Elijah Jones

Elijah Jones I had included Elijah when I talked about the Hunters, but calling him the zombie hunter doesn't really get into why he does any of this. Zombies: The Cursed spends a lot more time on that, and his history is pretty brutal. Elijah was enslaved by a man named Fontaine. He and Fontaine's daughter Cassidy loved each other, and when her father found out, he beat Elijah and refused to believe that Cassidy could actually want to be with him. Elijah eventually fought back, and they ran together. Fontaine didn't just send people after them. He had Reginald raise the dead to hunt them down. They managed to have some time together and even had a son, but they couldn't get far enough away. Cassidy was killed during another attack. When Sela offered to get Elijah and the baby somewhere safe, he agreed to protect his son, but he also wanted to come back and help deal with the people responsible. That's a much more personal beginning than somebody deciding monster hunting sounds like an interesting career. Then he spends years trapped in the Shadowlands. By the time he's back in the present, the world has moved on without him. He's still carrying the same loss. He goes looking for Fontaine's ring because it can control the undead, and he wants to stop Cassidy from coming back as one of them. That's where the story gets especially hard. He finds the ring, but he's too late. Cassidy rises anyway, and he has to face her himself. The comic doesn't give him a comforting reunion or a conversation where she tells him everything is okay. He has to put her back to rest. There's also Adalee, one of his descendants. Their first meeting goes badly, but after she finds an old photograph, she comes looking for answers. By the cemetery fight, he's trying to get her out safely and telling her that she's his family. So he hasn't only come back to find graves. There is still family here, even if he doesn't immediately understand the lives they've been living. I also appreciated that the story doesn't turn him into an unbeatable magic warrior to get through all this. Samantha describes him as a man without the powers some of the others have. He's very good with his whip and firearms, but his new weapon gets stuck in a zombie's bones, his gun runs empty, and he nearly gets overwhelmed. Samantha has to help him. He's capable, not invincible, and he still has something left to live for after finally saying goodbye to Cassidy.