Published
By: Dark Horse Comics
Release
Date: November 6th
2013
For
a very simplified tower-defense game Plants vs Zombies has been an
epic success. One game made it to pretty much every platform under
the sun and people were happy to buy it over and over again. Plants
vs Zombies 2 has recently been released on iOS but fortunately I'm
not reviewing that here so you're saved my ranting diatribe on the
curse of fremium and the consumable approach to in-app purchases.
Instead I'm looking at a Plants vs Zombies comic book.
Plants
vs Zombies: Lawnmageddon is a hardcover book that collects the
previously digital exclusive comics that finished a six issue run in
August.
Aside
from the simple-but-adicting gameplay, the original game had a
wonderfully quirky sense of humour as well as a fun cartoony art
style. It was not, however, well known for an intricate plot, so I
thought it would be interesting to see how the world translated over
to comic book form.
Although
the game this is based on appealed to a wide range of age groups it
should be said that this is very much a children's comic. That's not
a bad thing, of course, but it's worth noting that the writing feels
like a comic based on a saturday morning cartoon series. The puns
come thick and fast and while more hit than miss you can usually be
sure that if you laugh at something the exact same joke will be
re-used a little later. Like the game, we open with an attack of
zombies and are soon introduced to the two main characters, Nate and
Patrice. I'm still not entirely sure why Patrice was in Nate's
treehouse but the two meet and zombies are out for brains.
Fortunately Patrice has a crazy uncle who might be able to help.
Crazy
Dave, the only on screen human from the game, is shoehorned into the
comic as the creator of the plant army. While it's nice to see him,
it is a little weird how his speech can go from nonsensical, “urgs,”
and, “args,” to coherent exposition and back again for no reason
at all.
The
82 pages do fly by at a quick pace but this could also be because
there's really not a lot of story here and what there is feels a
little incoherent; it not only feels like a collection of individual
issues but also like each issue was written by someone new and they
only had a brief description of the story so far. A major motivating
plot element from early on seems to be forgotten half way through and
the resolution is not only incredibly convenient but also a little
too abrupt.
The
artwork throughout is pretty good. The zombies look like they've
walked out of the game and the living humans look like they're
visiting from a 90's cartoon. I was a little distracted by the fact
that the two children seem to be based on Ben and Gwen Tennison from
the Ben 10 cartoon and given their personalities I don't think this
was entirely accidental.
As
with so many things to do with Plants vz Zombies it would be easy to
dismiss this as a cynical and lazy cash-grab and it wouldn't be
entirely unreasonable to do so. But there is enough humour here to
entertain younger fans of the game and it does have a certain charm that makes me think of Halloween specials. If it weren't for the fact that it comes out a week after Halloween I
would say this would be a perfect seasonal read. The digital comics
are still available, though, so perhaps it would be better to turn
down the lights and give those a read instead. I give it three and a
half cartoon zombies (and for those of you who are curious, it's the left
half).
