New Recruits by Various

An anthology of work by new talent published by Dark Horse, could this be a replacement for DHP? Hope so.
Andrew Krahnke’s ‘Zombiekiller’ disappointed slightly, barely starting before it ends with a ‘to be continued’. Where? Dunno. It’s all set up with no pay off, to the extent that we don’t get any zombies let alone someone killing them! Either more pages were needed here or a self contained story. Krahnke draws well but more was needed here.
‘The Pied Piper’ by Nick Plumber and Adam Adamowicz didn’t do much for me. I didn’t get why what happened happened to the main character. The art style is nice, all pencil sketchy, a technique that gives the story a gritty squalid look suiting the content.
‘Discrete Despair’ by RHS is an odd fit. It’s nice to have range in an anthology, but this looks like the print run got mixed up with Kithcen Sink/Fantagraphic’s Blab. That said I did like it, and the artwork was very appealing, particularly the colouring.
‘The Mighty Skullboy Army’ by Jacob Chabot was one of my favourite pieces in the book. Sweet with a hard edge. I liked this a lot - especially the robot.
The last two strips are by INJ Culbard. ‘Way of All Flesh’ is a zombie story, which makes me happy, especially as zombies actually appear, but it’s the way it’s told I really liked. Culbard has a lovely clean art style no doubt informed by his animation day job. The storytelling’s clear and straightforward and maybe I’m imagining it but Tor makes a guest appearance, which is a nice touch.
I’m inferring from the intro that there’s more of Culbard’s ‘Wild Talents’, I hope so as it deserves a comic of it’s own, it’d fit in perfectly with DH series like ‘The Goon’ and ‘Hellboy’, not to mention one offs like ‘Amazing Screw-on Head’ and ‘Scarlet Traces’. Murder mystery in Victorian London, and a few more surprises. Excellent.
And that’s volume 1. Despite my complaints it’s well worth buying, all the people featured clearly have talent and anthologies, by their very nature, aren’t going to please everyone all the time, but that’s part of the fun, it’s a chance to sample different things.