Always Remember

Yeah, I know that the meme has pretty much run its course, but I couldn't resist one more.)

Review: A Trip to Rundberg

A Trip to Rundberg
by Nate Southard & Shawn Richter
Frequency Press, $11.95

Do you like zombies?

More specifically, do you think that zombies are best used as cannon fodder in an action/horror fest? (As opposed to a metaphor for the human condition or some such nonsense...)

If so, then A Trip to Rundberg is the graphic novel for you!

The situation is set up in the first 10 pages: A mysterious zombie plague has swept the land, but the small rural Indiana town of Millwood has been spared, mainly due to the fact that they're a small rural Indiana town. But food supplies are running low, and with winter fast approaching, they need to restock. So a group of volunteers (a term used rather loosely in a couple of cases) are selected to travel to nearby Rundberg to raid their food stores.

What follows then is a combination of interpersonal conflict and action zombie violence, complete with exploding zombie heads and dudes getting gnawed on, all in the best tradition of late-night cable tv.

Southard and Richter previously brought us Drive, and A Trip to Rundberg is in that same action-packed tradition. Richter continues to bring a action-movie quality to his art, using three 'widescreen' panels per page to give it a cinematic feel. His action-based storytelling is clear and never loses the reader--a definite plus in this type of story. His figure work is a bit improved though still rough in places on the humans, but he draws some pretty damn good zombies and imbues them with a touch of individualism--before they get their heads blown off by a shotgun.

So if the above description sounds like the sort of zombie comic you'd like, you probably will want to check this out.

Rating: 3 (of 5)


(a review copy of A Trip to Rundberg was provided by the publisher)

Viz OOP sale

Viz is having a sale on their out-of-print backstock. Most of these are older volumes done in their pre-manga-boom style: they read left-to-right and are slightly larger. A lot of the stuff also doesn't fit the current in-style mode (e.g. action comics for boys, shojo for teen girls, and fan service-heavy plot-thin books.) The books were also more expensive in those days, but the sale brings many of the titles closer to the expected $10-$11 range that many mainstream manga fans seem unwilling to cross, no mater the quality of the book.

There are several titles offered on sale that receive the YACB stamp of approval. They are:

2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino
A, A' by Moto Hagio
Adolf by Osamu Tezuka
Benkei in New York by Jinpachi Mori and Jiro Taniguchi
Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka
Dance Till Tomorrow by Naoki Yamamoto
Eagle by Kaji Kawaguchi
Mai the Psychic Girl by Kazuya Kudo & Ryoichi Ikegami
One Pound Gospel by Rumiko Takahashi
Rumic Theater by Rumiko Takahashi
Rumic World by Rumiko Takahashi
Sanctuary by Sho Fumimura & Ryoichi Ikegami
Uzumaki by Junji Ito

And there's plenty of other stuff on sale too.

I'm not shilling for Viz here, just trying to help you all find some good manga reading before it's no longer available. It's also a crying shame that the market cannot support quality titles like these staying in print.

(Thanks to Chris for the heads-up on this.)