Last Week’s Comics 10/12/2011
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The Theater #1
(Zenescope – writer: Raven Gregory; art: Martin Montiel and Novo Malgapo)
Bannen’s Book of the Week: I wanted this title for the cover (more specifically, the cover with the pigtailed cheerleader sitting in a zombie-infested movie theater.)
I didn’t know what to expect with The Theater, but my experience with Zenescope has been, for the most part, a positive one. Save for a few errant titles, the majority of stories that come out of Zenescope – and Raven Gregory – appeal to me in ways that most other smaller publications don’t. The ideas aren’t particularly new. They deal with zombies, superheroes, zombies and more zombies. But while I’ve complained about the over-saturation of zombie books on the market, I haven’t included Zenescope in that grumbling.
Raven Gregory has found a way to make the zombies the least interesting part of the story and instead create fun and memorable characters that steal the show. (In particular, I’m thinking of the characters in The Waking.) So I guessed that I would enjoy The Theater based on my previous experiences with the
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company. What I didn’t expect was to find a story that is both self-contained and continuous, and one that uses a multitude of venues to get its point across.
Put simply, The Theater is another great book put out by a comic company that seems to have found the formula for successful writing and storytelling.
The Theater utilizes a story within a story concept. The theater of the title is an actual theater where people go to see old movies. The movies they watch are then presented to the reader in the majority of the comic. Think of these as vignettes and self-contained stories that also seem to have a larger arc hidden within the two introductory pages.
The movie in this issue is about a boy and his father and the ways they try to survive after a zombie apocalypse. Informed that the last of the zombies has been destroyed, the father and son venture out of their bunker to find that civilization is starting to rebuild itself.
Things are going well until the boy and his father are attacked by the last zombie. The father is bitten and slowly succumbs to the zombie virus. In the end, the boy has to make the decision to shoot his father or let him rot in a chair to which he is tied.
The ending is very Twilight Zone-esque and one that, while predictable, still entertains. Martin Montiel illustrates this story within a story and does a nice job of offsetting the visuals Novo Malgapo draws in the bookend sections. The end of the comic, similarly to the movie, has a dark resolution that only creates more questions for readers.
Plus, there’s a sinister janitor and an eerie feeling of desolation in the “real world” parts of the comic, so readers never fully feel at ease, even after they’ve been pulled out of the zombie movie.
I’m a person who enjoys standalone stories, but they’re not usually done well. Every story seems to be part of an arc, and to fully understand what’s going on, most comic readers need to track down back issues or read up on past storylines.
I don’t see this being a problem for The Theater. It’s an entertaining, albeit simple story that asks very little of its readers. The art is appropriately grainy to match both the feel of watching a movie on a screen and the desperate tone of the boy’s situation. Plus, the various covers of this issue are simply beautiful.
Raven Gregory understands the art of comic book storytelling, and as long as he continues to write for Zenescope, I will continue to buy his comics. Zenescope says it’s the company that “does horror the right way.” I can’t disagree with this slogan, and after reading The Theater, I don’t think you will either.
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