Story and Art: Josh Howard
Publisher: Viper Comics
I was excited! I got an e-mail from Jessie Garza (President of Viper Comics) that said Josh Howard’s Dead@17 had hit the stands. After work, I pushed the car through Atlanta’s rush hour to get to the comic shop. I snatched up the only copy they had left and raced to the car… to sit in traffic… (Yahweh loves Atlanta.)
When I made it home the first book on my list was Dead@17. I’d read the 8-page preview on www.ViperComics.com! Teenage girls, short haircuts and axes… that, THAT speaks to me!
Dead@17 is this little bit of horror genius. Take a pair of High School girls, best friends and constant companions: Nara and Hazy. They’re as real as when my girlfriend has a Coca-Cola with her cereal (That’s truth! You can’t make that up… TRUST ME!) The characters come across as THAT genuine. With their looks and names, it feels like I’m reading this book about girls I used to date in High School or College. I mean, it’s weird and really cool. Josh Howard can bring that kind of stroke to his work, that kind of connection to what he’s writing about!
Within a few pages of Josh Howard’s clean, cute art, Nara’s looks have completely disarmed me and put me in the wrong frame of mind for this story. I was thinking about ex-girlfriends and hanging out late, bagging groceries at Kroger for gas money, talking to anyone wearing a bra because I want to get them out of it and then a man with a knife kills Nara Leigh Kilday.
Just like that. It bowled me over. I’d read some of this on Viper’s site but it still got to me. The story goes at such odd angles that I couldn’t put the book down. I felt like he’d written off one of my favorite ex-girlfriends. I never wanted to see any of them hurt. And it was disturbing how I kept turning the pages.
Honestly, I feel it is like Kraven’s Last Hunt in the pages of Spider-Man fifteen years gone by, when Kraven kills Spidey in part one and you are left going, “Well, what tha Hell are ya going to do for the other five parts?” And then J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck blow you away!
One night, at the tender age of 17, Nara Leigh Kilday is murdered. What’s left after the funeral is Dead@17.
What can you do after your main character is dead? I was curious what Josh Howard would do with the rest of the comic, let alone the series. He didn’t fail to deliver.
If you get the chance, PLEASE check this out! I love this type of brilliance!
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