REVIEW: ‘DCeased Unkillables,’ #2 (of 3)

DCeased: Unkillables #2 from DC Comics’ Black Label continues to build out Tom Taylor’s vision that he began last year. Written by Taylor, Unkillables #2 has pencils from Karl Mostert, inks by Trevor Scott, Neil Edwards, and Mostert, with colors by Rex Lokus, and letters by Saida Tomofonte. Where Unkillables #1 focused on building out two stories, with one centering on Red Hood and the other on Deathstroke, Unkillables #2 brings the two of them together.

Last issue, Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain, and Jim Gordon made their way from Gotham to a school where they began to look over a group of orphans. On the other side of things, Slade Wilson rescued his daughter and ended up being called to Vandal Savage’s hideout to become a part of his Unkillables, a team of supervillains either impervious to the virus or who just escaped it.

Unkillables #2 picks up three weeks after the first issue with the group of orphans – Jason and Cassandra included – forming their own family and debating how to take care of the zombies locked in a room. Vandal’s Unkillables are going a little stir crazy and when Lady Shiva reaches out to her daughter, Cassandra, at the school and attempts to bring her to the secret hide-out. Instead, she ends up connecting the Unkillables team to the remnants of the Batfamily instead as the virus finds the island.

Taylor’s story is still good. He’s able to build in small moments that tether Unkillables #2 to the larger world of DCeased with Lois Lane’s voice on a radio or an infected hero bursting through a wall. Additionally, the story in this issue seems to be focusing on what is built from remnants and how people push past both loss and expectations. But sadly, Taylor’s strong story is let down by the extremely uneven and frustrating art and colors.

Faces look like pruned fingers, regardless of age, distorting my understanding of who is who. Additionally, the way that the bodies are illustrated looks as if Mostert has only one model in his mind when penciling these characters. Cassandra looks like Jason, and when Cassandra and her mother are in one panel together, their clothes are their only distinguishing features. The team is trying to nail a pulp quality but it just doesn’t work and that may be because of how clean and bright Lokus’s colors are. There are some panels where the shadows overwhelm the character art as well and it makes them even more unrecognizable. Cassandra’s five o’clock shadow is a prime example in the page above.

With only one issue left in this mini-series, I’m not looking forward to the close of this story and I’m honestly unsure how Taylor will close this out. Overall, I want to like this series and Unkillables #2 so much more than I do. Taylor’s writing is great, but I can’t get over the rushed and disparate art and colors. The bright spot is that Tomefonte’s lettering is great, although the coloring on the credit page makes it almost impossible to read — a problem that carries over from DCeased. I’m looking to Taylor’s story to keep me engaged, but the art may make me tap out.

DCeased: Unkillables #2 is available wherever comics are sold.