(Berserker)

Belfast comics label Berserker has managed to secure three of Britain’s major talents – writer Alan Grant, artist Simon Bisley and Glenn Fabry for covers – for their first title with the first four issues of The Dead collected in this new trade paperback. Unsurprisingly, this is a zombie story with our protagonists holed up in a fire station in Oxford as the undead amass around them in a fairly generic apocalyptic scenario, but Grant packs in enough personality and action to keep interest high.

The art is particularly striking: as you’d expect from Bisley this is pretty graphic stuff with limbs, guts and gore filling the panels as zombies eviscerate our heroes. Bisley has always been at his best when depicting wholesale violence and The Dead really plays to his strengths. Fun, fast-paced and with an open ending which leaves you hungry for more.