Dead Run: Fast Cars, Disgustingly Ugly Mutants and Plenty of Guns

I managed to pick up the trade paper back of Dead Run last Sunday.

I normally spend my money on paperback novels and history books rather than comics or graphic novels these days. Picking up Dead Run was more of the exception to the general rule. Having finished going through the book, I'm glad I made the decision to pick it up.

The book's premise is hardly original: a story of a hard-bitten courier in a souped-up, bad-ass car plying his trade in the wasteland which used to be the Pacific coast of the United States. The hero reminded so much of Max Rockatansky and his supercharged V8 interceptor.

What really stood out for me was the artwork of Francesco Biagini. His illustrations made me feel like I was reading something out of the Heavy Metal Magazine in the early 1990s. As a Mutant Future referee, I can only say that I was quite impressed with his rendition of the mutants who infested the wasteland between the post-disaster Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The picture below is taken from the book, and is just one of the many evocative images drawn up by Biagini. This is how I'd imagine a hard-bitten Mutant survivor would look in the badlands. The book's protagonist referred to this guys as those who 'foraged' in the ruins. I couldn't agree with him more.


My eyes aren't as good as they used to be but the slabs of meat hanging on the right side of this Mutant's trike looked shockingly familiar. That particular morsel hanging second from the right wouldn't happen to be a pair of testicles attached to a phallus carved out from some poor devil would it?

Little else could be so hard core in the barren wastes of our Mutant Future.