Since we just concluded a nightmare sequence, I might as well mention a relevant high-school-era reference that’s stuck with me for the rest of my life. Back in the mid-80s, I caught the quite frankly awful—but inadvertently entertaining!—Italian horror flick City of the Walking Dead in the theater because, as a teenager, I would apparently watch any g-d piece of celluloid crap that happened to limp its way into the multiplex. (Hence my otherwise inexplicable decision to voluntarily subject myself to obvious cinematic atrocities such as  Mannequin, Ghoulies, School Spirit, The Pickup Artist, Iron Eagle 2 and Starchaser: The Legend of Orin.) 

Anyhoo, City kicks off with an airfield scene of zombie-like critters bursting out of a mysterious, just-landed military transport plane, unleashing the undead(-ish) apocalypse that rampages unchecked throughout the rest of the movie. Ah, but at the end of the flick, as our not-very-well-dubbed hero faces certain death, he wakes up with a gasp, realizing that It Was Only A Dream! Whew! Ah, but then cut to a familiar airfield, where an unmarked military plane once again lands, and the zombie(-ish) horde bursts forth once more! Oh, no! Freeze-frame, with the text of the following declaration dropped in over the image, and henceforth burned permanently into my memory: “THE NIGHTMARE BECOMES REALITY.” This phrase has been inextricably lodged in my brain ever since; note how usefully it can be applied to almost any imaginable context!

Side note: Per Wikipedia, the horror flick I mentioned was earlier titled Nightmare City, or Incubo Sulla Cittá Contaminata, but was renamed for its American release. However, City of the Walking Dead turns out to be a bit of a misnomer, as the zombies—well, radiation-spawned monsters, technically—burst outta that plane as the Running, Sprinting, Leaping Commando Dead, which was a refreshing—and literal!—change of pace. These fleet beasties predate even the high-speed zombies of 1985’s Return of the Living Dead, let alone the rage monsters of the much later 28 Days Later.

While I quite like the shot of hollow-eyed Thugboy in panel 5, I am considerably less fond of the Excessively Big and Pouty Lips sported by Emp on this page. Not a good look, and one I eventually eschewed later on in the series; but, I warn you, the occasional Soupcoolers Grandes will recur throughout the next few volumes. My apologies in advance.

-Adam Warren