Review – Zombie War Trading Cards

Zombies. It’s always gotta be zombies with you guys. Wait, wrong crowd. Sorry about that, just too many hours spent working on Zombie Dice has me with zombies on the brain. You know what I mean.

Anyway, the Zombie War trading card set by Kevin Eastman, Tom Skulan, and Charles Lang comes at us today straight from that dark year known as 1992. You remember 1992, don’t you? Well I do, because it’s the year when Image comics crashed onto the scene and a time when trading card sets were big business. Not that I ever owned this set back then. No, I had to wait until 2009 to get my hands on a set of Zombie War trading cards.

Was it worth the wait?

A Complete Set in Every Box

Unlike most trading card sets, Zombie War was sold in boxes with all 45 cards in the box. I’m not sure if I like this style of presentation — opening card packs is half of the fun — but it works in my favor in this instance since I’m coming to the part so late. I’m not sure if they should really be called “trading” cards, though. Art cards feels a lot more appropriate when there’s absolutely no reason to trade cards in an attempt to build a set.

In the tradition of Mars Attacks . . .

Zombie War tells a tale, with the front of each card featuring painted artwork by Charles Lang and the back of each card telling the next part of the story. As with the old Mars Attacks trading cards from the 1960s, this set builds the tale over time, starting with the approach of a UFO and ending in total war against a massive horde of zombies led by a zombie general. Yes, a zombie general. It’s dumb, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.

The art is okay.

It’s not the greatest art I’ve ever seen, but Lang’s depiction of the zombie war in the card set works and looks like it’s probably a collection of smallish acrylic paintings; I’d guess that each original is an 8″ x 10″ canvas. I’ve selected a few of my favorite cards for this review (all of the images shown here are what I consider to be the best), but as you can see this isn’t the greatest artwork that has ever been printed. It’s functional, shows a few neat scenes, and isn’t at all bad. It’s just not so exciting that the art alone is worth chasing down the card set.

Unfortunately, the story isn’t great.

As with the artwork, the storyline that develops as you read through the set is functional, has a few fun scenes, but isn’t the best work of fiction you’re ever going to encounter. Opening with a UFO beaming Earth with a ray that creates zombies, the story is as tongue-in-cheek as you can get — which is just fine with me — but it never really pulls itself out of the most basic of comic-styled storytelling. It’s almost like an old EC tale brought to trading card form; without the fun of the “shocking” ending.

And there’s even a comic book.

I’ve never read the comic, but somewhere out in the world there’s a Zombie War comic book series which sounds like it’s even less fun than the trading cards. this review at deathwishindustries.com isn’t exactly an endorsement:

“Zombie War (1992 FantaCo Tundra)- I knew this comic existed because I obtained the Zombie War trading card set which is derived from it in my trading card collecting-craze-days. The trading cards are kind of amusing, the comic is not. The story is by Kevin Eastman and Tom Skulan and the art is by Kevin Eastman and Eric Talbot. The inside art which is pictured below, seems sloppy and the story which contains a talking zombie king, as does King of the Dead, is not very good. Don’t make zombies talk!!! It doesn’t work!!! I imagine King of the Dead was inspired by this comic, especially since they are both from Fantaco. King of the Dead 0-2 has better art, but much worse story and humor. Don’t waste your valuable eyes on this comic series either.”

Too bad, because in my opinion the trading card set isn’t really worth tracking down. It sounds like overall what we get with the Zombie War trading cards and comic book is an attempt at an epic, global zombie conflict that resulted in a lot of time and money being sunk into two forgettable collectibles.

Closing Thoughts

I paid about $10 for this card set and that’s about twice the price that it’s actually worth. The art and story are okay so if you can find this for about $5 — and if you’re a zombie fan — then grab yourself a set. Otherwise, don’t bother with this one. There are definitely better trading card sets on the market.

Philip Reed is gonna dump his Zombie War cards on a shelf somewhere and forget about them. Then, in a year or two, he’ll stumble across them and get all excited. If Philip is smart he won’t open the box of cards when he finds them; it’s better to let the excitement make him think the set is better than it actually is than it will be to open the box and get disappointed all over again.