Rotting in Dirtville - Softcover

The bored small-town teens of publisher Gigantic's first book, Rick Spears and Rob G's Teenagers from Mars (2005), meet the zombies of the second, Spears and G's Dead West (2005), in the third. Callahan's teens are abandoned, too. The adults who didn't split after the economy tanked when the Martians invaded leave every day for work, which is nonexistent in Dirtville. Milton Bloom is worse off. His parents died when something stomped the house flat. Now he chops wood for cash while getting harassed by a gang that includes girl-next-door Betsy's brother. She treats Milton well, at least when no one else is around, and depends on him on the day the giant robot zombies come. Callahan wields a sharp line most effectively, here filling a frame with evocative detail, there suppressing everything but the focal figures. His way with action and figuration resembles Bill Plympton's in Hair High (2003), but Callahan is less caricatural and less buffoonish, though not less satirical. For this is, besides a neat sci-fi romp, a jaundiced coming-of-age parable. Ray Olson
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