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Driver for the Dead #3
Publisher: Radical Publishing
Writer: John Heffernan
Artist: Leonardo Manco
Cover: Leonardo Manco

**Minor Spoilers**

“Driver for the Dead pt 3”: It has been a pretty long wait between issues, but the finale you’ve been waiting for is finally here. The very undead necromancer Fallow has the body of Moses Freeman along with the cadaver’s great-great-granddaughter to help complete his ritual. Now all our hero, Alabaster Graves, has to do is retrieve the only thing that can kill Fallow, and it just happens to be embedded in the chest of the most vicious werewolf to stalk the Louisiana swamps for over one hundred and fifty years. All in a day’s work for this guy.

Now for all of the hype around the Loup Garoux (Swamp Werewolf), I do think that the fight between him and Alabaster fell a little short. This beast was built up to be quite the formidable monster that has been killing people for over a century, and the “fight” seemed more like a skirmish with a very rushed feel. I also felt this way concerning several parts of the final battle between Fallow and Graves, as I was hoping that some of the back story could have been replaced for action. Other parts of Heffernan’s story helped make up for all of that, and I liked the extra layers he gave Alabaster as he discovered his true nature. For some reason like in the last issue, I just really enjoyed the banter between Fallow’s zombie lackeys as they provided a small bit of comic relief to the story.

As usual, Leonardo Manco, Kinsun Loh, and Jerry Choo make this one excellent looking book from start to finish! I don’t think there was one panel that didn’t impress as I read through the story. Whether it was a panel filled with dialog or action, the quality didn’t suffer one bit, and you get a visual punch to the face with every page turn! Though seeing the floating “man parts” in the jars was a bit disturbing and something I’d rather skip next time, it did help get the point across and made for a strong scene.

If you can find the first two issues I’d highly suggest picking them up along with this one. If not, then snatch up the trade that is bound to hit shelves later in the year and prepare for a damn good ride. Never does the series become cheesy, nor are you left with any dangling plot lines by the series’ end. Heffernan ties everything up in this chapter of Alabaster’s life and delivers a much better story than what I was expecting. I’m hoping for a few more Driver for the Dead mini-series, as the ending left things open for a return since there’s never a shortage in Graves’s line of work. So hopefully someone at Radical and Heffernan are already working on the next Alabaster Graves adventure for the greedy fans that we are!

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