Sometimes a comic book comes along that I just have to get my hands on. Anything with zombies in it will at least be picked up, off the shelf, for a read but this book pretty much got my cash card out of my pocket and bought itself! Why? Just read the title... Are you done? Read it again. Cool isn’t it? Zombies are cool enough on their own but facing them off against robots... Can it get any better than this? Yes, yes it can...
At some point in the near future, government research into dimensional technology has the unwelcome result of flooding the earth with the living dead. If this wasn’t bad enough for humanity, government research into robotics is also having some unwelcome side effects... The upshot is a planet inhabited by zombies, robots... and one human baby. Can the robots help the human race begin again or will the zombies get to eat the last human on the planet? All this is before the Amazons appear with a zombie Minotaur in hot pursuit...
Now you might think that a fight between a zombie and a robot would be fairly short and fairly one sided. You’d be right but, in the case of ‘Zombies vs. Robots’, only to a certain extent. Not only do the zombies far outnumber the robots but their infected blood is just as dangerous to robots as it is to humans. If that wasn’t bad enough, robots are slaves to their programming and liable to really screw things up as a result (with no humans to look out for them). All this opens the book up to be a lot more interesting than you would think. Anything can happen and it will always happen at the most inopportune moment! This never failed to make me laugh out loud but there was always an underlying pathos to the story. There’s something about these robots trying to reboot humanity (as they don’t know what else to do) that made me feel really sad. There’s only one way out of this mess and it’s a surprise that anything is left standing afterwards! This is where the Amazons come in...
You never really find out how a tribe of Amazons managed to survive the nuclear apocalypse so don’t bother thinking about it, just go along for the ride! Some people might see this as an enormous plot hole, I prefer to see it as the writer not taking things too seriously and going for a ‘throw everything at the zombies’ pulp style affair. It works for me and if you’re after something light hearted and irreverent then I reckon that this will be for you too.
The only problem I really had with the book was the artwork, not good when you’re reading a comic book! Ashley Wood’s art is all over the place, only stopping before it falls off the page. Also, on some pages it was very much a case of lightly coloured characters on a lightly coloured background which made it really difficult, sometimes, to work out what was going on. To be fair though, once I got used to it I found that the ‘mad artwork’ really complemented the writing itself.
Despite some misgivings about the art I ended up having a lot of fun with ‘Zombies vs. Robots’. The ending hints at more to come (mermaids!) and I’m definitely going to have to check it out...
2 comments:
Great review of our comic, man -- thanks for this. Always nice to read a review by someone who "gets it." We tried not to take things too seriously. And in the case of Amazons surviving the nukes from the previous series, I just went in with the premise that any works of man -- the bombs -- weren't enough to hurt the offspring of the gods, so the island remained untouched by fallout. Or something.
Anyway, thanks! More Zombies vs Robots on the way in early '10, too (although the Mermen series might be a bit further off than that).
I just picked this up the other day, and had a ball reading it. How things keep getting progressively worse (and in ways I never saw coming) is strangely compelling.
Chris--I really have to compliment IDW on the high quality paper stock throughout. Thanks for giving the artwork a proper canvas.
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