28 Days Later: The Aftermath

I am a huge fan of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. If you have read any of this blog, you will know that I adore zombies. (Okay, I know some think the fast bloody fellas aren’t real zombies, but fie on you I say – Fie! I consider them zombies of a sort, so there. They may not be brain-dead reanimated kind, but there are single minded as such. Anyway…) I picked this graphic novel up at my favorite local comic shop, Titan Comics, and wasn’t disappointed. My matching zombie socks weren’t knocked off but it was a decent “interim” story to the two movies.

The idea behind 28 Days Later: The Aftermath was to tell the story of what happens between the two movies.  On that level, I don’t think it really meets that goal.  Most of the stories take place in the same time period of the first film or shortly thereafter. The last story kind of gives you an idea of where the sequel film will be, but honestly, I think the stories here add little to the 28 Days narrative. In one story, we see the researchers who developed the virus and more depth on how it was released. In the second story, we see a family on a picnic the day after the accidental release of the Rage virus. A chimpanzee attacks the young son and the family must flee to survive. In the third story, we see Hugh, a lone survivor in London tracking and killing the zombie hordes. As he engineers the death of another survivor by zombie attack, he sees American fighter jets zooming overhead. In the fourth story, the characters from the previous three stories meet in the refugee camp set up by the Americans. The survivors find out the truth from each other, with dire consequences.

The art in this graphic novel was good, with the starkness of Piccadilly Circus beautifully done in Chapter Three. It’s nothing terribly groundbreaking though, I think the style of 30 Days of Night would be even better. Overall, I was expecting more from this, but then I have high expectations for the 28 Days franchise. I wanted more to do with the time in between 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later.

Rating: 3 ½ for a decent bridge between two of my favorite zombie films