchett
What They Say:
When Jeremy’s quest for revenge goes bad, Melissa is forced to do the last thing she ever wanted—bring Jeremy home. What will her new family think of the life she once led, and…who else will follow in her wake?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With some interesting moments in the prior issue, Dead Day moves forward with more things revealed here and that lets Ryan Parrott watch as the characters react to it all. Parrott has already crafted an interesting story where the foundations were well-set quickly and each issue has introduced more intriguing elements not to just how this world works but the characters themselves. And Evgeniy Bornyakov has delivered strongly with the visual design for it as we get some strange elements here and there but just a lot of diversity in terms of what’s going on, from the home life, the gangster elements, the graveyard, the religious-military group, and just kids being kids putting buckets on their heads.
With Mel having brought Jeremy back home to help fix him up some after what they went through, the tensions are high. Strong enough the even Jewelry is telling her mother that if she goes out again not to come back. That’s powerful stuff there. Bill and Jeremy have their round of it as well with Bill helping to stitch him up but Jeremy still angry about how Bill has his life. That’s something he lashes out at Mel about as well but there are so many complicated moments to Jeremy’s death and how it happened that he’s assigning blame where there is none, beyond himself really. And that makes for understandable misplaced anger in the short term. But it’s having such a ripple effect on the rest of the family that the strain is showing pretty well at this point. And that’s before the gangster guy shows up with his militia to hunt the dead.
At the same time, we get to see more of what’s going on with Brandon and his friend at the graveyard. The time with the “zombie pope” is interesting as we see her frustrated in a calm way about how everyone keeps treating her she knows she’s no queen or anything. Beyond giving out the time until the next Dead Day, she helps by telling people things they need to know in order to be better or move forward. But she does this to Brandon as well, noting him to be an unbeliever unlike the rest, and making him understand that Bill isn’t his father is harrowing for the kid. It makes enough sense and you can see how that’s going to cause problems when it cycles around, but Brandon’s reactions are good here when it comes to both the Zombie Pope and the girl he likes and it’s a really good moment for his friend to stand up for him in a way I didn’t think he had in him.
In Summary:
I’m definitely curious to see where Dead Day goes from here, though I expect some heartfelt kind of reconciliation that produces a stronger family that may or may not have a Dead Day to look forward to again. For me, it’s Bill and Brandon that win this issue and getting to see some of the flashback with Bill and Mel definitely helps to clarify things. The action is minimal overall but fun because of its unpredictability and there are quirks our bad dude just didn’t plan on. I still want to smack Jeremy around a bit, however, and get him to focus on the better way of handling a day like Dead Day than he is.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics (Kindle Version)
Release Date: October 21st, 2020
MSRP: $3.99
