We’re stepping into Halloween tomorrow, and while some companies are just turning on their spooky content for this month, DC Comics and Tom Taylor have been bringing us some of the best horror writing in the genre with the DCeased mini-series since May. Now, this six-issue series is wrapping up with DCeased #6, written by Taylor, with pencils from Trevor Hairsine (pages 1-7, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18-25, 28-36) and Neil Edwards (pages 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 26, 27), plus inks from Stefano Guadiano, colors by Rain Beredo, and letters by Said Temofonte.
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Last issue, we saw the Man of Steel, the last hope for the survivors of the anti-life virus, succumb to the virus when he is forced to kill the Flash by making an unstoppable force meet a moving object. Pulling a scene from The Boys, Superman ended up with wounds caused by the Flash’s bones and even though his Kryptonian healing helped slow the turn, he was too late to fly into the sun. Stopping to say goodbye to his son and Louis, he may have doomed them all. It’s in this fearful moment when the final shoe drops that we finally learn who the series’ narrator is: Louis Lane.
Now, in DCeased #6, Superman is an unstoppable force of death, destroying the last remnants of the world. With only a Hail Mary play to save them, the remaining Justice League constructs a plan to stop him, or at the very least, buy the survivors time to flee on the Arks. Thanks to Batman, the remaining team member have Kryptonite and one last shot to survive.
DCeased #6 has a few surprises before we get to see Jon face off against the zombie of his father. Its strength is in Taylor’s writing – the emotion he fills Lois’s narration with and the love with which he has brought each character to life before brutally killing the on his pages. Additionally, there is beauty in DCeased #6 that comes from the narration used to accentuate the scenes and move the story through emotion and not through oversaturated exposition, a balance that is hard to strike.
By wrapping the words from the beginning of the series to the end of it, allowing us to see Lois’s true meaning, was a stellar choice and one that deepens the blows that Taylor lands this issue. DCeased #6 not only closes a graphic story of violence and hopelessness, but it ultimately continues to rip out the hearts of fans. While it looks like our heroes will win and that those we love will survive, Taylor subverts our expectations. There is no happy ending, even for those who survived.
The art from Hairsine, Edwards, and Guadino is beautifully somber while also being filled with the bloody horror that DCeased has perfected across six issues. When paired with Taylor’s narration, DCeased #6 is a powerful ending to a series that has brought fans’ emotions to peaks and lows.
The series has given us beautiful moments like Dinah becoming Earth’s Green Lantern, but it’s also shown us Alfred having to kill his son after a painful goodbye to Damian. There is a lot of meat in a story that also brings such detailed moments of dismemberment and gore. DCeased is why I love horror.
DCeased #6 is available where comics are sold.
DCeased #6
TL;DR
The art from Hairsine, Edwards, and Guadino is beautifully somber while also being filled with the bloody horror that DCeased has perfected across six issues. When paired with Taylor’s narration, DCeased #6 is a powerful ending to a series that has brought fans’ emotions to peaks and lows.
