Zombos Says: Good
In the never ending wishing well creators keep dipping into to keep zombies fresh, IDW's Chris Ryall and Drew Moss manage to get aliens mixed up with animated corpses in The Colonized. The aliens bring one up to their ship but never get the chance to go through their carefully rehearsed formal "greetings earthling" introduction because the dead guy wants to eat them instead of greet them. So much for superior technology in the face of adversity: the aliens have stun rods, but no cool disintegration rayguns. Bummer.
Ryall and Moss are going for a 1950s kind of alien sensibility, even if the local town being visited is going green, which seems to be annoying the local Cabela's shoppers, and the dead are rising faster than the aliens can say "take me to your leader."
The artwork is a perfect match for both the tone and mood of the storyline in issue 1: the zombies are decayed enough, but not too gooey serious, and the aliens act more like chimps dressed in spacesuits rather than predator warriors. The fishbowl helmets they wear aren't very good protection for them, especially when they trip over their own feet. Or whatever they call the things they have stuffed in their boots that work like feet.
No reason--yet--is given for the dead rising, and it appears the aliens didn't have a plan 9 for visiting earth. They're just a bunch of shlubs, like some of the locals, caught up in the moment. I'm not sure where it will go from here, but I hope the IDW team can keep the momentum going, or this could wind up being another Cowboys and Aliens.
(Note to Ryall and Moss: Come on guys, let's see some rayguns!)
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