Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When a space probe returns from Venus, alien energies re-animate the dead with an appetite for the flesh of the living! Can the strangers trapped in a Pennsylvania farmhouse escape before they join the ranks of the Living Dead?

I remember seeing ads for the individual Night of the Living Dead issues in the early 1990s but I wasn't that into horror at the time. When I saw a Kickstarter to bring this back in print, I kicked in some money and I'm glad to reap the rewards.

"They're coming to get you, Barbara..." Who doesn't remember that iconic line at the beginning of the movie? The Night of the Living Dead graphic novel starts a little before the movie does. We see how Cooper, his family, Tommy, and Judy Rose end up in the farm house before Ben and Barbara wind up there. Other than that, it's a pretty faithful adaptation of the original version of the film.

The black and white, fully painted artwork does a phenomenal job of setting the nightmarish mood with grotesque, exaggerated figures. And gore, so much gore! While some panels aren't fantastic, others are perfectly chilling. Carlos Kastro and Eric Meheu did a fantastic job.

Just like in both versions of the movie, the humans wind up being their undoing. Cooper is still a colossal dickhead, thinking it's more important to be right than to survive. I feel bad for Ben, as I do every time I watch the movie.

Night of the Living Dead is one gorgeous gorefest and I'm glad the guys at FantaCo went through the trouble of restoring it. 4.5 out of 5 brains.


View all my reviews