As soon as I read the title I was in. What's not to love? Zombies, good!
Robots, good!
Vs (which implies fighting), good!
This is the first in an ongoing series. As such you expect it to start with a bang (or at least I did). Unfortunately the majority of the first issue, which is split into three stories, is very slow. There's a few good things that will hopefully get dissected more in future issues. That being said a lot of this first issue is a lot of set-up and little punch.
The first story takes place on earth after some catastrophe that has left the world’s population turned to zombies. We follow a drone-bot, looks like a floating eye with four arms, exploring the planet’s surface to find out how safe it is. A lot of this is slow exploration with a lot of info-dumping. He stumbles on a horde of zombies and wonders how they are still going (what are they feeding on?). Then he discovers a portal, which he goes through and finds a giant warbot destroying zombies. Only something is wrong with it.
This first story is a lot like early episodes of Lost, it raises a lot of questions. Who is controlling the robots? Are they sentient? Are the zombies sentient? Who or what are they feeding on? Who is going to be our avatar through this story?
The second is a quick two-pager that shows a boy walking his robot, to find his dad.
The third story 'the orphan' follows a young girl. She's dirty and dishevelled from avoiding zombies and robots in the apocalyptic wasteland. She finds bits and bobs to put together a makeshift robot. Which ends when she turns it on and they decide they are friends.
This story was a bit lacklustre it's not a very new idea so they could have skipped a lot of the earlier panels of her foraging and cut right to her turning it on. Again we don't really get much but a few questions at the end.
The artwork in the first story is very sketch-like. The backgrounds are nice enough, I liked the shot of the space station with the opening cryo-pods (who are in them?). The characters being a few robots and the zombies a lacking a certain something. Maybe it's just that we don't know who we'll be following through this ongoing story yet?
The artwork in the orphan story is a bit more traditional. While I found this slightly easier to drink in through my eyeballs it didn't quench their thirst.
As far as first issues go it's not the greatest, but it does hint at things to come that might be more interesting. I'm still excited by the premise and I'm hoping they pull things together next issues for more intriguing images.
Oh and if you read this and totally disagree, then don't stay silent let me know in the comments.
Score: 1/5
Writer: Chris Ryall and Steve Niles Artist: Anthoney Diecedue, Val Meyerik, Ashley Wood Colorist: Jay Fotos Publisher: IDW Publishing Price: $3.99 Release Date: 1/21/15 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital