Graveslinger

Frank Timmons had been the undertaker of Gila Flats Territorial Prison for a good many years. It was his job to bury every prisoner who died there, whether by hanging or natural means. The last man he buried was EL Brujo, a Mexican that some had called a witch man. By the time he had hung, he had become the richest man in the prison.

While preparing the body for burial, Timmons cuts an emblem in the old man’s chest out with a knife and then performed the last rights. A bolt of lightning from the very Heavens hit him at that moment, not killing him, but sending him off to bed with a serious drunk.

When Timmons awoke the next morning, everything had changed.

All 117 men he had buried over the years had dug their way out of their graves, zombies now, and attacked the town, eating many of the people as they were dying, then escaping into the night. The prison they left alone.

They had just escaped from Hell. Why would they want to return to their former Hell?

Their last victims had been Timmons’ fiance.

Satan was angry. Not only had he lost 117 souls, but everyone they slaughtered on their rampage, he would be denied forever a chance at THEIR souls.

Timmons was given a choice. He could save his fiance’s soul by tracking down and killing those 117 once more. Ordinary guns wouldn’t kill them. Only Timmons’ weapons worked on the zombies. Though ordinary appearing, they would kill his intended targets AND never need reloading.

His palm, where he’d held the piece of flesh cut from El Brujo’s chest, now tingles any time he gets in the vicinity of one of the zombies.

This graphic novel collects the first four issues of the Graveslinger comic. The story is by writers Shannon Eric Denton and Jeff Mariotte with the artwork by John Cboins and Nima Sorat. It combines two favorites: zombies and the old west.

In this tale, Timmons gets involved with a young rancher who’s in the middle of a range war with a big cattle rancher. His wife and daughter have been taken by Bart Bevard and his gang, among the last ones Timmons buried at the prison, and the man who had put a curse on the prison undertaker with his dying breath. He has to rescue them from a grisly fate and help the young man with his other problem.

I liked this one and, in addition to the four issues, a number of full page illustrations are added with wonderful artwork. Here is a link that will take you to a Myspace page loaded with information and artwork about the character.

~ by randy Johnson on Friday, March 20. 09.