Zombie Powder Volume 4
By: Tite Kubo
Publisher: Viz Media/Shonen Jump Manga
Genre: Action
Ratng: T+ (Older Teen)
Price: $7.99
ISBN: 1-4215-1122-3
Rating:

Wolfina fights a solo battle for her brother’s life as Emilio, his body fused to a locomotive racing across the desert, faces a fate worse than death.  Luckily, Gamma and C.T. Smith manage to stop the train just before it plows into Alcantara and we get a happy ending and an obvious way for the story to continue…

Unfortunately, Zombie Powder will likely never be finished, Kubo-sensei is far too busy with Bleach to ever come back and write more about Gamma and friends and this really makes me feel a bit used.  I mean, I bought this thing looking for a story, not a couple of chapters of something someone did once and then dropped it.  Zombie Powder had the potential to be a great quest epic with Gamma and his ever-expanding cast of extras seeking out each of the Rings of the Dead and facing almost insurmountable odds.

Our backup story this time is Bad Shield United which, while not bad, really comes off like a pitch for another manga story.  I guess in the end, it feels like they’re unwittingly rubbing the reader’s nose in the fact that they’ll never see any of this stuff come to fruition.  No more Zombie Powder.  No more Rune Master Urara.  No more Bad Shield United.  Ha Ha, look what Kubo-sensei did, but you’ll never see any more of it!

I’m certainly not upset at Tite Kubo, people lose interest in things and move on all the time and when you realize this is something he wrote in high school, long before he hit it big, I suppose that’s perfectly understandable.  What sort of bugs me is why Viz would put together a collection of things that are unfinished, just because Kubo-sensei wrote it.  It seems like a cheap way to cash in on name recognition, like putting out the collected high school creative writing projects of Stephen King, just to make a buck.

Don’t get me wrong, for what it was, Zombie Powder is definitely worth the read, but knowing that you’re not getting a complete story is a bit disconcerting, especially when you get attached to the characters and want to know where their story goes from here.

The problem is, it goes nowhere.  And that’s sad.