Category: Reviews

Post-Apocalyptic Reading – Impressions: ACHERON by Bryon Morrigan

Posted on by anninyn

Description of Bryon Morrigan’s Acheron[1. This book was provided for review byPermuted Press]

Captain Nate Leathers thought being a soldier on the frontlines in Iraq was hard enough. And when his convoy is attacked and he’s thrown in a dungeon by insurgents, he can’t imagine things can get any worse. But then the world is turned upside down.

When he escapes, Leathers finds the city of Basra shrouded in green mist and under siege from nightmare creatures far more horrific than any terrorist. Walking corpses. Tentacled beasts. Giant slithering things. Ancient creatures risen from the depths.

Alone in the city Leathers will have to draw on all his training to survive, let alone stop the mist from spreading. Monsters beyond imagination are closing in … and some of them are human.

 

It’s been quite some time between my receiving this book and my reviewing it, and sadly I think that says a lot.

Continue reading “Post-Apocalyptic Reading – Impressions: ACHERON by Bryon Morrigan”

First Impressions: Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon

Posted on by tavia.

[wpspoiler name=”First Impressions vs. Reviews” ]First Impressions are based on demos while Reviews are based on entire games.[/wpspoiler]

Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon  is a video game based on Ugly Americans, which is a sitcom on Comedy Central based on a New York City where all manner of monster lives in harmony– harmony being the same crazy, terrible, apathetic way the city is at present. In the show, Mark Lilly is a nobody in a dead end job with a zombie named Randall for a roommate. Continue reading “First Impressions: Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon”

What you should be afraid of.

Posted on by anninyn

Whole psychological theories have been based on what shows up in our horror films. I could go on and on about them, but as I only have an A level in Psychology, I’m sure I would be ill-informed.

But one theory that I do agree with is that fear of monsters – of zombies, vampires, demons, whatever – is simply a way of dealing with our awareness of our own capability to be monsters.

Continue reading “What you should be afraid of.”

Post-Apocalyptic Graphic Novel (Comic): Sweet Tooth Vol. 1

Posted on by tavia.

Sweet Tooth, by Jeff Lemire (both art and story!), is an apocalyptic comic that benefits from being both familiar and unusual. The concepts, on the surface, allow for a easy suspension of disbelief while the details will keep readers enthralled.

Seven years ago a sickness struck the world down. If you weren’t sick, you would be eventually.

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The children would have been the hope of the future, since all the children are immune to the sickness. Unfortunately, every child born since the sickness was boron a human-animal hybrid.

Sweet Tooth stars Gus, a nine-year-old boy –with deer antlers growing out of his head–, who has been raised by his religious and paranoid father in a cabin in the woods ever since the whole world got sick and the only children born were part animal.

Early in the comic, Gus loses his father to either sickness or old age. Shortly after going out to burry the old man, Gus gets himself either rescued (or hoodwinked) by a badass loner named Jepperd. Jepperd promises to take Gus to “The Preserve,” where kids like Gus (human animal hybrids) are safe. Having only ever learned what his father taught him about people and the world, Gus is native but not stupid. He’s had almost no interaction with others but still manages to be kind without losing his instinct for self preservation.

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Sweet Tooth manages to create a humor-violence-emotion hybrid. Each character is dimensional, reasonable, and interesting.

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Without saying too much, appearing too hokey, or over developed everyone is still fleshed out enough to be fresh and charming in their own, sometimes sadistic, ways.

I totally recommend this series.

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But, just in case my enthusiasm isn’t convincing enough, you can read this free preview of issue #1 (Volume 1 is a compilation of issue #1 through #5).

How can playing Skyrim teach you to survive the apocalypse?

Posted on by anninyn

After all, wouldn’t Fallout 3, Rage, Brink, Fallout New Vegas and all the other post apocalyptic games be a better bet?

Well, yes and no.

Yes because of the obvious. Those other games are all set in apocalyptic or post apocalyptic worlds, and for that reason alone you’d think they had an advantage.

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And, in fact, I have used Fallout as a survival simulator, though for some reason in real life I can’t carry a mini nuke launcher. So unfair.

But there are many things Skyrim can teach you that they can’t. And it can teach it two-fold- once from the in game experiences, and once from the actual experience of playing it.

Continue reading “How can playing Skyrim teach you to survive the apocalypse?”

NYCC: CROSSED Post Apocalyptic Ultra-violence

Posted on by Safety and Survival Council

At New York Comic Con I was not only able to pick up a copy of  Crossed in the exhibit hall, but I was also able to shuffle some three feet to my left to have it signed by artist Jacen Burrows.

I, unfortunately, did not ask him if his gory art makes it difficult for him to sleep– though I’m sure it does.

Crossed is a super-violent story of a world not simply gone mad, but  gone to live out their most depraved and violent dreams. Continue reading “NYCC: CROSSED Post Apocalyptic Ultra-violence”

Post-Apocalyptic Comic: ORCHID #1

Posted on by tavia.

This week I was able to preview the full first issue of the new comic from Dark Horse Orchid.

