Zombies, zombies everywhere. It seems like there are so many zombies today that the average person just wants to see them go away. The team of Jonathan Appel, Chris W. Freeman and Korey Hunt came together to tackle this genre, spit in its face and laugh at it for all it’s worth. The end product is “So… I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse and All I Got Was This Podcast,†a comic zombie comic so inventive that it will make any zombie fan smack George A. Romero.
Mara Mitchell is a survivor of a zombie apocalypse. She also has a podcast to reach out to anyone who is still alive. When she finds out that the dead are sort like the living she decides to join them and make friends.
It’s a silly concept with an even sillier payoff. Mara finds out that trying to fit in with the all female zombies turns out to be a lot like high school. She’s tries practically everything to make them accept her and it just blows up in her face.
This is why this is one of the better zombie stories on the market right now. It takes an overexposed genre and turns it into a high school drama. This is a welcome departure in a genre that has become stagnant and predictable. Seeing a character actually making friends with zombies and them acting like a high school clique is pretty inventive and has room for laughs.
What keeps the story from being a complete masterpiece is that underneath the zombie interior lies another genre that’s done to death. That is the outcast girl trying to fit in with the “it†crowd. The difference here is that the creators did manage to make the story quite enjoyable to the point where that little detail can be forgiven.
The art, which is done by five people (Richard Bonk, Andrew Mangum, Alan Kupperberg, Anthony Diecidue and Jerry Beck,) does turn out a lot better than is expected. Normally when that many hands go into something it turns into a disaster. These people have managed to make the comic look appealing, the movements smooth and everything consistent. The zombies do look like the typical high school kids that would pick on the unpopular kids. So much so that this could easily take place in a high school, thus the whole idea behind the comic in the first place.
“So… I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse and All I Got Was This Podcast†is a zombie/high school drama hybrid that anyone will find is a relief from the zombie stories out right now. It stands out, has an interesting story and stands out from the huge pile of zombie stuff that’s currently out now.
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