51dPJkYpD7L._SL160_Ever since I read Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND back in middle school, I immediately saw the potential written prose had, as oppose to cinema, for conveying a great zombie story. A story that was not only affective pop horror but intelligent and thought provoking as well.

I already feel many of you about to pounce; “I AM LEGEND wasn’t about zombies! I AM LEGEND was about vampires! Rabble, rabble, rabble!” Little pop-culture lesson for you. Zombies, as you know them today, have little to nothing to do with their like-named voodoo predecessor. The zombie, as redefined by the great George Romero, based in the work of Matheson, is strongly rooted in vampire lore. Each are undead, each feed on the living, each die only (usually) after trauma to a major organ, each turn others into horrid abominations such as themselves via inflicted bite. Simpley because I AM LEGEND never uses the term zombie doesn’t mean it negates to closely adhere to the subgenre (I’m sure you can all already see that The More You Know shooting across your computer monitor).

THE DEAD, originally published by Ace back in 1989, recently reissued under Permuted Press (a publishing house that specializes in zombie/apocalypse tales), is the latest writing venture by author Mark E. Rogers. Rogers, probably best known for his SAMURAI CAT series, not only wrote but illustrated the 36 pictures that accompany the novel and its narrative.

The story kicks off with Gary Holland, undetermined agnostic and university English professor, distraught by a dream of his father’s funeral (a dream wherein, the corpse of his dead father breaks free of its bronze coffin enclosure and tries to kill him). Gary wakes from his dream to the sound of his phone ringing. At the other end, his mother with the disturbingly coincidental news that his father had, in fact, passed away.

Gary, along with wife Linda, heads down to the jersey shore community of Bayside Point to attend the funeral. Alongside quick witted, if at times delightfully rude, older brother Max; Gary, Linda, and a slew of additional absorbing and diverse characters find themselves confronted by a series of strange phenomena. Passenger airplanes crash from the skies, cars fail to function properly, people worldwide turn-up missing; all following a collective dream on Last Judgment and culminating in the dead rising from their graves, reanimated by demonic forces from Hell.

As I began thumbing my way through the first couple chapters, I have to admit, I wasn’t all that enthralled. For starters, it opens with a dream sequence, I hate dream sequences. There usually nothing more than a cheap gimmick and a waste of time. I became all the more hesitant when, early on in the book, the undead uprising is preceded by a rapturesque vanishing of God’s chosen few, leaving the rest of the world to fall to damnation. I half-suspected that the Fango staff slipped me one of those Christian/Evangelical propaganda books like LEFT BEHIND or TRIBULATION FORCE as a joke. You know the ones. They later get adapted into marginally budgeted, straight to video, feature films starring Kirk Cameron of GROWING PAINS fame. Thankfully, as I continued to read on, I realized that Mark E. Rogers’ THE DEAD was nothing of the sort. I realized that all of my initial misguided gripes with the material were mere weavings in an elaborate narrative fabric that would ultimately payoff as the story progressed.

This is more than just another zombie story, but rather, a tale of apocalyptic religious mythology that, in my opinion, rivals that of THE STAND by Stephen King. With THE DEAD, Mark E. Rogers delivers a genuinely original story that manages to be, in turn, engaging, intelligent, funny, and brutal, whilst building tension all the way through. From the first zombie attack that you’re exposed to alongside character Duncan Grady, horrorstruck at the eye of his telescope, to the novels riveting climax, you will not want to put this book down.

THE DEAD is, without question, not only among the best zombie stories I’ve read in recent years but among the best horror fiction I’ve read in recent years. Aided by Rogers’ rather powerful illustrations, this commanding novel is a must read for any and all fans of the genre. Your only excuse for not reading THE DEAD is if you’re already among the dead yourself.