Remote: Dead Air (Fire I)

Double Take, an imprint of video game company Take-Two Interactive, has launched 10 comic books set during the Pennsylvania zombie invasion from the movie Night of the Living Dead (now in the public domain), of which this is the 10th. Presumably the editors were confident they could come up with 10 unique takes on an already overdone story, but this installment, about a woman who keeps the local radio station running during the zombie crisis, has a familiar air of jaded, rambling horror-comedy. It’s a good premise, but the horror isn’t scary, the comedy isn’t funny, there’s no consistent tone or level of reality, and everything is rendered in stiff cut-and-paste artwork. The project feels like it was assembled by tech executives who were vaguely aware of comic books as those things Zack Snyder makes movies out of. Why the New Yorker cartoon on the inside cover? Why the pages of 1960s factoids? Why the naked giant? The world may never know. (Sept.)