Zombos Says: Very Good
Radical Publishing collects the three-issue comic series of the FVZA: Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, based on the spoof organization's website. The artwork is gorgeous, the story tried and true, but the logic of the premise escapes me. Why would vampires pollute their preferred food source by turning people into zombies? It does not make longterm practical sense for their survival.
David Hine fortifies the FVZA idea with enough pseudo-historical context and political name-dropping to flesh out the agency's growth, spanning back to the days of the Wild West. Briefly disbanding after vampire and zombie activity seemed to stop, Dr. Hugo Pecos, the pragmatic and unemotional leader of the agency, is given the go ahead to start it up again when a new zombie virus, released by a scheming vampire, breaks out.
Given the numerous "agencies" dealing with supernatural or fantastic events that are now policing the horror, sci fi, and fantasty mediums, it would be easy to dismiss the FVZA as another would-have, could-have plotline, but Hine keeps it involving by focusing on Dr. Pecos' little emotional armor chinks, his incessant training of his niece and nephew after their parents are killed, and a well-constructed narrative that ties it all together through the people it involves.
Landra and Vidal are tutored in fighting techniques and the history of the agency, a lengthy preamble that's made visually engrossing by Roy Allan Martinez and Wayne Nichols as it moves from the Copper Creek Siege of 1885, through a Nazi concentration camp in World War II, and ends with the shutdown of the agency in 1975. The pencil art is painted by Kinsun Loh and Jerry Choo, lending a near irredescent quality across the colors, enriching the somber mood with a darker tone while giving expressive highlights to the vampire and zombie action.
Hine uses a neat dramatic wrapper to begin and end the series. In the opening Dr. Pecos is about to be shot dead by Landra. The events leading up to this point are illustrated across the three issues, finally bringing us back to Landra and Dr. Pecos, and the gun she's pointing at him ready to fire. A childhood story Dr. Pecos would tell her at bedtime, Kiss Me Dead, provides the effective–and I would add noirish in its importance–sad but necessary denouement.
The vampires in FVZA: Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency are vicious, ugly, and hungry. The zombies are victims, but still hungry. The agency and its people are also hungry, but their hunger is more personal and harder to satisfy.