The Living and the Dead

by JasonThis George A. Romero-esque zombie comedy is the middle installment of Jason's "horror trilogy," begun with the Frankenstein monster love triangle of "You Can't Get There From Here." Jason's elegant deadpan style somehow manages to make the gruesome gore and splatter effects almost... charming - and yes, it is a sweet love story at heart. If you read only one book in which a zombie devours a baby this year, read this one!

From Publishers Weekly

With the plethora of zombie comics and films out there, the idea of one more hardly sounds appetizing. But no matter what genre Norwegian cartoonist Jason touches, he owns it. His style is too inventive and distinctive to be overpowered by any of the latest trends, and it's this art style that makes the book work. It's not that the plot is anything new: a young chef falls in love with a young prostitute, but a gang of zombies show up to complicate the romance. Being on the run from a flesh-eating horde has never been so funny. All the characters are anthropomorphized or birds, all lanky and resistant to big facial expressions. His storytelling is lean and every panel counts, with the action told in an efficient and droll manner with few words: there are only seven lines of dialogue in the entire book. The sweet but irreverent sense of humor reaches its high point with the little twist ending—it's romantic but not in any conventional way, further testimony to why Jason is one of the most dependable talents creating comics today. (Mar). Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Grade 10 Up—Boy meets girl. Meteor hits. Dead come back to life. Dead eat living. Boy saves girl. Girl becomes zombie. Boy becomes zombie. Boy and girl eat living together, and exist happily ever after. Jason uses stark, stylized black-and-white line art to portray this rehash of George Romero's film Night of the Living Dead (1968). The sparingly drawn anthropomorphized animals are reminiscent of 1930s cartoon characters such as Felix the Cat. Designed like a silent film, the sequential storytelling through visual panels flows quickly with few words. Jason's cartoon characters, combined with the book's gore, horror, and romance, should appeal to certain young adult sensibilities. The book's brevity and points of comparison with cult movies and pulp fiction add to its worth in graphic-novel collections.—Jodi Mitchell, Durham County Library, NC Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Some of Jason's monstrous gag-strip denizens (see Meow, Baby! , 2006) meet his weakness for doomed-love stories (Tell Me Something , 2004; Why Are You Doing This? , 2005) in what might be called an ordinary zombie yarn. The doggy hero washes dishes at a fancy restaurant and runs a gauntlet of prostitutes on the walk to his rented bedroom. The doggy heroine is a novice hooker. They exchange glances, but she's beyond his budget. That night, he spies a meteor that, when it lands in a cemetery, raises the dead. By his next shift's end, there are zombies everywhere, among them his boss, the remaining diners, and everybody on the street. He and she find each other when he stops her zombie assailant. The ensuing cat-and-mouse scenario is resolved when love triumphs, if not over everything. Jason's uncluttered, uneccentrically angled and composed panels (always six per page) recall the deadpan presentation of silent-film comedies. Too bad Chaplin and Keaton made no horror flicks; Jason suggests how good they might have been. Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Jason hails from Oslo, Norway, but currently resides in Montpellier, France. He's won multiple Eisners, a Harvey, and an Inkpot award.

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