What makes a monster? Is it one’s capacity to commit atrocities, their outward appearance, or the ability to ignore the plight of “lesser” beings? Writer Deniz Camp and artist Stipan Morian continue to explore these themes in a heart-wrenching issue where they question who the true beasts are in a post-apocalyptic world.
Title: Bleeding Hearts #5
Creative Team: Deniz Camp (Writer), Stipan Morian (Artist), Matt Hollingsworth (Colors), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (Letters)
Characters: Poke, Rabbit
Villain: Mush, The Zombies
Format: Ongoing Series
Our Rating: 9.5/10 Stars
The Horror of Out-Break
Camp takes us deeper into zombie culture by opening the story with Out-Break, one of the zombie’s most important rituals. On this day, they capture living beings before releasing them to be hunted down. It’s key to their society, bringing the zombies together in a way not unlike our own holidays. This isn’t just important to them as a tribe, but as a people. The world-building in this book makes it special, and watching the undead celebrating their own rituals is another example of this. They continue to be more and more like us.
We see how fully developed this ceremony truly is. The zombies build a metal effigy to patient zero, the very first of them, while others play games and music. Morian doesn’t spare us any gory details. Human faces are stretched to become bongos, bones are fashioned into flutes, and actual Adam’s apples are used for bobbing. It elicits a nauseating reaction before you realize humans do the same things. For thousands of years drums were made using animal hides and their bones were made into tools. Camp cleverly makes us look inward by showing us a world where we’re the materials.
Rabbit’s Lost Innocence and the Skill of this Creative Team
Meanwhile, Rabbit has been captured by Poke’s friend Mush and is part of the humans who are to be hunted. We learn through her POV that the zombies have already eaten her mother. It’s a cold, abrupt ending to a character who warned Rabbit about trusting the undead, and we see how this is affecting her in real time. Rabbit is becoming cold to the world, blaming herself for what happened to her mother. She was a shining beacon of hope through the first few issues, but now she’s becoming another jaded survivor. It’s a tragic yet inevitable fate.
Morian’s skill is on full display with the design of the zombies. They all look unique, coming in different sizes with bulging noses, missing eyes, and hollowed-out cheeks on a horrific page two splash. Colorist Matt Hollingsworth wraps them in pallid greys and nauseating reds, driving home the decay plaguing their bodies. Letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou continues to show their personality, giving each zombie its own dialogue pattern. Some talk in big, bolded speech bubbles, while others are more theatrical, as their words pop with large, upper-cased fonts and changing colors.
Verdict: Should you buy Bleeding Hearts #5?
Bleeding Hearts #5 stands out because it makes you question your own humanity. Things we take for granted like eating meat, wearing leather, or even hunting, are reframed through the eyes of the zombies. They’re the dominant species now, and we’re the animals. Rabbit’s loss of innocence is a gateway into how those lesser species might feel. We’re more similar to these zombies than we want to believe. What does that say about us?
‘Bleeding Hearts’ #5 Review: Let the Hunt Begin
Bleeding Hearts #5 stands out because it makes you question your own humanity. Things we take for granted like eating meat, wearing leather, or even hunting, are reframed through the eyes of the zombies. They’re the dominant species now, and we’re the animals. Rabbit’s loss of innocence is a gateway into how those lesser species might feel. We’re more similar to these zombies than we want to believe. What does that say about us?
