Writer: Arvid Nelson
Artist: Matt Camp
Publisher: Dark Horse
Price: $2.99
Release Date: 18th July
The new mini-series from the creator of Rex Mundi, Zero Killer takes Nelson’s passionate love of alternate history closer to home. Set in a New York ravaged by nuclear war and where every surviving skyscraper is a fiefdom, the book follows Zero, a ‘trashman’ who works for whoever pays him at the time. To get the obvious comparison out of the way, if DMZ’s Matty is an observer forced into the centre of events, Zero often instigates events but rarely sticks around for the consequences. It’s an interesting concept, one part classic 2000AD and one part Nelson’s own unique style.
A book like Zero Killer rises and falls on its spectacle, on the combination of mortal characters and fantastic situations and Matt Camp rises to the occasion admirably. His desolate, flooded New York is beautiful and bleak, a fractured world where people cling to buildings like life preservers. His character work is equally impressive and echoes early Gary Erskine. This isn’t a world where everyone’s pretty and the future is inhabited by fitness models in ripped spandex. In fact, the nearest comparison is HBO’s Rome, a grimy, vibrant, visceral world which Zero is right at home in. The only time Camp’s art stumbles is in an early fight scene, clearly intended to come off as whip-quick and fluid but coming across as mannered and clunky but aside from that, his work is uniformly impressive.
Nelson is a phenomenally gifted author with a love for research as his timeline for the world pre-issue 1 ( http://www.rexmundi.net/zerokiller/main/index.html) shows. He’s almost novelistic in his approach, building slowly and letting the characters and events speak for themselves. Normally, that would be an asset but here, ironically, it’s Zero Killer’s one weak spot. So much time is spent telling us how intensely dangerous and high impact Zero’s world is, that we barely see it. The end result is an issue largely consisting of talking heads and occasional action which despite being never less than entertaining is never that much more. This is in effect a ‘pilot episode’ and you can almost see the elements not quite gelling.
Despite that, this is still something genuinely different with a great central concept and an interesting plot. No one produces work like Arvid Nelson and if you’re remotely interested in smart, bleak thrillers, then you could do a lot worse than take a trip to Zero’s New York.
Alasdair started writing when he was nine, powered by a hefty diet of '80s cartoons, Doctor Who and Icepops. He's quite tired by this stage but has written a lot of things for a lot of people, including Fortean Times, Neo and Surreal.