REVIEW: Self Storage #3 (of 6)

Written & Created by: Clay McLeod Chapman
Illustrated by: Matt Timson
Review: Will Dubbeld

451 Media is a relatively new (to me, anyway) Indy company that popped up on my radar a couple of months ago. They had a few pretty enticing sales pitches, so I went ahead and ordered a few titles, including one about a werewolf biker gang, one telling the tale of a Dirty Dozen WWII squad of monsters a la the old DC Creature Commando books, and a whimsical little ditty called Self Storage.

Self Storage hooked me on its initial premise of a hapless schmuck who opens a storage locker and finds sequestered within a zombie girl.
Best. Storage Wars. Ever.
A down on his luck local yokel hoping to hit paydirt in an abandoned locker and finding a zombie girl is a pretty damn original pitch as far as I'm concerned, and I was in for the long haul.


I was a bit concerned upon buying the first issue was a curious credit attributing one Michael Bay as a company founder. I didn't check to see if it was the selfsame director of dubious quality, but the books thus far have not been inundated with explosions or vaguely racist toilet bowl humor so it may be a coincidence.

Self Storage is thus far a great comic, but here I am three issues in and very little story progression seems to have happened. A few zombie fatalities have occurred, protagonist and his redneck buddies attempt to prevent zombie fatalities, protagonist attempts to discover the secret of the locker-zombie whilst dealing with troubles at home, so on and so forth, but halfway through the series and we haven't tread too much ground. Hopefully this doesn't lead to a rushed feeling in the second half. As an interesting aside, the story is almost inferring that the male lead is falling for the zombie girl. I may be reading too deeply between the lines here, but this is potentially a great creepy/gross angle.

Self Storage's art is good, although it's the type of black and white line art that one almost expects from a zombie comic these days (or the days of yore, for that matter). Deadworld, The Walking Dead, The Dead . . .
There really seems to be a theme here . . .
Not to say the art isn't good, because it is. It just falls into that Indy horror comic comfort zone.

3 issues down, 3 to go, and I'm in for the long haul. We're getting close to uncovering the secrets of naked-zombie-locker-girl, or at least some of her secrets, and curiosity drives me to finish this series.
If nothing else it's fun to see the redneck supporting cast shooting paintball guns at shambling zombies and ineffectually attempting to wrangle the undead.

Is it the best zombie horror comic I've read? Nah, but it's pretty good and throws in enough off-kilter humor to skew the equilibrium of the book away from the archetypical rank-and-file zombie book. It's unlikely to blow your mind, but it's certainly worth a look.