Dead Corps

Dead Corps
Cover to Dead Corps No. 1 - Suckers of Mars. Art by Steve Pugh
Publication information
Publisher	Helix (DC Comics imprint)
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Mini-series
Genre	Science fiction
Publication date	1998
Number of issues	4
Main character(s)	CJ Rataan
Creative team
Writer(s)	Christopher Hinz
Artist(s)	Steve Pugh
Colorist(s)	Patricia Mulvihill
Creator(s)	Christopher Hinz

Dead Corps, subtitled Dead Corpse is a four-issue comic book mini-series published in 1998 under the short-lived DC Comics imprint, Helix. Written by Christopher Hinz and illustrated by Steve Pugh, the story is set in a near-future earth where medical technology has opened the possibility for the re-animation of human beings and the dead play an active but sometimes unwilling role in everyday society. The title met with little success commercially as it was published by Helix some time after the cancellation of the entire imprint had been announced. ^[1]

Plot synopsis

The year is 2101 and thirty three years have passed since the first successful brain tissue remodulation and body reanimation of a human being. Vitals, ordinary living human beings, share their lives with Expireds, an underclass of once dead people who have been restored to life to perform a variety of specialist but unwanted tasks. Apart from the pallor of their skin and the putrid chemical unction which they are forced to consume as a food-substitute, the dead are otherwise indistinguishable from ordinary functioning human beings.

Detective Sergeant CJ Rataan is the senior officer in a squad of the Paladin Dead Corps an elite but poorly respected team of mixed expired and vital police officers based out of North Nome, Alaska.

CJ himself is an Expired, having been murdered and then revived several years prior to the narrative owing to his role thwarting the operations of a gangland syndicate of body-poachers and killing the leader's brother. As the tale develops, CJ and his rag-tag crew of Expireds (Detectives Cicatriz and 'Pappy') and Vitals (Detective Eldo Kway and Corporal Meep) are engaged to investigate the circumstances surrounding CJ's death. However in addition to robbing him of his first life, CJ has been targeted for PR....

“

....Perpetual Retribution. If you really want to get back at somebody, don’t just kill them once. Wait until they’re revived for a month or so and then kill them again.... and again.... and again

”

Notes

1. ^ Anderd (October 2001). "'The Best Sci-Fi You've Never Read. This Month's Featured Author: Christopher Hinz". Boxcar.org. http://www.boxcar.org/archive/press/books/feature/001.html. Retrieved 2008-01-26. ^{[dead link]}

References

• Dead Corps(e) at the Grand Comics Database
• Dead Corps(e) at the Comic Book DB
• Dead Corps(e) at the Big Comic Book DataBase