SURVIVAL comics

(for those intertsed, our next story is "A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiber - the show's page is here - http://freakytrigger.co.uk/slugoftime )

I've been curious about reading it, but have not checked it out yet called Wasteland that seems to be about this situation. It is set 300 years after 'the big wet' that wipes out civilization. It kind of looks like a comic somewhere between a spaghetti western Mad Max and JG Ballard's "The Drought". I thumbed through the latest issue and had my local shop order the first trade for me a couple of days ago.

I think someone could do a wicked comic about colonizing Mars that could play off survival in an extreme environment. Then again, I wish someone like Warren Ellis would break down and do a good long series based on colonizing the solar system.

Oni Press has a free preview of Wasteland, which seems to fit the bill. It didn't grab me.

xpost

I think "The Walking Dead" is Exhibit A here.

Peter Bagge's "Apocalypse Nerd"

Oh, that's a good one!

Also, there's a lot of DC stuff around the Great Disaster mythology--most of it was going to be reprinted in that Showcase "Great Disaster" volume that got axed last year. KAMANDI, most obviously, but also to some extent the "Atomic Knights" stories (which are more about rebuilding the world post-apocalypse), "The Day After Doomsday" stories, etc.

Rocketo!

LAST AMERICAN by Wagner/Grant/McMahon (Epic/Marvel mini-series - Wagner/McMahon/Bolland's 'Cursed Earth' Judge Dredd serial in 2000AD is also pretty much a post-apocalyptic survival yarn)

the JEREMIAH series by Belgian comics great Hermann Huppen (couple of the early volumes translated by Fantagraphics in the 1980s, pretty tough to get now)

DOOMSDAY +1 by Joe Gill and John Byrne (1970s Charlton comic, has never been reprinted far as I know)

DRAGON HEAD, perhaps. Though I lost patience with it in short order.

I'd recommend KAMANDI, but I'd probably get a (deserved) flogging.

Oddly enough, I lost patience with WALKING DEAD as well. Maybe I'm not cut out for that particular set of tropes. Or maybe I just don't think they're done particularly well.

I was almost about to say Y The Last Man, but I suppose it's a lot more of an action movie blockbuster kind of plot where the guy is trying to avoid being assassinated more than just trying to get food and shelter.

I kind of agree about Walking Dead, though I did enjoy it at first. After a few volumes it's like... okay, we get it, they're going to put these stock characters through as many of these situations as possible to survive and it's not ever going to work out. Though if there are some really original concepts coming in after Book 3 or 4, someone say so. Maybe it's just zombie overload in all media in the last few years.

Does anyone remember "Disaster 1990" in 2000AD?

Vaughan Bode & Norbert Bode's Cobalt 60 was an engagingly cartoony post-apocalypse thing that appeared mainly in Marvel's Epic Illustrated magazine, though maybe it was so long after the apocalypse that it does not really count.

The Crunch (a long forgotten DC Thompson title) had a strip about people trying to cross the USA after a plague had wiped out most people there and turned the rest into crazies. It was oddly reminiscent of The Cursed Earth (which was all a bit like Damnation Alley, obv.).