By Cat Wyatt
Not Alone is a really interesting new series. I actually had to sit down and think for a while before writing my review for it. It both is and isn’t a story; which sounds strange, but bear with me. It all starts out in the middle of a story, and it ends in the middle too (though I suspect there will be another volume, so that isn’t exactly true). That means the focus is more on the characters than on what is happening around them.
Our main characters meet by chance after the world has ended. Well, that sounds rather dramatic, doesn’t it? From what I’ve gathered the zombie apocalypse has occurred (that or some humans started craving human flesh and lost the ability to talk and think), affecting most of the people around (except our main characters, of course). Like I said, the "why" isn’t as important. What is important is that our characters found each other, despite all odds. I mean if the world did have a zombie problem, what are the odds that a lone survivor would find another? Let alone another survivor with good intentions (we’ve all seen the Walking Dead, so I don’t need to clarify this statement).
Together our characters go on trying to find resources while also managing to get themselves into bizarre situations. Both are remarkably good at surviving zombies, though I suspect one enjoys this act more than the other (but then again, he has amnesia, so what does he know?). The absurdity of it all helps to drive home the point – that the characters matter the most here. I know I’ve said that before, but I feel the need to empathize that point again.
Despite the horrible situation the survivors are in (i.e., being stuck in Zombieland) there’s an odd amount of humor to this series. Sometimes it’s something little, like the manic grin on a character's face as she slaughters a zombie, and sometimes it’s the way the characters interact with each other (say by using technique number forty-five to wake the other up).
The series should be absurd, but it’s oddly human in its own right. The focus on human nature and human interaction via forced circumstances… it’s pretty brilliant. It wasn’t until I took the time to think about the series did I realize just how much time and effort was put into it. I went from finding the series kind of cute to pretty impressing. I love series like that – the ones that dropkick you with their points. If you’re looking for a food for thought series, or just something that’ll make you smile by its incongruous nature, give this one a try (and bonus, it’s a webcomic so you can read it for free).
The artwork is more on the simple and sketchy side, but that sort of fits with the whole thing. The artwork isn’t there to be pretty; it’s simply a means to an end; it allows the author to tell us the story she wants, nothing more, and nothing less.
Score: 4/5
Not Alone: A Graphic Novel
Author: Sophocles Sapounos
Self-Published