Originally posted on Irish Comic News (17/May/2017)
Zomben #1
Written by Mike Heneghan.
Line art by Abel Cicero.
Colour art by Manoli Martinez.
Letters by Aditya Bidikar.Zomben is a four part mini-series following the adventures of Ben. Ben is trying to live a normal life following the ‘Multipocalypse’. What most people don’t know is that Ben is infected with a zombie plague.
Given that this is issue one of four, the focus of the comic is to familiarise the readers with the world of Ben and his family. Ben lives with his parents and younger sister. His family have managed to avoid becoming infected with the zombie plague. His parents are doing their best to keep Bens secret. Should his secret be revealed he faces almost certain destruction from neighbours, teachers and the wider community.
The premise of the comic and the teaser art I had seen online made it very unlikely that I wouldn’t enjoy Zomben. The writing (by Dublin-based Heneghan) made the comic feel quite familiar, particularly with regard to the dialogue. There was something about it that made it feel like this wasn’t the first comic of Zomben I had read. The choice of narrator was interesting to as it had me curious as to what means for how the story will play out.
The art team of Cicero (line art) and Martinesz (colour art) do a great job building upon the work of Heneghan., As this is a comic that has children as the focal characters, the art is bright and cheerful for the most part. The comic naturally has moments of horror and peril (it is a zombie comic after all!) but those scenes avoid being overly grim or grotesque. I did really like the use of a comic drawn by the narrator as means to give the readers some basics with regards to Multipocalypse.
The lettering by Bidikar is well done for the most part. There’s plenty of dialogue as well as captions throughout the comic. None of which is obstructing the flow of the story or artwork. Though I was curious as to why the infants small bit of dialogue seems to be lettered almost in the same way as the sound of the door bell ringing. It didn’t spoil the enjoyment of the comic, just merely wondering why it was lettered that way.
Overall, issue one delivered what I had hoped it would when I added it to my pull list. A fun comic about a child zombie trying to survive in a world where most of it want to destroy zombies. The addition of the covers for remaining three issue in the back of issue one really has me wondering where the story will take Ben next.
Issue 1 is in shops now.