Ripped from the pages of Andre Duza's novel DEAD BITCH ARMY, the new graphic novel HOLLOW-EYED MARY, from Devil's Due Publishing, reads like an origin story: the tale of Bloody Mary, also known as Hollow Eyed Mary, a zombified woman who, along with her band of terrorists, seeks to plunge the world into an apocalypse.

The tale begins with a school in a future/alternate earth where we are told it is 2004. A great catastrophe has occurred, and a teacher stands before her class - all of them are wearing gas masks - when one of the students blurts out a question about someone called "The Queen."

The teacher, Lisa Ludlow, then goes about telling her students the "untold story" of where the Queen, also known as Bloody Mary, came from, and how things turned out the way they did. We then plunge into the past to see just how all of this came about.

Ludlow was once a TV news show host covering the infamous "Bloody Mary Murders," when she meets Natasha Armstrong, who has been arrested for the crimes. Tasha grew up with Bloody Mary in an orphanage. Back then, Mary was known as Jane Doe. Mary had strong abandonment issues and when Tasha is adopted by a family named the Armstrongs and leaves her, Mary has an overwhelming anger which is only multiplied by a staff member who is molesting her. Freedom comes in the form of Joshua Ray, the facility's former groundskeeper and her only remaining friend, who takes her away to raise as his own daughter. Ray also leads a church devoted to a pagan survivalist cult called Ergeister, who are obsessed with staying alive after the world ends. Preparing for the end involves many rituals, including killing.

As Ludlow learns more about Bloody Mary's past, she starts to believe that Tasha is innocent.

As an adult, Mary marries football player Carl Mezerak. When she becomes pregnant after believing she is unable to have a child, Mezerak says the baby isn't his. They fight, and when Mary goes out into the rainy night, she is hit by a van and killed.

But that's just the beginning of the story. Because Mary comes back from the dead. And she's angry.

Mary is now a reanimated corpse with a coherent, vengeful mind. She has taken up with a group of outsiders, including Griffen (Griff), who can control other people's minds (he's the one who framed Tasha for the killings).

As a political crisis unfolds and possible nuclear war heats up between America, Russia and China, Mary and her gang engage in acts of violence as they await the end of the world.

An especially powerful sequence involves Mary getting revenge on her husband Carl, coming to him in the shower as a rotting corpse, and eventually hacking him to death with an axe as she holds her own severed head by the hair, laughing.

A big showdown between Tasha and Mary at a rave provides one last stand before the bombs go off.

Writing a comic book is very different from writing a novel. Where, in a novel, a writer has free reign to describe characters and events, in a comic book the writer has to defer to the artist for the visual cues. In this case, Duza has found a good collaborator in artist Rudolf Montemayor, who does an effective job bringing all of this to life. His artwork matches the tone of Duza's story perfectly and adds to the mood of the piece.

This being a tale told in flashbacks, it does tend to jump between times and characters, and there are a few moments when someone not familiar with the source novel might be a little confused, but on the whole it is an exciting ride. Mary is a formidable character, and you almost wonder why she needs cohorts in order to strike terror into the hearts of her victims.

Duza and Montemayor do a good job pulling us into their world. The graphic novel also left me wanting to know more about Mary and her supporting cast, and I would be curious to know how many readers of this illustrated work then seek out Duza's novel.

There is graphic violence and nudity, so this is not a typical mainstream comic. But it stays true to Duza's vision. If you're a fan of his work, you really should check this out. And if you're not familiar with DEAD BITCH ARMY, then HOLLOW EYED MARY is a good introduction to the world of Bloody Mary.