Wynter. Zombie Cadence. Art by Rudy Martinez. Art directed by Ave Rose. Book designed by Blaine Hays. Published by Ave Rose. LA, CA: InkPenMutations Press, 2006.
Reviewed by Vanessa Raney

Though Zombie Cadence is not a traditional comic (explained later), it raises useful questions about how we read art that is part of a story involving text. Some noted comics scholars like Thierry Groensteen privilege the image while disregarding the text as equally important when a comic includes both. Therefore, I wish to begin by telling you what story Rudy Martinez suggests with the images he created. The art follows every even page beginning on page 4, with the exception of page 26 which disrupts the flow of images with additional text.

First, a man appears cornered in an elevator while two black suited men are outside of the elevator (4). Then, a red eye-tainted person with one long white sleeved shirt looks in the car's mirror; you know it is a car because of the traffic (6). This same white-shirted man, now with red hair, leans over from the car in front of a house with red teeth exposed (8 ). Secondly, a black shadow cuts across a woman holding her breasts; it looks as if the shadow's holding a weapon. Then a blood-stained person's teeth holds a piece of flesh from the woman's right breast where she still has her hand (12). Thirdly, a white-shirted boy appears to be on the porch because of the street behind him, though there is no suggestion of threat in the scene; yet this depends on how you read the boy's facial expression given the previous contexts (14). The man from the car reappears again with an arm in his hand while the same white-shirted boy lays on the ground in blood; at this point, the shadow and the partial face connects to this particular zombie man, though it is unclear when he put on a jacket shirt (16). An old woman looks prepared to hit the zombie, who may have dropped the arm; his position on the ground and no signal of motion from the bat accounts for multiple interpretations (18 ). The man, however, now stands looking stronger, his features darkened; his left hand holds the woman above the street, blood flowing from her scalp (20). His shadow and that of what appears to be only her head stands in for them; the zombie's head, however, moves under the arm that a female zombie now holds in her left hand (22). The zombie man is now on the ground looking up while a crowd of zombies stand behind him (24). Fourthly, a woman lying almost completely down looks to be screaming; the only hint of threat is the diagonal position of the scene, which would be a standard interpretation if this were a movie (28 ). The source of her scream seems to be the zombie man as he bites into her right butt cheek (30). Finally, a black man shoots the zombie in the head, as indicated by the bullet hole; the only visible racial aspect of the man is his hand (32). With the black page, however, one may assume that it is a flyleaf (34).

If, however, you believe the above descriptions give away the story, you would only be partially correct; you need the text to know which aspects are true to the storyline. Specifically, with the info. I provided, you have already identified the wrong narrator, who is omniscient in the correct storyline but whose perspective overlaps with Cade's, the main character in Zombie Cadence. While the text is not the mark of a professional writer, Wynter offers an unusual angle on the subject of zombies. Without letting you in on the secret, allow me to quote from the omniscient narrator: "He [Cade] is but a witnessing conscience" (7).

In other threads on this forum, I have talked about the text as the story's formal context, and the image as the emotional context. Sometimes, though, the image misleads the reader/viewer. Zombie Cadence presents one example of why we cannot divorce the text from the image. Because of how the text and the images work together - even if the images are descriptive, which is true of many comics - one could qualify Zombie Cadence as a comic since there are two overlapping stories that depend on what the reader/viewer reads.

The object is to read the images against the text, but not everyone does; by ignoring the text, therefore, you build up a storyline that follows what I laid out previously, but which, as I mentioned, presents the wrong set-up for understanding what is happening, though it informs one specific aspect of the story's beginning and how the zombies continue in the town of anywhere where the story is set. We do not know how the zombies began, but we know one particular person's experience of what it is to be a zombie.

So, check it out! It is available for $5 directly from InkPenMutations Press (see http://www.inkpenmutations.com, then click on the kiss-lipped book link and scroll down until you see Zombie Cadence).

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