Zombies again. We remember, the thesis was that we find something better than death everywhere, or something better than "The Walking Dead", Robert Kirkman's drunken TV and comic endless loop. In three episodes we have already found better, German quality products, and even in episode four you will not be disappointed, although - this time it is more complicated.

We are in the trash area, the series is correspondingly striking "zombie terror". Volume 6 has just been released, with the beautiful subtitle "Emperor Dennis goes crazy!" Now you probably want to know who Kaiser Dennis is, and as a decent journalist, I'd rather just answer something else: namely, what's up with the responsible publisher tinplate comics from Schönwalde.

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Levin Kurio:
Zombie Terror 6

Emperor Dennis goes crazy!

Tinplate comics; 36 pages; 4,90 Euro.

He has earned merit just recently with the new edition of the "sick comics", but the real core business of the house are in-house productions, in the truest sense of the word. About 85 percent of them are drawn and developed by Levin Kurio, the publisher. They are called "Horror Shocker", "Captain Berlin", "Kala, the primeval world Amazon" or "Worlds of Terror".

The lettering swirls with letters of wavy lines, bloody dripping, the cover adorn skulls or maggots in eye sockets, and it is full of headlines like "Caught in a world of the undead!" or "52 pages of undead horrors!" That sounds like old 70s comics, like "ghost stories," like "Buffalo Bill chasing the death gang!", And it sounds like tracks from the station cinema. That's it too, because Kurio does not like the term "Trash", he prefers "B-Movies".

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Zombie Comics: Levin Kurios Comic B Movies

This is justified: Benevolent ridicule about the silliness of the comics of his youth is only part of the curious ingredients. At least as important is obviously always the yearning of the 41-year-old for the fascination of earlier - and thus the knowledge that the crap of yore also must have had qualities.

These qualities can now be found in his own work. For more than 25 years, Kurio has taken care of all these ranks himself, delivering new and reliable material on a regular and reliable basis, also necessarily because the station book trade constantly demands new things. With this output, it is almost inevitable that he also come ideas that are too bad for Verulken. This is the most noticeable in zombies.

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Levin Kurio:
Zombie Terror 5

Tinplate comics; 36 pages; 4,90 Euro.

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Unlike the other series, they do not tell individual episodes, but an ongoing story. Of the parody is actually only the cover design left, and that Kurio with readable joy a group of Reich citizens as a brand new villains. Otherwise, however, there are more and more elements that are made good handcrafted.

For example, if an adventure does not start with the lead actor, but with a foraging rat. That the weathered hero of the story does not collect the usual extras, but a helpless, because blind blonde (in the Kurio also waived the otherwise absurdly plump breasts).

For the neglected parody department Kurio then rather a new series from the ground stomped: "Zombieman", the "Avenger of the living dead", which beats a "Z" on the chest of a sheriff, the "Walking Dead" - Heroes Rick Grimes looks suspiciously similar.

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Levin Kurio:
Zombie Man 1

The Avenger of the Living Dead

Tinplate comics; 36 pages; 4,90 Euro.

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The result is an amazingly experienced and professionally working bag of wonders. Sure, some ideas are banal, but not more trivial than in the comics of yesteryear. There are some pretty clever things about that, and the drawings are no different. Kurio is not a talented century, but a diligent worker and ambitious improver. The Ungelenke, reminiscent of early Marvel notebooks and was well suited for the parody, is constantly retreating. Meanwhile, some panels have almost something Robert Crumb-sticking, some pages, such as the rainy second chapter of "Zombieman", are almost too perfect.

Then things get complicated: The better Kurio gets, the more he gets into the warren with the romantic-nostalgic cheap charm that makes the whole project so unique. Especially when you open up the old "ghost stories", you will often find a drawing style behind the elaborate cover, which is scarier than the actual story - so one should not be too good. How Kurio solves the contradiction promises at least as much tension as the zombie stories themselves. Strange? But that's the way it is written.