Dead of Winter: Good Good Dog

Gr 9 Up—A zombie apocalypse has shaken the world, but a team of fearless survivors are fighting back. With them is an unusual hero. Sparky, a golden retriever, seems immune to the zombie virus and serves as a courageous attack dog when things get tough. The group must band together and face a new challenge: a deranged (but still human) police officer. Based on a tabletop board game, this story tries to add a twist to the popular zombie survival narrative with faithful, yet deadly, Sparky but unfortunately falls flat. The human characters, who dominate the work despite the attempts to highlight Sparky, are relatively clichéd and one-dimensional. They are each introduced with a brief description of who they were before the apocalypse, but with the exception of brash and disruptive Forrest, they are indistinguishable, making the narrative hard to follow. While Sparky is a novel idea, he gets relatively little screen time in comparison. The art is adequate but lackluster.