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Dead Heat
Book by Del Stone Jr., Scott Hampton, Dave Dorman
188 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 18, 2019
What a gas! Amazingly, it avoids every cliché of the genre, except—virtually by necessity—the post-apocalyptic setting. Even this, though, bears more in common with Stephen King's The Stand, where the chaos is fundamentally contained by a cosmic framework of good vs. evil, than with the random degradation of, say, The Walking Dead. The story digs away at concepts of purpose, humanity, free will, and cosmic horror, while being wall-to-wall action packed. It does so through the vehicle of its protagonist: a unique, intellectually fully functional but emotionally hollow zombie... who wields a razor-sharp meathook on a chain as his weapon of choice. Easily the best horror novel I've read this year.
July 17, 2008
One of the best zombie books ever. It's just a rocket ride with a tremendously interesting main character. Action galore.
February 8, 2024
Edit: I didn't say it before but I thought this book and its character Hitch was kind of ripping off Dead World (comic series) but turns out it might be set in the same world so... yeah lol.
The art is cool. There was some cool stuff in the book but it kinda starts to turn into some sci-fi thing and it loses me every once in a while and then it'll pick up again and then lose me again. Not really much to the "zombie" in this book. The zombies are more of a setting for the odd sci-fi stuff.
The art is cool. There was some cool stuff in the book but it kinda starts to turn into some sci-fi thing and it loses me every once in a while and then it'll pick up again and then lose me again. Not really much to the "zombie" in this book. The zombies are more of a setting for the odd sci-fi stuff.
March 11, 2025
Hitch is motorcycle-riding zombie who, for some reason, has retained more of his faculties and feelings than the other zombies. For one thing, he can operate a motorcycle, which definitely sets him apart. For another, he also has a psychic link with an ancient primordial force that guides him by giving him messages from the ether at strategic moments.
Hitch has a grudge against someone in Michigan, but fortunately he’s stolen a nuclear warhead that he plans to detonate there to get his revenge. To make it to the “Great Lakes State,” though, he has to defeat a neo-Nazi who walks around in something like the power loader from the “Aliens” franchise. Oh, the wannabe Hitler also has a death ray.
You can probably guess by now whether or not this is the kind of party you want to attend. It’s definitely inventive, but sometimes the author’s imagination seems to outrun his ability to execute what he’s seeing in his head. There are technical problems as well, chief among them occasional shifts in tense, and basic mistakes regarding homonyms; there are a lot of vehicles being parked in “hangers,” for instance.
The author Del Stone Jr. apparently comes out of a comic book background, where he provided text and artists did the images. His style seems better fit for that format than the novel, where the writer has to do all the lifting. Or at least most of it here, since in this instance Stone enlists the talents of artists Dave Dorman and Scott Hampton to help out.
“Dead Heat” might have really come together if it were a graphic novel with lots of storyboard style panels lain out on the pages. Instead we just get individual illustrations, scattered throughout the book at key moments. On the one hand, the pictures complement the words, but on the other, they remind one of a lost opportunity, and the disparity between one man’s way with words and other men’s way(s) with pictures.
Hitch has a grudge against someone in Michigan, but fortunately he’s stolen a nuclear warhead that he plans to detonate there to get his revenge. To make it to the “Great Lakes State,” though, he has to defeat a neo-Nazi who walks around in something like the power loader from the “Aliens” franchise. Oh, the wannabe Hitler also has a death ray.
You can probably guess by now whether or not this is the kind of party you want to attend. It’s definitely inventive, but sometimes the author’s imagination seems to outrun his ability to execute what he’s seeing in his head. There are technical problems as well, chief among them occasional shifts in tense, and basic mistakes regarding homonyms; there are a lot of vehicles being parked in “hangers,” for instance.
The author Del Stone Jr. apparently comes out of a comic book background, where he provided text and artists did the images. His style seems better fit for that format than the novel, where the writer has to do all the lifting. Or at least most of it here, since in this instance Stone enlists the talents of artists Dave Dorman and Scott Hampton to help out.
“Dead Heat” might have really come together if it were a graphic novel with lots of storyboard style panels lain out on the pages. Instead we just get individual illustrations, scattered throughout the book at key moments. On the one hand, the pictures complement the words, but on the other, they remind one of a lost opportunity, and the disparity between one man’s way with words and other men’s way(s) with pictures.
October 29, 2024
Wow! I enjoyed this story. It was hard to put down and kept me up way past my bedtime. For me it was thought provoking.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews