Booklist Review
This bleak graphic novel opens on a desolate, rubble-strewn post-apocalyptic world, with a raggedly dressed one-armed man offering to lead the reader to his underground shelter ( It'll be dark soon. Better come with me ). As we accompany him on expeditions for food and supplies and encounter a small handful of other desperate survivors, we learn that the world has been overrun by zombies, and the demise of civilization is inevitable. Ralph skillfully builds the tension as we evade the zombie onslaught, making the story so gripping that it's easy to overlook the understated effectiveness of his approach. The zombies are never clearly shown and only occasionally glimpsed, making them all the creepier, and Ralph's use of an unvarying layout of six uniform panels per page further reduces the sensationalism. The likely audience for this graphic novel is fans of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead and other mainstream zombie fare. With luck, they'll appreciate the sophistication and subtlety of Ralph's quietly devastating end times tale.--Flagg, Gordon Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
While anything zombie gets attention these days-sometimes more than it deserves-Ralph's debut stands out from the rest of the undead horde, because it takes an inward and personal approach, like all good indie comics, to the idea of trying to survive in the land of the walking dead. Written and drawn from a first-person perspective, Daybreak pulls us into a world where humans are prey who scavenge for food and hide in makeshift shelters after nightfall. We follow a one-armed man who welcomes us into his home and schools us on his daily survival rituals. Slightly abstract line drawings and beady-eyed people build an aesthetic that's more art house than artifice. And the content mirrors that vibe with a story line focused on companionship, trust, and introspection rather than guts, blood, and monotone chants of "brains." Verdict Ultimately, this book is a voyeur's journey into zombie Armageddon, where the cruelest trick isn't what these monsters do to us but how alone they make us feel. For all zombie completists and pulp horror movie fanatics; but the dynamic appeal is really for cultural outliers who prefer the prefix indie in front of their entertainment options.-Robert Morast, Fargo, ND (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
