Dead@17: Protectorate

    (Viper, 2005)
™ and ©2005 Josh Howard

There’s no letterer credited for Dead@17: Protectorate, which is a shame, because someone devised a wonderful trick; when the fallen angels who have lost the war in Heaven are cast into Hell, the dialogue is in English with gray angelic script in the background. It’s an innovative way of doing a translation, and one not-always achievable, though it certainly works here.

The book spends its first half dozen pages leaping around locales and times, but settles in Darlington Hills, 1945. There, we meet Grace True and her father, a pastor dabbling in arcane research that uncovers the Book of Balabogg. Zombies and demons overrun their home, and Grace is saved by the presumably newly-formed Protectorate. Mind you, the book does open with Grace being shot, so it could be a brief respite, though we know that for the chosen girls of Dead@17, death is only the beginning.

Alex Hamby scripts a better-than-your-average book about a girl in a negligee being chased by monsters, and Benjamin Hall has a sort of animated Art Adams style of drawing, with nice, idiosyncratic colors by Marlena Hall.

— Brendan McGinley
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#1

October, 2005
Cover Price: $2.95
3 copies available from $2.98 		Alex HambyBenjamin Hall
#2

November, 2005
Cover Price: $2.95
3 copies available from $2.98 		Alex HambyBenjamin Hall
#3

December, 2005
Cover Price: $2.95
3 copies available from $2.98 		Alex HambyBenjamin Hall