Full disclosure: I have an irrational fear of zombies. They terrify me, yet I am somehow drawn to reading about them, watching shows about them, listening to podcasts about them. It’s a repulsion-attraction thing. Kind of like I am with watersports.
When at Chicago Comics on Wednesday April 4, I spotted “FANBOYS vs. ZOMBIES #1″. Three things made me pick it up: Zombies, the art, it was $1.
First the good news. It was $1
Now the bad news. I want my dollar back.
The art is decent in a “Jay & Silent Bob” cartoon kind of way although the supposed loser nerds are drawn way hotter than real fanboys are. They all look like Emma Frost and Kitty Pryde and Barry Allen and Mark Grayson and not like real people at all.
While I can overlook that, I can’t overlook the horrible dialogue. It’s like an adult trying to seem cool by speaking like a teenager even though teens don’t actually speak like adults think they do. Have you ever heard someone say “It’s chill. I’m hooked to the gills on Advil!” Yo. Snap. OMG. WTF. KMN (That means ‘kill me now’ and I just made it up because the writing gave me a headache and now I need the aforementioned Advils.)
So basically a group of hot nerds are at Comic-Con and someone dumps an energy drink on a hot dog throws it away and then some idiot eats it out of the trash and zombies everywhere.
The characters are unremarkable and the story is peppered with too many in-jokes. It’s like Sam Humphries and Jerry Gaylord (writer and artist respectively) decided to create a story that would only appeal to their small group of friends rather than a larger audience.
This comic is 22 pages long and I started to skim around page 6 then flipped to the end then gave it to a co-worker who refused to read it and said “Um…no. Throw that in the trash can.”
SKIP IT.
