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Spoiler Warning for DCeased: Dead Planet #6
Being a sub-genre of horror, zombie fiction is typically anything but optimistic. This almost nihilistic darkness can best be seen in the original Marvel Zombies series, where hope is dead, and the few humans left are far from heroes. Fittingly, DC’s zombie series stands in stark contrast. DCeased might be full of tragedy, but the main theme is hope, and that hope even extends to the fate of the infected themselves. In DCeased: Dead Planet #6 the Justice League is out to save the undead from mass extermination.
Writer Tom Taylor and artist Trevor Hairsine have been building up to a cure for the Anti-Life equation fueled plague ever since the first DCeased series. After the new Justice League discovered that the Anti-Life Equation’s opposite, the Life Equation, laid within Cyborg, the heroes scrambled to get it out of him. This proved no easy task, as the heroes had to steal Metron’s all-knowing chair in order for Cyborg to access the equation buried deep in his coding. With a god’s power, Cyborg unlocks his coding and cracks the Life Equation. Nine of the DC Universe’s greatest doctors and thinkers then link their minds to turn the equation into a cure. Just having the cure is only the beginning though.
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Tensions run high among the assembled heroes as Green Canary and Mister Miracle argue over which of their loved ones should be the first to receive the cure. Eventually, the group decides that Mister Miracle’s wife is the best candidate, so a group of heroes travels to her prison on an alien moon. When they arrive though, they discover Barda, the strongest New God, has broken her chains. In a fury, the infected Barda tackles her husband. Superman quickly delivers the serum as Barda prepares to feast. Though it takes a moment, Barda comes out of her stupor and recognizes her husband, proving the cure works. Unfortunately, they have no way of knowing that the world’s surviving villains have a much different plan for dealing with the Anti-Life plague. As Mister Miracle and Big Barda celebrate the plague’s cure, an army of Amazo robots is unleashed on the undead horde, meaning that if the Justice League wants to save the earth, first they’ll have to save the undead.
One of the reasons DCeased has been so fun is how original it is. People have been burnt out on zombies for almost a decade now, and with the genre constantly recycling similar plot points, it’s easy to see why. The search for a cure is often an important element of zombie fiction, but too often those plot lines go nowhere. Too much of zombie fiction is about giving characters an excuse to kill hordes of people without any guilt, just as the villains of DCeased do. If a cure is legitimately possible, then readers would have to question the ethics of their zombie-killing protagonists. The fact that the heroes have to save the undead is such an interesting reversal of typical zombie fiction. It all illustrates the clearest difference between DCeased and Marvel Zombies.
This latest twist makes it apparent that DCeased is a story about the power of hope. In a different series, Dinah saving her zombie husband would have doomed the survivors, instead, her hope is rewarded. Though the series has covered familiar ground, DCeased: Dead Planet #6 proves there may still be life for the undead.
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