Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of the Dead - a DC Comics mini-series

I've been a comic book fan since ... well, I'm not going to say the year, but I will say that my first comic that I purchased off the spinner rack at a convenience store while on vacation in Florida was Super Friends no. 28 (I'll let you figure it out).  From that first comic book, I was hooked.  I had a hunger for more, so I started buying pretty much anything on the racks - from super hero to horror ... from 48-page dollar comics to regular sized 40 cent comics ... from new series hitting the stands to series that had been around since the 1940s.  But in all this time, the one genre of comics that has never really interested me is war comics.  I never bought DC's G.I. Combat or the Unknown Soldier or Marvel's Howling Commandos series.  They were just comics that I never had any desire to read.

Now, that being said, flash forward to 2022.  By now, I have been a long-time fan of horror movies, and I enjoyed Bruce Campbell in the first Evil Dead movie.  The second movie was alright, but felt like nothing more than a rehash of the first film.  The third film?  Well, the less said about that, the better.  But when I heard that Bruce Campbell was going to write a DC comic starring Sgt. Rock, where he and his "Easy Company" battled an army of the living dead, well, I figured I'd give it a try.  After all, with a title like Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of the Dead, there was bound to be some great horror tropes involved, right?

As is the case with most mini-series now, I purchase all of the issues, then I sit down and read the entire story (so that I'm not waiting month after month just to get the next chapter - yes, I know I could wait and buy the trade paperback collected edition, but I prefer the single issues).  Since the sixth and final issue of this mini-series came out not long ago, I had the opportunity to sit down and read the story.  I was expecting some violent and bloody battles (I mean, this is war and all, right?), and Campbell did not disappoint.  What he did disappoint on, however, was the story itself.

I am somewhat familiar with Sgt. Rock and the Easy Company, as they have made some appearances in comics I have read over the years (Brave and the Bold, Crisis on Infinite Earths, the DC Holiday specials, etc.).  But I have never really gotten to know any of the characters, per se, and so I thought with this mini-series, there might be some character development that would give me an idea of who the members of the Easy Company were.  Well, that is far from the case.  In fact, not even Sgt. Rock himself gets any character development in this story.  From the first page of the first issue to the last page of the sixth issue, I did not get to know any of the Easy Company - in fact, I honestly could not tell you any of their names or what their personalities may be like.  I only know that Sgt. Rock himself was willing to sacrifice himself at the end in order to put a stop to Hitler's army of the dead.

Honestly, I tried to like the story.  I really did.  But with each issue, I became less and less invested in the tale, and by the sixth issue, I was simply reading it to get to the end of the story.  For example, the first issue has 22 pages of story and art - yet, it feels like there is only  few moments of actual story.  The reader is introduced to Dr. Morell, who is heading up the "Regeneration Plan" for Hitler ... we see a zombie attack at night ... Sgt. Rock and his Easy Company get charged with the mission of stopping Dr. Morell ... and a zombie awakens at the end, prepared to fight for Hitler's army.  All of this could have happened in the span of ten pages or less.  From that point forward, the remaining five issues are nothing more than fighting zombies page after page, panel after panel.  The reader does not connect with or get any real information on the characters themselves, and even Dr. Morell feels like a cardboard stereotype doctor who, when he is killed, gives the reader no sense of satisfaction.  Even Hitler's desire to be made stronger and for the doctor to accelerate the doses of serum feels stereotypical.

The art is not bad, in and of itself, but the coloring makes it difficult to read.  The constant dark blue, black, dark purple, and dark green hues tend to distract from any definition of characters and backgrounds in each panel - while I understand the coloring was likely to reflect the night scenes of the battles, it did not do any justice to Eduardo Risso's art.  And with this being a DC Horror comic (which, I'm guessing, is akin to the new Black Label line of comics), I had assumed there would be more graphic kills - but, instead, many of the zombie kills are subdued by the constant dark coloring of the panels

If you like pointless battles with absolutely no characterization and very little plot, then this comic is for you.  And, hey, I won't knock you for it - I mean, after all, everyone has their own tastes in storytelling, and what one person enjoys, another does not.  This comic was definitely not for me.  The only really good thing I can say about this series are the covers - Gary Frank's covers are beautifully rendered - if the interior colors had been as vibrant as those on the covers, I may have had a little more interest in the story.

Oh, well, as the saying goes, you win some, you lose some.  At $3.99 an issue for six issues, I definitely lost some this time around.

RATING:  2 appointments with the grim reaper out of 10 simply for pitting Sgt. Rock and his team against an entirely different kind of enemy to battle on the warfront.