Baltimore Comic-Con Spotlight 2013: FUBAR Press

The FUBAR booth really attracts attention.

Welcome to another 2013 Baltimore Comic-Con Spotlight entries. Over the course of this week, I will be highlighting creators and publishers who will be at another of my favorite conventions, the Baltimore Comic-Con. You can check out all of my spotlights for the Baltimore Comic-Con from both this year and prior years here.

"Oh Great," you think as you look at the incredibly elaborate booth set up in the Baltimore Comic-Con Artist Alley, "another group of people trying to sell me a zombie comic. Pull the other leg, pal, it detaches and festers in your hands."

Trust me, that would have been my reaction, too. Zombies replaced Pirates as "The Thing" at comics shows and it seems like they're hanging around everywhere, not unlike the supposedly real horror itself. The fact is, a lot of zombie stories suck. They don't tread any new ground, are often illustrated poorly (using the excuse that the characters are a wreck, so they don't have to look good), and just cause me to roll my eyes.

FUBAR, however, was a bit different. I had a friend, Rafer Roberts, working with them, so I was willing to at least take a look and see what I thought.

Turns out, sometimes there's new ground to tread in the world of zombies after all.

What makes FUBAR different is that they pick a solid theme (WW2 Western and Eastern Theatres, as well as early American History) and ask all of the creators involved to write/draw stories that fit that theme. You can't just toss mindless bloodsuckers at a group of plucky people when you work like this. In order to pass the muster roll, you have to think about how zombies might fit into the world of that time. So in the case of the WW2 Eastern Theatre (review here), zombies are Kamakazis or part of the experiments the Japanese performed on their hapless prisoners.

Sure, not every story is quite as strongly themed as that, and as with any anthology the quality varies, but overall, this is a great way to show that you can do a good zombie story that stand out among the glut of them on the market. That's why I highlight these guys every year. If you have any stomach at all for zombie comics, at least give them a look. You might just find like me that sometimes it's worth giving a second look to a concept you'd normally dismiss out of hand.

Gonna be AWOL at Baltimore Comic-Con? Then have a look at FUBAR's website, which has a link to their store.