Everything Dead & Dying #2: Trapped in the Past

Zombie outbreak stories are usually about avoiding and/or killing zombies. Everything Dead & Dying #2 charts a course as far from that idea as possible. It obsesses over what was lost, with main character Jack being unable to move on from the life he knew.

Everything Dead & Dying #2 focuses on Jack’s husband, both in the past and present. Jack doesn’t see his husband as he is now. Instead, Jack is tethered to their shared past–how he and Luke met, their shared time together, and how Jack and Luke almost broke up. Jack is frozen in certain moments in time, emphasized by intercutting between the standoff in the present and certain moments in the past. The confrontation between Jack and the newcomers heightens the emotion in the issue. It was one thing in the first issue to see Jack maintaining a status quo. But here he fights for it. Having gotten the life he wanted, Jack is unwilling to let it go even in these horrific circumstances. His undead and potentially lethal husband matters more to Jack than living people who might endanger him.

Thanks to the emotional nature of the story, Brombal is able to go against the reader’s expectations and make the characters who kill zombies into the bad guys in this situation. While the undead Luke isn’t necessarily sympathetic, it’s hard not to see this as a tragic situation for Jack.

Present day Jack is crazed through all of Everything Dead & Dying #2. He’s wide-eyed at times and other times shouting. Phillips captures his agitation quite well, especially in closeups where his eyes are most visible. Combined with his somewhat unkept hair and stubble, Jack comes across as very unreasonable in the situation despite how tragic Brombal makes his circumstances out to be.

This contrasts heavily with how Phillips draws Jack in the past. He is more reserved by comparison. Lines establishing his facial features and conveying his emotions are cleaner. In the present day those lines are rougher giving Jack a more rugged, worn look. He feels beat down by age and experiences which only heightens his unreasonable visual quality.

Martin’s color choices keep the same contrasts going as was established in the first issue. The inside of Jack’s house is gray and black, devoid of almost all color. It feels like a dead, empty space. The characters’ appearance plays into this as well. Jack and his “family” wear dark colored clothes, drained of color and generally looking the same as the house’s interior. Life seems to invade the house in the form of the clothing on two of the newcomers who follow Jack inside. Their shirts, green on one and pink on the other, are much brighter than their surroundings. These characters come across as vibrant and alive compared to Jack.

Further reinforcing the deadness of the house are the color choices made for the past sequences in Everything Dead & Dying #2. They’re mainly soft and warm with heavy use of lighter pinks and oranges. A once loving home is devoid of that love in the present despite what Jack thinks he is doing. The exterior present day sequences are colorful but lack the warmth of the past. Martin is almost suggesting that it is preferable to be trapped in the past like Jack is–unable to move forward. Certainly it explains why Jack finds the past so inviting.

Contributing to the idealized past is how Bidikar handles the dialogue bubbles. Unlike the present day sequences, Bidikar doesn’t outline the bubbles with black lines. Instead, the bubbles are just white fields among the colors on the page. In that way, the dialogue is just as soft and warm as everything else is in this idealized past.