Best of DC: Week of July 3rd, 2019

Best of this Week: DCeased #3 – Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine, Stefano Gaudiano, Rain Beredo and Saida Temofonte

Hope is dead. 

Tim Drake, Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne lie dead on the floor of the Batcave as Alfred makes his way to the Batwing, unable to mourn their deaths and wanting to help stop the zombie threat. Harley Quinn finally gets the catharsis that’s she’s been looking for by pumping an infected Joker full of lead. With her face full of glee, it soon turns into a look of determination as Batgirl, Catwoman, Huntress and Batwoman are set upon her, bloody and rabid with infection.

These first few scenes are horrific and shocking to the extent of which this infection is spreading. The Batfamily is normally the most prepared for things like this to happen, but in one fell swoop, they’re almost all gone. That’s the brilliance of Tom Taylor’s plotting with this story, the inability to know what the hell is going to happen next. Batman would have come up with a cure, a plan, but with Tim and Dick being infected and him unable to fully prevent himself from succumbing to his wounds, the world’s greatest planner is no longer a factor. Barbara would have been an excellent second, but any hope of that was lost the moment she showed up covered in blood.

The world has turned to hell and even Superman can’t bring himself to smile or be hopeful as he looked into the faces of friends and companions, their eyes replaced with the rabid rage of infection and none of the love that they once had. He removes the infected from the Daily Planet office and shores up defenses on the outside before promising Jonthan that everything will be okay before he flies back home to Smallville.

The best way to describe Clark’s emotions as he makes his way through the Planet is hope being replaced by despair. The captions say it best, the hardest part of dealing with the infected is dissociating. These people are no longer Clark’s colleagues. They’re rageful monsters bent on killing, thankfully none of them can make a scratch on him, but the internal scars are far more painful than anything on the outside. Even when he promises that he’ll be back to his son, there’s this underlying feeling of doubt. We don’t know that he will, he doesn’t know that he will, but he’s Superman, right? He has to have hope?

Elsewhere, Garth and Mera are working to make his magic stronger before noticing the sky grow darker, dark with blood. They watch as Aquaman tears through Atlantis’ warriors, infecting and spilling their blood as it flows through the water and gets Garth. Mera barely escapes, but the fear on her face is palpable, she knows that all is lost. 

Even Atlantis isn’t impervious to all of this, granted it’s because Aquaman was attacked by infected diving out of a boat, but that doesn’t make things any less terrifying. This also helps us to learn that the infection can spread through blood and given how fast Aquaman and Tempest can swim through water, and how far spread the infection already is, nothing is safe.

On his way to Smallville, Superman does his best to save anyone not infected along the way. He catches up to Jefferson Pierce, aka Black Lightning, and his daughters, telling them to head to the planet before reaching the home of the Kents. Martha is okay, but Jon… Superman makes one final act of kindness before flying his mother to safety, leaving any hope that he might have had in the barn with his father.

That’s what I loved about this book. It is hopelessly nihilistic because of how tragic everything is and how all of it can even break Superman. Hairsine’s art invokes the feeling of terror that I felt the first time I watched 28 Days Later, seeing these ridiculously fast and violent killing machines tear through everything in their path. The shading on everything makes the inkers inks feel even more dark and bleak especially as Aquaman is slicing through Atlantis in a nice double page spread with a black background.

DCeased is definitely much better than I initially gave it credit for. With Hairsine’s art and Taylor’s bleak writing, this is definitely worth checking out, high recommend!