Review: Amalgama Space Zombie #4

STORY

From Action Lab Comics comes a new femme fatale, Amalgama, the self titled space zombie. This little moniker is a little confusing since the cover claims she is also a Zombie Tramp, Vampblade, Dollface and once you get into the comic you realise she is also a cyborg who is powered by ki energy. So, yeah this is a bit all over the place. I’m not sure who to direct my observations at since there are no credits to tell me which of the creators did what on this book.

This book would have really benefited from some sort of recap blurb to clue new readers into to what’s going on here, because this comic moves fast and never looks back. I’m sure its all fine if you have been reading the series up to this point but authors must recall that every comic is someone’s first comic and if you are not supplying the information in the narrative some sort of primer would help. Now to be fair, by the end of the comic I do learn enough about the story to get a general idea of the plot but there were several moments where I was either a little lost or didn’t understand why certain things were possible in the course of the story.

There isn’t much in this issue to grab onto character wise. The only character we get much contact with is Amalgama and she isn’t very fleshed out in this issue. I can’t speak to the previous issues but in this issue I just don’t know much about her other than she has and speaks (I’m presuming) in three or four different voices (as demonstrated by multi-colored text bubbles) and that she has no memory of who she is. You do get some demonstration of her abilities which is both helpful and a little confusing. The cyborg arms are pretty obvious and the zombies eating brains idea works, but I have no idea why her hair can animate or how one of her cyborg arms is immune to a device generating some sort of attraction field to hold her in place isn’t affected by this trap.

On the plus side the story moves at a brisk pace. It feels like a return to the format of 90s Image comics. Lots of stuff happens, and the action quotient is kept high to shore up a light story. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with this approach, it certainly worked for titles like The Savage Dragon back in the day, but Larsen also wrote a character one could become invested in fairly quickly. In a little as a single page he gave us moments which allowed us to empathize with Dragon in between pages of insane action. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad comic at all, I just wish I had a bit more to go on.

ART

The art is pretty ok. It’s clearly manga inspired considering the character models and some of the creature designs. Unfortunately it lacks the dynamism of your average manga. A lot of the panels are very flat angled, lacking interesting camera angles to add to the drama or action. The page flow, however, is clear and there were only a couple of minor issues with the storytelling.

The colors were particularly good and really helps to punch up the art. It enhances the line art with detail but without over rendering. The colors are vibrant and really makes the scenary pop and helps to add focus where needed.

LETTERING

Now this has to be mentioned, while I’m a fan of customized word balloons to denote special vocal characteristics it it paramount that these word balloons be legible. The white lettering against the pink and the neon green (especially the green) word balloons are incredibly difficult to read.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This isn’t a bad comic and I think it might have some fun things going on, but I just don’t get enough out of this issue to really recommend it. I’m a bit 50/50 on this one.

SCORE: 2.5 out of 5

REVIEW: AMALGAMA SPACE ZOMBIE 4
Creators:Â Jason Martin, Dan Mendoza, Bryan Seaton