Review: Dead High Yearbook by Dutton Books

Dead High Yearbook is a hardcover comic book about a pair of dead teens who create a high school year book by matching live photos with dead photos of teens that have passed on. Each dead photo goes with a story and during this yearbook class, you learn about teens, their obsessions, and how they died. A great concept and one that could go further given the proper imaginative writers to work with. As it stands, the art is well done, but I just didn’t find any of the stories that exciting.

Probably the most interesting story is the one titled “Fear Pressure”.  A fat chick and a wimpy boy like each other. They go to a herbal remedy shop where they are promised their bodies will change to their liking. Soon the chick is losing weight and the dude becomes Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both of them are excited and love their new bodies, but then the remedy goes overboard. The muscle man explodes from the pain of his muscles expanding and the skinny chick dissolves into just an eyeball with a tail. In the end, they are together in separate jars, nothing but alien-looking blobs.

Horror fans may dig this book just for the cover. It looks like a real yearbook with a bloody handprint on the front. Who doesn’t want something cool like this to display in their personal library next to their flesh-like Evil Dead journal and vampire coffin kit? As for story, I might pick up later books to see if the stories get better, but this one is plain eye candy with mildly amusing tales.
If you would like to check this book out, they have a preview at Amazon.com here:
Dead High Yearbook