Yes we do appear to have another case of ‘Splash Zombies into Absolutely Anything’, thanks for asking:

When we were children we all read the classic storybook stories of Red Riding Hood, The Three Blind Mice, Jack and Jill, the Gingerbread Man and many other stories that taught many of us valuable lessons in life.

What if that world did not exist because of a unknown zombie virus that spread like wildfire throughout the storybook world and turned this lovable characters into brain loving flesh eating monsters!?

Welcome to StoryBook World 2012 one of many story book worlds in the storybook universe, but this storybook has been devastated by that unknown zombie virus, turning many storybook residents into flesh eating monsters.

Who can save them?!, Who can stop this madness?!, Who can kick major zombie butt plus have the fashion sense and look really hot doing it?!

It is too early in the morning for this stuff, I’m telling you.

*sigh*

Well, seeing as there was a free preview available, I went to download it and document the atrocities, as it were.

Here’s a brief segue into another ZRC pet peeve. If you’re giving away a free preview, just give it away. Don’t make me sign up for an account at some e-tailer in order to get the free thing. If you’re literally giving something away you *should* want to make it as easy as possible for the user to get the sample; that’s the point. Having to feed some website I’ve never heard of before my user information, then put the comic into my cart, then check out with it, find out that the comic site’s checkout process doesn’t work with my browser, copy the download link over into another browser, THEN get it to move and finally obtain a PDF is a waste of everybody’s time.

Another critique of this preview? If you’re giving people 7 pages, 2 of them shouldn’t be the same splash panel (once used for the cover, once as an interior illustration) with a third being the title page. Again, defeating the purpose of a preview here.

Rant over. How’s the comic?

In a word: ghastly.

In terms of plot the comic seems to be a retread of Marvel Zombies: a peaceful alternate world is suddenly ‘infected’ with a Zombie virus/Apocalypse of some sort and all your cherished fictional characters are turned into either grizzled survivors or flesh-devouring ghouls.

Naturally this means a before and after page, much like time travel stories often involve scenes with lots of clocks. Here’s the after for you:

Unfortunately, grizzled survivors and copious gore are about all the comic has going for it. The art is confusing, squiggly and crammed into the panels, making it hard at times to follow what’s happening. The story, what little one sees of it, is as mentioned highly derivative/familiar with the already detestable MZ formula.

Zombies are of course treated as a scourge, a plague, something to be eradicated with a shotgun. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Based on this admittedly small sample the ZRC still feels comfortable giving ‘Goldilocks in Zombie Land’ our lowest rating, that of Living Supremacist, for consisting of violent propaganda in favor of Anti-Zombie mayhem.

Tags: Comics, Zombie Flavored Creativity Substitute, ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, May 2nd, 2011 at 9:27 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.