"Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords"

I’ve just finished reading Death Falcon Zero vs. the Zombie Slug Lords. I’m not going to lie. At first I was eager to read the graphic novel, but I had certain set expectations and a couple of pages in my eagerness was replaced by anxiety (wait, not a good way to start a review, but hold on a bit!) the tight-fisted reign of those expectations dissolving into a messy goo, much like the gooey innards of the Slug Lord Zombies which had yet to appear on the pages as I was only on Chapter One in which we find Death Falcon Zero being released from prison with a carrot promise of probation if he succeeds in his given mission, reminding of Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” Snake, only not, because Death Falcon Zero is no fancified, Hollywood glossed Kurt Russell. In fact, he’s kind of repulsive. If, through our neighborhood of shoulder-to-shoulder Mary Poppins developments, homeless despair, hooker entrepreneurship and flats for cranky, hungry, low maintenance artists/musicians/authors (like our building), I was strolling down to Publix for our daily gallon of fat free, USDA organic milk, and Death Falcon Zero opened his 1966 black GTO passenger door to offer me a ride, I would run away.

OK, uhm, let’s try a different approach. If I was a careworn Wendy, and Tinkerbell showed up in wrestling boots to excitedly announce, “Troma punk yet lives! It lives in you!” I’d sigh, “Tink, I’m too far gone, long removed from my days of delighting in Troma punk. The Bush years, Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington becoming queen of the internet have ransacked my faith in the innocent delights of I can’t even remember what because it’s been so long, after all I’ve been a mom for eleven years and have had to live through the horrors of Disney, which I managed to avoid as a child but couldn’t spare my son as his uncle gave him all his Disney VHS tapes, and even before that I was just plain so traumatized by the collapse of culture that I couldn’t appreciate the ravaging of its remnants. Tink, no, my Troma years are long behind me, even though I’m depraved enough to keep unquitting and unquitting again tobacco and have, on the occasion, had a cigarette within thirty minutes of stepping off my yoga mat. Please, leave me to iPod downloads of Krishna Das and my blueberry tea, because I can never sleep and I must yet try again tonight and not be bothered with that Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords graphic novel you seem so intent on shoving at me. Please, I beg you, leave me in peace. If Peter Pan lives, he has joined the industry of Caribbean Pirates and conceals the loss of his ability to fly with mega-money special effects.”

But Tink did not leave me in peace. And so it is now dawn, which means I stayed up all night reading Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords, which is not even a Troma film, is it. It’s a graphic novel written by author William Bitner (M is for Monster), conceived by film-maker Daniel Boyd (Invasion of the Space Preachers, Chillers, Heroes of the Heart) with William Bitner, sterling Double-D all natural art provided by Brendon and Brian Fraim (The Odd Squad, Knights of the Dinner Table, Antiques: The Comic Strip). But the streamlined sensibility of the text in combination with the graphics makes me feel as though I’ve watched a film, and that film turned out to be a lot of fun and had me wondering to the end where it was going and how it would end. My imagination cut loose, freed from the skeptic boa constrictor that strangles creativity’s wellsprings with lashes of better judgment, my film was black and white, in the manner of Luis Bunuel, but filled with zombies running amuck through the punch bowls and ballrooms of the less-than-discretely charmed. My perspective had so altered, several chapters in, that every time the plot flung a pebble in my teeth, I’d think, “What would Troma do?” and resolution was magically, immediately had. Yes! The movie in my head would breeze along, and the me in my head kept eating popcorn and turning to my husband in my head and saying, “Isn’t this just perfect? Isn’t this great?”

The year is 1974, two years after the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and that fact in itself takes some adjusting, back to a time of music on rubber platters and 8 mm films. A place called West Side in Charleston, West Virginia has been besieged by zombies. The defunct wrestling team, The Grapes of Wrath (the aforementioned Death Falcon Zero, Raw Talent and Professor Danger) marshaled to combat them, two question marks dripping blood and assorted yuck on the urban wasteland beg answers to who is creating the zombies and for what purpose? Will The Grapes of Wrath, each marked with alienating super-foibles, win the good fight or be sucked into the zombie world that invites flesh-eating freedom from daily cares?

But hold, there’s more! The novel was designed with an ulterior purpose, by Bitner and Boyd, both themselves late-blooming wrestling pros, and Daniel Boyd a West Virginia State University communications’ professor who “forged the first student film industry in West Virginia”.

“This is just one more creative outlet from the mad scientist team at State’s communications department and media studies program that cooks up ideas to get students thinking about new outlets for their storytelling skills,” Boyd said. “As with all our output, we bring in industry masters and link them with students who work with them throughout the entire process.”

It works. They may have been talking about the actual hands-on experience of students involved in the fruition of Death Falcon Zero vs. The Zombie Slug Lords, but, seriously, the magic in this 130 page (give or take a few) book is in slamming to the mat the living dead sludging the reader’s psyche, inviting and allowing one to Make Your Own Damn Movie. Yes, you can! In your head! Where it all begins! You’ve everything it takes to read a world between the lines and let the film unwind on your inner projectionist’s screen, and just maybe slay the sinister Zombie Lords who have long been purchasing claim to creative privilege, denying your right to dream and pursue your own quest in the medium of your choice in the physical realm.

And hold again! Further exemplifying walking the talk, proceeds from the release of the graphic novel go to Rev. James D. Ealy’s nonprofit New Covenant Community Development, Inc., which “provides multiple programs to aid the young and old on the West Side.”

For a truly unbelievable price of only $12.99 you can now purchase Death Falcon Zero vs. the Zombie Slug Lords at Amazon.

Update: Read a newspaper article on Death Falcon Zero vs. the Zombie Slug Lords in which Danny Boyd discusses some of the book’s history and his commitment to community service. The article can also be seen in USA Today.