Only the Savage Are Left #3
Writer: Zack Kaplan
Artist: Stefano Raffaele
Colorist: Thiago Rocha
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Here's a question for you:
It's effectively the end of the world. You've done everything that you can to hold on to your values and not let yourself become a monster.
If you suddenly found yourself with three days left to live, would that change things?
Minutes to Midnight
Ryder and Fionn's attempt to sneak into the base of the men holding Oaklynn… didn't go well. Not only did they let a horde of infected out of a locked building, but both men got bitten. So now they have three days to burn an infected body and inhale the smoke, or it's all over for them.
Actually, Oaklynn has that same ticking clock now. She had to fight off a swarm of infected and got covered in their blood in the process. So now all of our estranged trio are in a race against time.
As Ryder tries learning how to actually fire a gun (he's terrible at it, no surprise), he and Fionn are trying to figure out how to find an infected to burn without having to fight the whole base. The only other being they'd seen anywhere nearby was the absolutely giant infected they encountered on the road. That won't go badly, right?
The two men come up with a halfway decent plan—but you know what they say about plans surviving contact with the enemy. In this case, the enemy is the men holding Oaklynn, who corner Ryder and Fionn in the giant's cave. Which makes it a really bad time for the beast to come home…
The World That Was, the World That Is
If you're looking for a fun, breezy comic book, this is not the one for you.
But if you're looking for something a little bit different that will make you think and feel, you should check out Only the Savage Are Left.
Post-apocalyptic stories about zombies, plagues, or monsters are a dime a dozen. But too often they get tied up in the "scares" part of a horror story, preferring to focus on the monsters and blood. Lots of blood. This book takes a different tack—one where the plague and the monsters are almost window dressing, and the real heart of the story lives in the characters. How they react to the world they find themselves in, and just how far they're willing to go not just for survival, but for love.
In my review of issue #1, I referred to Ryder as "milquetoast." As the story progresses, he is trying to break out of that mold, to varying effect. He's not sneaky; he's not a good shot. He's not much of a fighter or the fastest runner. But he is resourceful and determined. You can't help but want to root for him. Hell, in the right (wrong?) set of circumstances, I could be him.
The story continues to jump back and forth between the present and various points in Ryder and Oaklynn's relationship. The more we see of them before the world ended, the more I wonder about the two of them together. You can clearly see they care for each other, but I get the feeling that he was more into her than she was into him. Maybe I'm reading that wrong—it's been a long time since I was in the dating pool, and I was never very good at it—but it just feels like, although they both care about each other, he's a lot more invested in her than vice versa. The more I feel like that, the more I find myself questioning why he's willing to go through all of this to find her. And I'm worried about how she's going to act towards him when they get out of their current predicaments, if they get out of them.
Even Fionn has more to him than it seems at first glance. Initially, I thought he was going to be the "man who let himself get corrupted by the world and will do literally anything to survive, dragging Ryder down with him" character in this story. And although a lot of that is the case, he seems to truly love his daughter and tolerate Ryder. His efforts to teach Ryder to shoot and be less useless in a combat situation seem to be genuine, as does his frustration at Ryder's lack of progress.
The giant infected that was first glimpsed on the cover of issue #1 is as horrifying in-story as you'd expect it to be. The idea that something had been infected for that long, that it had killed and fed and grown to such monstrous proportions… it's a chilling glimpse into the future for anyone who lets themselves get too far gone. And it's looking like a hugely insurmountable obstacle for our trio to overcome.
If this were a different book, I would find myself thinking "oh, if they can kill the giant and burn it, that would release a ton of smoke into the atmosphere and could cure basically everybody." But this isn't that type of book, and if Zack Kaplan is reading this, I'm guessing he just laughed at me right now.
Emotional Damage
Speaking of Kaplan, he is an expert at making you both think and feel at the same time. I've read a lot of books by him recently, and what's impressive is how they're all so different in terms of setting and subject matter, but you can always feel the beating heart within them all. Here he gives us a core cast of characters that are all well-rounded and realistic—the kinds of characters that a reader can see themselves in. His pacing is almost perfect for this kind of story: it's slow, but not so slow that you're checking your watch while reading along. The characters and situations get room to breathe (but not the smoke they need, or there would be no conflict right now). And there's a strong cliffhanger to boot.
Stefano Raffaele's art works so well for this kind of story. It's detailed, but not to the level where you're picking out every little strand of hair or clump of dirt. The characters look real, which adds to our investment in them. The infected creatures look hideous and horrifying—I actually think the infected children got to me more than the giant one did, but the giant has more to offer the story right now. His staging and panel layouts tell the story with a minimum of fuss or flash, which is what's best for an emotionally grounded tale like this.
The color work of Thiago Rocha complements the art incredibly well and helps give the issue a consistent tone even as it moves back and forth in time. The present-day scenes have a dirty, brownish tint to them, and the many night scenes are dark and ominous. The flashback scenes are done in a much brighter palette, representing the happier times—although the ones that are at the point of outbreak are still pretty blood-soaked…
Falling in Love at the End of the World
Only the Savage Are Left #3 is another terrific issue in a book that has not been what I expected at all. It's a post-apocalyptic tale about a plague turning people into monsters, sure, but the real story here is the characters and how they do or don't hold onto their humanity as the world falls apart around them. I don't think there is a happy ending in the cards for Ryder and Oaklynn, but that doesn't mean I'm not rooting for them anyway.