ZVRC: Zombies Vs. Robots Classic #2 - Image Comics

ZVRC: ZOMBIES VS. ROBOTS CLASSIC No. 2, April 2022

For those readers encountering this particular “re-presentation of the oft-forgotten Zombies Vs. Robots series by Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood” for the first time, the creative duo’s adventure “Inherit The Earth!” will certainly provide them with a bit of a head-scratching storyline. In fact, this publication’s forty-one page long plot arguably leaps all over the place with robots sacrificing themselves so another automaton can start-up a television broadcasting company, the Undead’s infection supposedly being able to contaminate androids, and a doomsday droid deciding the only way to save the planet is to nuke its surface asunder with a plethora of atomic devices.

Happily however, whilst the logic behind many of these threads debatably don’t withstand too much scrutiny, they do help depict a horrifying post-apocalyptic world utterly devoid of both common sense and sound-decision making. Such stupefying chaos really does help ‘sell’ the dysfunctional nature of the robots’ desperate last hope to save our civilization from its flesh-eating threat, and also provides some genuinely intriguing notions as to just how mankind could endure so cataclysmic a conundrum through the multiple cloning of a single, surviving baby girl, with any semblance of sanity remaining; “The human child’s brain patterns can be used to preserve its consciousness in a robot form, and stabilize our circxxxuits at the same time.”

Perhaps this book’s most beguiling concept though sits with its notion that a single “drop of infected zombie blood” inadvertently falling upon a Guardbot’s sole, eye-like sensor, would be enough to instantly turn any machines connected to its artificial group consciousness into brain-chomping bezerkers. This idea is truly terrifying, especially when the disease-ridden mechanisms quickly become the only line of defence between the helpless infant and a fast-moving wall of Walking Dead - all of whom want to feast upon the final living morsel our world can apparently offer.

Undeniably providing the shambolic robots’ great plan with an even stronger sense of desperation are Ashley Wood’s incredible-looking layouts. The oft-times scratchy, rather undisciplined nature of the Australian concept designer’s artwork genuinely imbues this comic’s storytelling with an all-pervading sense of unapologetic bedlam, and also helps sell the sheer desolation on show across the entire Earth once the nukes fatally begin to fall in an almost homicidal effort to protect any remaining people from the innumerable zombie horde.

The regular cover art to "ZVRC: ZOMBIES VS. ROBOTS CLASSIC" #2 by Ashley Wood