'Night of the Living Dead, Volume 3' – Wolfer, Verma (Avatar)

I was going to leave it at least another week until tackling volume 3 of Avatar's 'Night of the Living Dead' series but I was so disappointed by the last volume that I think a part of me just wanted to get the series over and done with. Having bought volume 3 already, it was almost a case of having to finish it really. So I did and...

The most terrifying night in American history was only the beginning! The year is 1969, and though the risen dead had ravaged the eastern seaboard a year earlier, two thousand miles of distance bring comfort to a handful of young and carefree “weekend warriors.” Eager to leave their tensions behind, they head out into the Californian dunes for three days of hot sun, dune buggies, and skimpy bikinis.But the pristine white sands will soon run red, as a secret even more gut-wrenching than flesh-eating ghouls coes to light! Collecting the entire “Death Valley” story arc by horror comic legend Mike Wolfer, with an added bonus story set in the Louisiana bayou, where the psychological threat of the coming undead hordes pits survivor against survivor!

So I finished it and while the series as a whole is far too inconsistent for me to recommend it to anyone, this concluding volume wasn't all that bad, after all, and that meant my experience of the series ended on a relatively positive note. If only volume 2 had been like this.

Somewhere along the line, John Russo's involvement with the series ended and while it's a little presumptious to equate that with the upturn in quality (I'll admit that I'm not a big fan of his work), it may be that handing the reins to just the one writer resulted in a more cohesive tale. I thought that Wolfer did a very good job with the story, picking up the tale of one of the main chracters from volume 1 and mixing this into an encounter with a Californian death cult and of course, loads of zombies.

While you still can't escape from the nudity that's there to titilate rather than anything else (and makes it really difficult to read this book on the bus...), Wolfer lets the plot take centre stage and the book is all the better for it, throwing the reader at least one decent curve ball and making the story one that you want to stay with until the end. The concluding chapter of the volume, telling the tale of a zombie encounter in the Louisiana bayou is too short to really go anywhere but is the closest story to Romero's work that I've seen across the three volumes. Zombies are dangerous but it's always the living that are even more so and will prove to be the cause of their own downfall.

Like I said, I'd have serious reservations about recommending this series to anyone but maybe I'd suggest just reading volumes one and three. You have to go looking for the good stuff in these books but it is there, just waiting to be found. 'Night of the Living Dead' won't touch 'The Walking Dead' or 'Zombie World' for quality but those two volumes could prove to be an entertaining diversion in the meantime.