The Rumble's Profile

Super generic post apocalypse with a slight horror slant. Way too little dialogue for how mediocre the art is.

Some cool visuals and I appreciate that it doesn’t lean too far into pastiche, but it ultimately feels very hollow. There’s almost nothing to latch onto character-wise or story-wise. The art is good but not good enough to carry. There is occasional comedy but enough to call this truly funny.

I didn’t care for the change in perspective. Zombie-developing-feelings is a fairy unoriginal premise, but I think the ideas of activism and passive cruelty offered a really unique perspective that spoke to Deniz’ strengths. There isn’t much of that in this issue and it mostly feels like a generic zombie story. Like many of Camp’s stories, the emotional beats can err on cloying and the characters are a bit thin.

This is basically just a fire hose of exposition and considering how much of it there is, I don’t actually feel this added much to the first issue.

The Zombie Council was kind of interesting, if a little on the nose. Besides that, I really don’t think this added too much to the previous two issues and like most Deniz Camp comics, the characters are just really not that engaging.

The hype behind this is so odd. Some good laughs here and there and it obviously goes down very easily, but it’s really nothing special. The story is too trite to be interesting and not self-aware enough to be clever.

The pacing grinds to a halt to introduce the whole town and this issues mostly just retreads ground covered in issue 1.

It’s not the most eventful issue, but I did like that there was more of a focus on Ezra’s backstory this time around. I still find him unfortunately quite dull, but it helps to see his virtuous side with his history in the police and how it ended. This one doesn’t progress the mystery too much and as a result comes off feeling a but more like straight-up noir than the adventure hybrid of the last two issues. I think that makes some of the super cliched elements stick out a bit more because it’s not as novel if it isn’t taking full advantage of the premise.

While the premise is very unoriginal, the socially conscious context in which Deniz is framing it seems promising. That said, I still found this to be a pretty slow start. None of the characters are really compelling and despite all the world building, I can’t say I find this take on the zombie apocalypse to be particularly memorable.

I do think Starks’ writing works best when he’s illustrating it himself. It highlights the silliness a bit more. I still think this is a fun series and it provides a nice complement to the other, more serious Vertigo relaunch series. Eddie gets his first bit of real character development this issue by helping his dad. Obviously, that needed to start happening sooner rather than later. So many people were turned off of this series by the first issue because of how unlikable he was. While I do find him a bit grating at times, it’s also hard for me not to appreciate the fact that he has a really strong personality that jumps off the page. That’s more than I can say for the other protagonists of new Vertigo like Ezra Cain and Poke.

This was a fun start.

Probably my favorite first issue out of the new Vertigo relaunch.