My First Floppy

Being new to the comic book world, I went blindly into my first floppy. Entering the comic book store, I awkwardly looked around until out of confusion I retreated onto comixology.com. With nothing to draw me in any direction, I based my search on my film interests and searched for a horror comic. I finally came across issue one of 68: Homefront by Mark Kidwell, Kyle Charles and Jay Fotos. This comic is largely reminiscent of The Walking Dead, as a group of zombies come into a small town and a small group of cheerleaders are on their way into the newly created chaos.

Although this comic takes on the horror genre, I found many of its aspects to linger its atmosphere and make an almost comedic twist. For instance, the overly done and in-your-face sounds interrupt the mood of the scenes. In one image, you have an extreme close-up of a zombie that is ruined by an intrusive “Glukk”. The sounds are in a bright yellow font that seems to belong in a Superman comic instead of omniscient zombie apocalypse and the overwhelming amount of text takes away from the story as the images are covered up by big, round, white blobs. The black background and faded colours are offset and the suspense that could have instilled becomes void.

Did this comic fail in its genre? The images clean cut outlines emphasize the action narrative but the colour scheme and content of the images are clearly horror. The images with their dark, faded colors and hints of popping red or an occasional yellow do an excellent job of emphasizing the gruesome images of the half dead. Moreover, the images find themselves on the more realistic side of the comic spectrum with simple backgrounds but detailed characters. However, the writing and font, not created by the cartoonist, seemed to clash. This comic demonstrates a major issue within the creative process itself; this being the specialization of tasks. This comic was split into story, image and font. In my opinion, the font chosen did not reflect the images or complement the story.

All in all, 68: Homefront is an enjoyable comic and an easy read but I think it lacks the complexity the comic medium has to offer and reduces the dual language to a word focused narrative. I will be continuing this comic in the upcoming three issues to be released and watch as it develops.

Dana Carson