‘Bleeding Hearts’ #1-6 Review: An Ongoing Zombie Series With an Actual Beating Heart

I’ll be honest, I almost didn’t need convincing on this one. I was hyped for Bleeding Hearts before a single page existed, just off the strength of who was making it. But six issues in, I can say the thing I was hoping for actually happened: this is one of the best comics I’ve read all year, and it’s not close.

Bleeding Hearts is ongoing, which means this isn’t a “wait for the trade and judge the whole thing” review. This is a “here’s where we are after six issues, and here’s why you should already be reading it” review. Because a series this confident out of the gate deserves to be talked about now, not months from now when everyone’s already caught up.

What Is Bleeding Hearts About?

The zombies won. That’s the premise, stated as plainly as it can be. Ten years after humanity fell, zombies aren’t shambling background noise, they’re a functioning society with their own culture, their own language, their own rules. Our way into that world is Mouse-Pokes-Golf-Ball-Through-Hole-In-Head, or Poke for short, a well-liked member of his community who spends his days shuffling through the only life he’s ever known alongside his best friend Mush.

Then his heart starts beating again. And the humans he’s spent a decade seeing as food suddenly start looking like something else entirely.

WHAT WORKED

The smartest thing Bleeding Hearts does is give Poke an inner life. He thinks. Constantly. He wonders whether he and his kind are evil for wiping out humanity, and that single choice changes the entire genre conversation around zombies for me. We’re used to zombies as a force of nature, a plague with no interiority. Reading a zombie’s actual thought process, his doubt, his curiosity, his guilt, is such a simple idea on paper and such a rare one in practice, and it’s the thing that hooked me from page one.

From there, the book builds out two lives running in parallel, Poke’s and the small found-family of humans he can’t stop himself from protecting, and lets them collide slowly instead of rushing the payoff. There’s a real tenderness to how trust gets built between a zombie and the humans who have every reason not to trust him, and Camp is patient about it. Small gestures matter. A shared meal matters. A kid’s favorite toy matters. And because that trust is built so carefully, every threat to it, and there are several, lands twice as hard.

What really got me is how the book keeps raising the stakes without ever losing sight of what it’s actually about. Poke’s loyalty to his own kind gets tested against his loyalty to people he was never supposed to see as anything but food, and by the sixth issue, that tension boils over in ways I genuinely did not see coming. I won’t walk through exactly how it plays out, but there’s a moment involving Poke and his oldest friend that’s one of the more gutting things I’ve read in a comic this year, and the issue’s final page had me putting the book down for a second just to sit with it.

The Art, Color, and Tone

Stipan Morian’s art is doing something I haven’t quite seen in a zombie book before. It’s messy in the best way, loose linework that somehow makes the decayed, post-collapse world feel lived-in rather than just gross for shock value. Matt Hollingsworth’s colors lean into that same chaos, murky and unsettled in a way that mirrors exactly how Poke’s world is starting to fall apart around him.

It’s worth noting Morian and writer Deniz Camp previously teamed up on 20th Century Men, a book I’m embarrassed to admit is still sitting unread on my list (I know, I know, it’s happening soon). But you can feel that prior shorthand between them here. The art doesn’t just illustrate the zombie society, it fits it, cartoonish enough to keep some warmth in the room, bleak enough that you never forget what world you’re actually in. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s lettering keeps Poke’s internal monologue distinct from the noise around him, which matters a lot in a book built on a character who spends half his time in his own head.

Why Deniz Camp Being on This Book Is a Big Deal

I’ll just say it: Deniz Camp is one of the hottest writers working right now, and it’s not particularly close. He just finished The Ultimates at Marvel, wrapped Absolute Martian Manhunter at DC (which, like everyone apparently, we loved), and his range across those two very different books alone tells you everything about how talented he is. His Marvel debut, Children of the Vault back in 2023, was already a standout for us as X-Men fans, and Bleeding Hearts feels like the next step in a run of work that keeps getting better.

The Coven’s Verdict

Launching a new zombie book in 2026 is a hard sell. The genre is oversaturated, and most horror comics at this point are working from a pretty familiar playbook. Bleeding Hearts doesn’t feel like that. Giving the zombie a conscience, an inner monologue, an actual emotional stake in the humans around him, flips the entire genre on its head, and six issues in, I’m fully invested in Poke, Rabbit, and whatever’s left of the world they’re trying to survive in together.

I’ll say it plainly: this is one of my favorite new comics of the year, maybe THE favorite. There’s nothing about these first six issues that’s given me pause, which almost never happens for me with a new ongoing this early. Camp and Morian aren’t just doing a good zombie book, they’re doing one of the best comics on shelves right now, period.

I’d also be shocked if this one doesn’t end up as a TV or animated adaptation somewhere down the line. The premise alone is a pitch meeting waiting to happen, and the emotional core Camp and Morian have built here is exactly the kind of thing that translates well to screen.

If you love horror, if you love zombies done differently, or if you just want to see what Deniz Camp is doing next, get on this one now instead of waiting for the trade talk to catch up to you. This is an ongoing series, which means there’s still time to jump on, but the earlier the better.

Related Reading

• We called this one before it dropped, and we were right
• My review of The Walking Dead Compendium One

FAQ

Is Bleeding Hearts worth reading? Yes. It’s one of the smartest takes on the zombie genre in years, built around genuine emotional stakes rather than just shock value.

Is Bleeding Hearts a one-shot, miniseries, or ongoing series? It’s an ongoing series from DC’s Vertigo imprint, so there’s no set endpoint yet.

Who is writing and drawing Bleeding Hearts? Deniz Camp writes the series, with art by Stipan Morian, colors by Matt Hollingsworth, and letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.

Do you need to read anything before Bleeding Hearts? No prior reading required. It’s a fresh, standalone world with its own rules.

When can I get the first collected edition? The first trade paperback, Bleeding Hearts, Vol. 1: Out-Break, is scheduled for October 20, 2026, if you’d rather wait and catch up on the first arc all at once.