I can safely use my new favorite phrase to describe this comic because it’s recommended for 18+ audiences– Orchid is an Amazeballs Apocalyizgasm.

The preview on the Dark Horse site is mildly misleading. It starts of very slowly with a lot of backstory and foreshadowing. No characters for the first four pages even. We learn that this world is set far in the future of our world, which has been ravaged by flooding, wide-spread animal mutations, and the general demise of human society.

At first I was a bit skeptical, thinking I’d be reading a storybook with a James Earl Jones-esque narrator telling me about how things were once and how sad they’ve become and that, maybe one day, there’ll be a hero fight against the corrupt power and rage against the machine[1. Pun totally intended. ORCHID is the creation of Rage Against The Machine’s former guitarist, Tom Morello].

Then exciting things started happening. There was suddenly a band of rebels I found myself cheering for and a cause I vaguely understood and wholly supported. Continue reading “Post-Apocalyptic Comic: ORCHID #1”

Apocalyptic Entertainment: Terra Nova

Posted on by Safety and Survival Council
Fair warning:

I find it hard to get on-board with shows where the first person to die is Unnamed Black Bad Guy. Quickly followed by the group to teenage idiots suffering the serious injuries of Frantic Black Girl Who Flees and Black Guy Who Serves as Useless Main Character’s Shield.

Do you ever watch a new show and get the feeling you shouldn’t get too attached because it won’t last? Thinking in the back of your mind, maybe six other people in the entire world are watching this.

This is how I feel about Terra Nova. I’ll watch for as long as they air it; though I’m not expecting that to be longer than half a season. Why? Because it’s really expensive and just really okay.

The story and characters aren’t so gripping and compelling that I’m forgetting to eat or even forgetting to fold laundry so I can pay full attention.

The family the show focuses on is a family of five and I can only remember the name of the youngest daughter –because she’s a source of conflict by existing. She had maybe five lines, but Mom, Dad, Daughter 1, and Son are just not super engaging.

Continue reading “Apocalyptic Entertainment: Terra Nova”

Post-Apocalyptic Graphic Novels (Comics): Y The Last Man

Posted on by tavia.
*This whole post contains spoilers for most of Volume 1 of Y: The Last Man*

In Y: The Last Man Yorick is the last man alive on Earth after a random, sudden thing kills all the men in all the world, and shit if I don’t wish he’d just kill himself so those poor women could just wither in peace.

Never before have I been so against a protagonist’s survival. He’s so dumb in a gross know-it-all way that I want him to get shot by the heavily stereotyped Republicans’ wives.

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I want his poor monkey, Ampersand, to run away and maybe be the father of a new human-monkey hybrid species of the future. I want anything but for stupid Yorick to continue being a walking, preachy, tropey, asshole.

Frist there’s: “Wahh, I’m in love and that’s important.”

Then he’s all: “You women need to band together and act like civilized last people alive and do our forefathers proud.”

(Lady President promptly shut him up saying: “These women have suffered more than you can imagine. They don’t deserve to be lectured by a self-righteous child.[1. That, unlike the others, is actually a direct quote from issue #3]”)

Then he’s like: “I get that people are actively trying to kill me but I don’t want to hide from them. They’re just angry women. Is that a bear? Let’s poke it with this stick to check.

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Continue reading “Post-Apocalyptic Graphic Novels (Comics): Y The Last Man”

A Mini-Review of Contagion

Posted on by tavia.

 

I watched Contagion this weekend with Husband. Duh, I loved it. It wasn’t a hype machine for crazy-pants pseudo -science or mutants or zombies. It was crazy-pants really, real.

Unlike most of the post-apocalyptic stories we see in entertainment, there was an unsettling realism to Contagion. The fear that was so easily fueled and exploited just made sense. There are enough people in the world with enough mistrust to easily create chaos unrelated to the  direct source of danger.

The movie followed a number of people in different places as far as the virus’ path, place in society, and ability actually do something for themselves or others.

It was interesting (and disturbing) seeing the little things break people down faster then the actual virus. The idea that the dead were only about 1%, give or take, of the population (maybe, as they only alluded to it), was scary.  Society just fell apart.  That’s one (maybe two) out of every one hundred people…

I might sound insensitive but, I honestly didn’t think I’d notice. The thing isn’t how long it would take us to notice though, it’s how long it would take the government to respond. Once they start hiding the President and organizing the national guard people start too panic.

We only know what we see on the news and we assume the government knows so much more than we do. We assume they know about science, suspects, cures, and have more than enough food for almost everyone. We assume they, like we would, well take care of their family and friends first and everyone else will have to prove themselves. When we take a good, hard look at ourselves we’ll realize that we probably don’t have the whatever-it-is that someone’s looking for when they decide to save a life at the expense of long term planning for people they actually give a shit about.

Contagion was more about the infectious nature of rhetoric and rumors than the damage done by actual the virus itself.

I say it’s definitely worth the watch but maybe not worth the money to see it in a theater.