Awakening

Co-Created with Alex Eckman-Lawn | Lettering by Thomas Mauer | Rereleased digitally by Top Shelf/IDW, 2015

For Mature Readers (16+)

The once peaceful city of Park Falls has been tainted by a series of missing persons and gruesome murders. Town crazy Cynthia Ford comes forward to speak with retired police detective Derrick Peters one January afternoon with information about the strange happenings, claiming that they’re connected. But does she hold the key to unlocking the mystery, or has she gone completely insane? To Derrick’s disbelief she utters one word:

Zombies.

Though he doesn’t believe her, Derrick is compelled by their shared history to look into Cynthia’s evidence. What he finds should be impossible.

The investigation leads Derrick, federal scientist Dr. Daniel Howe, attack survivor Sandra LaFayette, and others in the city down a murky path as each must reconcile their past before facing what lies ahead. Coming to grips with all that they’ve been through is only the beginning as the weeks turn to months and the death toll slowly rises…

Reviews

“A dark journey into the end of days. Genuinely unsettling and scary, Awakening delivers all the moods and the chills– a genre-bending graphic novel.”

– Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)

"Deftly written by newcomer Tapalansky... Eckman-Lawn's art is a fantastic complement to the prose... The panels evoke a building, palatable sense of unease, and by the last turn of the page, the reader is immersed in the terror of Awakening."

- The Library Journal

"[Awakening is] near, if not at, the pinnacle of the best execution of a zombie graphic novel."

- The San Francisco Book Review