I love reading comics and I specially love reading comics in Hindi. I don’t know the reason behind this strange fixation of my mind because when it comes to reading novels, scripting stories, penning poems or writing articles, I have always preferred English. It is only the comics where I enjoy the most, if it is in Hindi. That is why, even in case of new publications like bullseye, swayambhu, maze etc, I always opt for the Hindi edition.
This is the reason why my entire comic dissection blog is in Hindi, but today for a change, I decided to perform the dissection in English. The primary reason for this change in language, is because this comics is completely in English. I was not able to find the Hindi edition or maybe they don’t even exist.
So without further ado let’s begin the task of ripping apart Chariot comics presentation ‘Zombie rising volume 1 and volume 2’.
Zombie rising is a prequel to India’s first zombie origin film ‘Rise of the zombie’. The film itself was an extremely low budget, low quality and low on entertainment piece of trash and as someone who simply loves the zombies genre, I don’t even acknowledge the existence of this film.
So when I came to know about the fact that chariot comics released two part prequel to this pathetic film, I had almost zero expectations, or shall I say negative expectations, and yet I bought both the comics because that is how crazy I am for this industry.
Zombie Rising volume 1 and 2
Story – Devaki Singh
Art – Tarun Kumar Sahu and Tamal Saha
Creative director – Luke Kenny
1. Story
Volume 1 – volume 1 sets up the story very nicely and builds up quite a bit of suspense. We are introduced to the major players in the story and get just a few glimpses of the evil incarnate, that is zombies. I especially loved the opening act titled ‘The Bahadur incident‘. The final reveal of the zombies hidden in the basement of an abandoned bungalow, in the middle of the Jungle increased interest for the second part.
Volume 2 – volume 2 begins where the volume 1 ended and for few pages the story develops very nicely and then it becomes a blubbering mess, where one gets confused as to what exactly is happening in which frame, who is dying, who is surviving and from where are the zombies coming. All the build up in first part is watered down by some rushed writing and lazy execution.
2. Art
The art in both the comics is okay and kind of compliments the eerie setting of the story. But at some places the art appears to be plastic, which means the faces of the characters look like basic drawing with no lines or wrinkles on the face. I also didn’t like the picturisation of zombies in some frames because they look less like zombies and more like ghouls.
To be honest, when I purchased these two comics I had this sinking feeling in my heart that I am wasting 200 rupees but after reading both the volume I can say that I wasted only 100 rupees on volume 2.
My Verdict – 5/10 (1 point only for volume 2)
Second part meeting expectations set by first is a very rare event. I think people should put it in list of soon to be going extinct phenomenons. Ha ha. Liked that you used english in this article but an hindi article about an english comic would be that much fun to read.