At first glance, the new comic “The Dark 48″ looks like a mish-mash of Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” (they’re not really zombies, more like humans infected with a “rage” virus) and your standard zombie movie, with a group of survivors battling a zombie horde infestation. The comic book premieres as a two-issue limited series by writer Steven O’Connell and artist Daniel Indro, and colors by Joel Seguin.

The premise:

History will come to know it as DARK 48. It all started when a terrorist cell intercepted a designer Soviet plague - a virus genetically engineered to attack the Y Chromosome of males, inducing rage. In the ‘80s the Russians had hoped the Afghan rebels would turn on each other saving them lives and ammunition. Thankfully they never used it. An ex-Russian General brought it to the attention of the CDC. They confiscated it. The terror cell got wind of it and the rest is history. We follow an all-female strike team — Battle Corp Delta — whose mission is to traverse the contiguous lower 48 searching for survivors…and hopefully a cure.

Over all, not an entirely bad first issue. We are quickly introduced to the all-female battle group, led by the American Anthem (all the girls have codenames). When we first see them, they’re approaching yet another crazy-infested city in Strykers (armored personnel carriers) as helicopter gunships shoot everything that moves in the city. Basically, since every man in America has been turned into “crazies” (the comic’s term for them) by the virus, every men is fair game. The unit’s mission is to find survivors, and a couple of those happens to be broadcasting from a hospital inside the city.

There are the usual inter-personal problems — Spanish chick Solstice takes umbrage with Anthem’s leadership, and the two throw some kicks at one another. The unit is an International one, with a British girl, Canadian, Spanish, and Americans. A U.N. force, if you will, composed entirely of women.

The comic’s highlight is the artwork by Daniel Indro, which is really good and detailed, although he didn’t get enough chances to draw zombie hordes, I thought. Most of the first issue consists of the characters bickering, with a couple of action sequences that doesn’t really get into the “heart” of a zombie epic — i.e. the zombie encounters. I would have liked to see more action, but maybe they’re saving that for the next issue.

Creator/writer Steven O’Connell’s writing is somewhat “off”. I can’t really put my finger on it, but some of O’Connell’s dialogue is really hard to digest. On more than one occasion I had to re-read a character’s dialogue more than once to understand what they were trying to say. It always seemed as if a word here or there had been misplaced within the sentence, or there were two or three words too many. That kind of stuff. Hard to explain, but you’ll know it when you read it.

I have another minor quibble with the issue: one of the characters narrates the story in the form of letters back home to her mother. She happens to write in cursive, and the comic re-prints her letter in cursive. And I hate reading someone’s cursive writing. Again, it just ruined the experience between I kept having to re-read passages of “letter”.

Overall, “The Dark 48″ boats tremendous artwork by Indro, but somewhat stiff writing by O’Connell. Plus, I’m just naturally interested in this type of fiction. End-of-the-world stuff, plus zombies, always puts me in a good mood for a good time.

There’s an excellent cliffhanger at the end, and makes me really anxious to see Issue #2. I’m still not sure why they’re doing this as a very limited 2-issue mini-series. You’d think they could accomplish more with 5 issues or more.

You can find more information on the comic from its official site here.