For those who don’t know, Free Comic
Book Day is an annual event where, on the first Saturday of each May,
participating comic shops are given special comics by participating publishers
to give away for free (this can also extend to figures for the popular Heroclix
tabletop game); these comics are mostly reprints of a company’s older comic,
but can also feature original material (IDW has used the event twice recently
to kickstart a Transformers-related series). Each year, there is also a
(lesser-known) follow-up event on the last Saturday in October called Halloween
ComicFest, which is essentially Free Comic Book Day Part 2, but usually
features different free comics for distribution, often featuring
Halloween-themed books in the line-up (this is also a mixture of reprints and
original material). Today was one such Halloween ComicFest, and one of the
comics up for grabs was a mini-comic from publisher Dark Horse, a print preview
of a digital series called Plants vs. Zombies: Timepocalypse (in a similar
fashion to the SDCC version of Plants vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon). Aside from
having a funny subtitle, this series is meant to tie in with the mobile game
Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time. Though this is only the beginning of a
larger story, I decided to review it anyway to see how well this comic does
with interesting the reader in wanting to read more. Having read it, I can say
wholeheartedly that this does the job well.
Following the events of Plants vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon, Dr. Edgar Zomboss builds a Sun Vaccum that will, as the
name implies, absorb all sunlight so that zombies can feast on brains
unimpeded. However, when he tells a zombie to make some Pop Smarts (Strawberry
flavor), the zombie puts them in the Sun Vaccum instead of the toaster, causing
it to explode and open a portal, scattering the Sun Vaccum’s pieces throughout time.
Zomboss then orders the zombies to go through and retrieve the scattered parts.
Paul Tobin returns as the writer for
this comic, which he revealed to me when I got Lawnmageddon signed at
Comic-Con, and he does as amazing a job as ever. There’s plenty of humor abound
in this snippet of Timepocalypse, and I enjoyed every moment of it, since it’s
the kind that fits within the Plants vs. Zombies universe. We also get to see
how Nate, Patrice, and Crazy Dave are doing in this, as they are the main human
characters, and so far the story does well with fleshing them out from the
previous story. Ron Chan also returns as artist (and presumably Matthew J. Rainwater
as colorist; the credits are listed in an ad for the digital release), and they
again prove to be a great compliment to Tobin’s style of writing and add
greatly to the humor value of the story, in addition to making the characters
very lively and accurate to the source.
The Halloween ComicFest version of
Plants vs. Zombies: Timepocalypse is a great way to get fans of the Plants vs.
Zombies comic a reason to come back and make them want to see what happens
next. The creative team from Lawnmageddon returns for this series, which is
good as I think they did a wonderful job with the previous story and it seems
the two will share a similar tonality and enjoyment level as a result. As a
preview, I think it managed to hook me once again and I would recommend Plants
vs. Zombies fans check this out via its digital release or the inevitable
physical hardback; I personally am going to wait for the latter before I review
the full comic in the future, mainly because I prefer physical releases. In any
case, if you haven’t already and are interested (especially as a fan of the
games), I would also recommend checking out the Lawnmageddon comic, as it,
while not entirely required, provides some background on the events of
Timepocalypse.
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