Advance Review: Memories Of The Past Pervade ‘Everything Dead & Dying’ #4
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
One of the best series of the year reaches its next-to-last issue in style. With equally strong scripting and visuals, this story of a man trying to hold onto the past in the middle of a zombie apocalypse is equal parts touching and terrifying. It’s an absolute must-read.
Overall
9.5/10Memories are funny things.
Be they happy remembrances or rueful ones – or both simultaneously – these memories can pop up at the most unexpected times. For example, during a zombie apocalypse.
Everything Dead & Dying, one of the best series of 2025, has relied on memories of a different, simpler time throughout its run. But those recollections take an even more important role in this penultimate issue.
Jack Chandler has built his entire life – or what passes for it in the story’s end days – around his memories of better times. Despite everyone he knows and loves having turned into the undead, Jack has rebuilt his old life by keeping the zombie well fed. Instead of trying to eat him, their muscle memory kicks in and the monsters resume their normal pre-undead life.
Under writer Tate Brombal’s pen, when a group of outsiders stumble upon Jack’s town of Caverton, they view the zombies, as well as Jack, as a threat. But even as he’s tied up and facing his own death, Jack has flashbacks. He remembers the good times and the bad – getting beaten up as a child because he’s gay as well as his husband and daughter.
Brombal crafts a complicated, adult story that feels at once familiar and entirely novel. He manages to turn the tired zombie story into a compelling tale of what it means to be human.
Artist Jacob Phillips shows off his own talents by moving fairly effortlessly between the past and present. His linework depicting the past is cleaner and clearer, while he takes a more muddled approach to the apocalyptic here and now. Everyone is dirty and bloody in the present, whereas the past was smoother, as if being viewed through rose-colored glasses.
With only one issue left in this limited series, there are plenty of loose ends for the creative team to tie up. It’s hard to imagine that things will end well for any of the characters. But at least they’ll have their memories of better days.
Everything Dead & Dying #4 will be available in comic book shops and on digital platforms Wednesday from Image Comics.
