Awakening: A Comic You Should Buy

Allow me to indulge in some product pimpage here.

Awakening is a zombie horror comic written by Nick Tapalansky, with art by Alex Eckman-Lawn and lettering by Thomas Mauer. It was recently nominated for an Eagle Award. It's published by Archaia Studios, who are responsible for awesome comics such as Mouse Guard.

Also? Awakening is really good and you should buy it.

Full disclosure: I met Nick and Alex at San Diego Comic Con last year. They were extremely nice and professional guys, and I remember they complimented me on my shirt. (That's the way to go if you want to flatter me, really. I heart my t-shirt collection). Anyway, they pressed their book into my hands and sold me on it with a very enthusiastic pitch. Which is fortunate, because without that experience, I'm not sure I would ever have picked the book up. Another zombie comic, right?

Not really. Awakening's not a gorefest, and it's not exactly full of scares. Nor is it a winking post-ironic examination of the zombie trope, or whatever else the kids are reading these days.

Nope, it's a down and dirty detective story where the zombies barely get any screen time. They're really more like phantoms than traditional Romero-esque flesh-eaters, and when they appear at all, it often happens too fast for us to get a good look at them. Tapalansky subverts all the usual zombie cliches: Instead of attacking in packs, they work alone; instead of roaming mindlessly, they hide in the shadows and strike like hungry wolves. Heck, their victims don't even turn into zombies, and they even occasionally run away.

So the zombie stuff is really there to lend menace and atmosphere to the overarching detective/forensics story. Much like Ellis and Templesmith's Fell, we get the sense that the town in the story is physically sick, festering with an unseen evil. It's all very moody, meditative and grim. All of which is a pretty clever device, but it might not have worked so well were it not for Eckman-Lawn's frankly beautiful art.

I really don't know how to describe the art and do it justice. It's like Templesmith and McKean had a love-child. Scribbly lines, wild ink spatters and off-kilter photo-collage are the norm here, and while this sort of style is currently popular and much-copied, Eckman-Lawn seems to be approaching a real visual technique of his own. Characters fade in and out of silhouette; in and out of reality. They appear flat and vaporous in one panel and lavishly painted in the next. Swirling patterns and scraps of newsprint fade in and out of the pages, subtext literally rising to the surface.

And the double-page spreads: Just gorgeous. Ditto the covers and the pages with closeups of character faces. The latter often feature elaborate haloes of design elements around the characters' heads, like crazy sunbursts of emotion.

Basically, it's stylish, gorgeous to look at, and a creepy-fun read. Best of all, there's a hardcover collection coming out in June. And if you're not already convinced, well, go check it out for yourself at the official site. All you have to do is email Nick, and he'll send you issues 1-4 as ebooks for free. That, folks, is how you market a comic book.