When Nara Kilday is brutally murdered in her own home, her family and friends are distraught, as most would be. But what they don’t know is that Nara’s death is part of a much larger plot, one meant to raise a deadly demon to rule the world. But all is not lost; at least not for Nara. Because she climbs out of that grave mere days later, a reborn avenger on a path to prevent the demons and the walking dead from taking over. For her, being dead at the age of seventeen is only the beginning of her new life.

Josh Howard’s original DEAD @ 17 trilogy is collected in this massive volume, though it isn’t a simple reprint. As Howard himself mentions in his introduction, he’s gone into George Lucas territory, remastering some pages, redrawing others, and adding new ones to make the story flow better. In short, this is slightly different that what you get when you buy those original books, and unlike Lucas’ STAR WARS SPECIAL EDITIONS, the changes Howard makes don’t come off as looking dumb or in violation of the original work. There’s only one that’s somewhat glaring (a new ending page to volume one’s story), and the rest is fairly seamless. Not easy to do, but Howard pulls it off. And you also can’t blame him for doing it. He mentions in the introduction, he only had 2.5 months to complete the original four-issue story. That’s something very few creators working today could pull off, let alone a guy who was doing his first-ever comics work.

I don’t have any other real quibbles with the book. It’s produced nicely, and at $25, priced very reasonably. I would like to make a suggestion, though- there needs to be a second one. There was a series of DEAD @17 ROUGH CUT books, along with a miniseries detailing the adventures of an earlier girl in Nara’s position, as well as the recent series that followed up on the original trilogy. For the story to feel truly complete for the reader, a second COMPENDIUM is required.

Marc Mason