Review: Zombies Vs. Robots

Zombies Vs. Robots by Chris Ryall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rating 4 out of 5 |B+; Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Premise:

Humans discovered a technology which made time displacement possible. But, in an inverse case to the Terminator, organic matter gets annihilated during the trip. So, they created robots of various classes, to travel as proxies and collect necessary scientific information.

Something went wrong, it was postulated that one of the robots might’ve accidentally brought back a virus, either from the past or future. But this resulted in the spread of a zombie virus in the human world.

A portion of the human population succumbed to the virus. Another portion got turned into the undead, and preyed on those who remained uninfected. Perhaps in a bid to augment their fast dwindling fighting force, the humans commissioned various military class robots, to serve as a bulwark against the spread of the Zombies.

This proved to be a stop gap measure, as ultimately the planet was overrun by the Zombie horde, necessitating what remained of the human allied leadership to launch their nukes to scour the planet clean of the infestation, thus ending themselves in the process.

What remains of humanity are straggling bands of survival looking forwards to a bleak future. The remnants of the Zombie horde, now combat the remnants of the Robot army in the desolated earth.

This volume contains a series of short stories, about life in the zombie infested wasteland, where the protagonists are the robots, who, despite the death of their creatures, indifferently carry out their programmed tasks of zombie extermination. Their colorful personalities, as well as the devil may cry attitude at the end of the world, is what makes the comic entertaining.

Art Style

Robots vs Zombies utilizes a classic comic book strip style of artwork. Most pages are muted, reminiscent of a black & white illustrations, with shading & contrast of the monochrome coloring, used to convey depth & the environment. It is a curious combination of the use of blank space, as a substitute for the background. The panels are diverse, and often don’t clearly wrap up the action. Sometimes the actions spill over, which provides for a more engaging read. Curiously enough, many of the robot characters, in their art and demeanor, reminded me of Wall-E. Or rather their homicidal cousins.



But, seeing as this is an anthology of stories by different authors, the artstyle changes from panel to chapter. But that dark, grainy, gritty style is maintained. And where the illustrators chose to add color, they soak the panel in it, with varying gradations of color. Thus transitioning you from the bleak colorless wasteland, to chrome fueled mad max style action scenes, which really POP out.



In some pages, while the panels themselves are Black & white, there is a subtle bleeding effect of colors in the pages, as if heralding bloodshed. This gives an eerie feel to the pages.



In other pages, the background itself is muted, and shaded, while the main subject is vibrant and filled with life, which serves to further accentuate their emotions, even though said subject is a robot.



There was a homicidal mad scientist robot, that tortured zombies for kicks. Why didn't they make a longer story out of this?

Towards the end, the panels become more and more abstract & reminiscent of canvas paintings of Impressionism. They look so gorgeous, that I could make a painting out of them to hang on my walls.



Thoughts

The weak point of the series is arguably its story. With most of the narrative being oh so too short stories, even when an interesting premise & world building is set up, we don’t get to fully explore those aspects, and feel cheated.

I’m all for a more in depth adaptation for stories which are set in this dilapidated world. This would even benefit from an Animatrix like motion adaptation.



If the story is its weak point, the strength of the series is clearly its roster of sardonic, indifferent, cynical and colorful robot characters, with their devil may cry attitude. They don’t care that the human race is being exterminated due to the virus. They don’t care that the survivors are being threatened by zombies. They don’t care that civilization as we know it has been ground to extinction, due to human actions. They couldn’t give a flying f**k.



Given a choice, they’d go about their own business (that being whatever) rather than having to deal with humans and their undead problems. Unfortunately for them, whichever a**holes manufactured them, also hardwired instructions into their tin cans. Which prompts them to find and exterminate zombies at whichever chance. So, they go about this task, grumbling, cursing, even when this primary function of theirs no longer serves any purpose in face of human extinction.



So, much like Waste allocation Load lifters in Wall-E, they continue to do their job, day in, day out, until the final zombie is eliminated from the face of the earth. When that task is accomplished, one has to wonder what the last robot left on earth would do, now free of its obligations.

Will it look up to the star and let out a mechanical sigh of relief. Or will immediately shoot itself in the servos, so that it may end its tiresome existence. Thus leaving the earth truly a dead planet. Who knows?



If you like zombies, robots & post apocalyptic landscapes, you wouldn't regret picking up this book.

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