Dylan+Dog+-+summary

Here I am going to summarize the first number of //Dylan Dog//: “L’alba dei morti viventi”, published in October 1986. The comic opens with a woman called Sybil Browning who is attacked by her husband: a scientist just returned home from Scotland, where he had been working on a secret project. Before attacking his wife, he, very ill and almost raving, had pleaded for being killed by her. Of course she had refused, but suddenly his heart had stopped to beat, his face had turned death-like and yet he had stood up from the deathbed: he had become a zombie. In the ensuing fight Sybil manages to put her zombie-husband KO by plunging scissors into his eyes. Afterwards, she decides to ask Dylan Dog, “l’indagatore dell’incubo”, for help, since the police can’t believe her weird story. Dylan Dog makes some questions concerning the research her husband had been carrying out and she remembers that he had been working together with another scientist called Xabaras about what she cannot tell. Dylan Dog immediately tells her that Xabaras is an anagram for Abraxas, one of the Devil’s many names. The following day, Dylan Dog, Groucho and Sybil set out for Scotland, in order to solve the mystery. On the train bound for Scotland they meet Xabaras/Abraxas and having ascertained his sinister character, they stealthily follow him till his very domain in a small dreary village fictitiously called Undead (!) nearby Inverness, in Scotland’s north-eastern corner. But Xabaras is waiting for them and openly declares his true identity: he is an immortal daemon called Abraxas, still mightier than the Devil himself. With the help of Sybil’s husband he had discovered how the dead could be given new life. But he further explains them that his zombies have no reason and no will but their master’s. He also tells them that he is about to use the three of them as guinea-pigs for testing a new drug which should turn them into reasoning zombies. Dylan Dog with a cunny stratagem (he asks for the last wish) rescues his two companions and himself and after a desperate flight from thronges of blood-thirsing zombies, he lets a bomb (hidden within his clarinet’s case) explode thus causing a conflagration destroying Abraxas. The zombies without their master fall to the ground stark dead. But the spirit of Abraxas on disappearing cries out for future revenge. The comic ends with Dylan Dog back home, in bed and in Sybil’s arms...

Next page