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 respect the deliberate pacing and for an East Coast guy, Condon is quite good at Southern atmosphere. That said, almost nothing beyond that really grabbed me here. There isn’t a very interesting hook, Tabby has yet to really show any promise as a protagonist and the art is pretty bland.

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.

Bit of a step down from last week. George’s big exposition dump was kind of a slog and it didn’t really add a ton of new dimension to his character and I feel like a good chunk of the jokes didn’t really land this time around.

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.

I don’t think Sean’s art is dynamic enough for a super long action sequence like we get in this issue. I honestly think this series has my least favorite art out of any of the Vertigo 2026 series. It’s nice to look at but a little stiff I think, at least compared to the really creative and unique work of Stipan and Pugh’s super expressive art. Anyways, this series continues to suffer from having the least interesting protagonist ever. It’s interesting that Condon gets compared to Brubaker so often because Brubaker’s greatest strength by far is his ability to write incredibly compelling, lived-in, and real characters.

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.

Great premise but I think this started to drag towards the end. This felt sharper when it was more slice-of-life and focused on characters who are still stuck in the same routines even though there’s no point to any of it anymore. As it went on, it didn’t explore that as much as the start promised. The art is also quite rough.

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 my favorite issue so far. It’s still going in a fairly predictable direction, but I think Poke and Mama both felt a little more alive this issue. Their internal monologues were both pretty well written and I appreciate that the end tees up Poke for a really nice conflict.

This was a fun start.

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