Started reading and found the art style very gruesome, and I had trouble following the story. While I am grateful for getting this ARC unfortunately this is not my style of graphic novel. It definitely leans way too much into the horror genre for my personal taste.

I’m not entirely sure what I expected going into this, but it’s not what I got. Zombie Makeout Club sounds like something out of Tina Belcher’s erotic friend fiction. What I learned, after reading the entire manga and then doing some googling, is that Zombie Makeout Club is a brand of clothing sold at places like Hot Topic and Spencer’s, catering to fans of manga and Junji Ito. The story itself is called DeathWish.

The art is cool, but the plot is lacking. This is a horror manga, so of course it has its share of gore and violence. There’s no world building. This is the first volume, so I expected a little more of that. It’s about a teenager who is brought back to life after committing suicide. The description of this book states that she is piecing together her fragmented memories and trying to find out why she was resurrected, but if I hadn’t read the description, I would not have gotten that from reading the book. The characters kept referring to a backstory that isn’t included in the book.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ for me. I found myself lingering between pages just exploring the art. Fans of Junji Ito are going to find this manga unappealing. If you’ve ever read his work, you know his imaginative storytelling and artwork are on another level. However, I think it would be right at home in the hands of the folks who love the clothing brand.

Big thanks to Peter Richardson, Diamond Book Distributors/ABLAZE, and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. You can pre-order Zombie Makeout Club Vol. 1 on Amazon in multiple formats and begin reading it on November 22, 2022.

Beautiful art and i like the premise. Though i was a little surprised by the gore, so heads up if that’s not for you. The story was a bit confusing.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for givning me a chance to read this.

Yeah this book is literally just filled with gore and violence. I hated it. There wasn't much of a story and the art was so busy and clustered it was hard to tell what was going on.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, this book was a massive hit for me. I was really drawn into this book by its beautiful cover and interesting synopsis.
 
This book was kind of confusing, to say the least. I felt the story was super rushed, non-existent, all over the place  super chaotic.
 
When it is the first volume in a series, I tend to be open-minded because that’s where the introduction to the characters and the world building etc. But this didn’t even do that well. We were given a page with the character’s names, pictures, and a bit of background about them, and that’s it. The story just expects you to know who these people are just by reading that character page.
 
The art style was just beautiful. I loved it.
 
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it because I didn’t like it.. Will I read the second volume? No, I don’t think I will.
 
Thank you to Netgalley and Diamond Book Distributors for providing me with an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My reviews are done in video format. I recommend following the link below to view the content as I've intended it.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR9V3QV1/

Hello and welcome to the Warmadillo Inc Board Review of Zombie Makeout Club. For full disclosure a copy of this book was provided for free by the publisher for the purpose of this review. Now let's get things started with our opening statements.

Warmadillo On the Desk
I want to start things off by issuing a content warning for graphic imagery, suicide, and sexual abuse. Zombie Makeout Club is the story of Yume, a high school girl pushed to suicide after the death of her older sister. She then awakens in a strange laboratory, brought back to life from the morbid experiments and machinations of a character known as Gasmask. If she wants to stay alive, Yume must fight and kill her way through the facility to gain her freedom. The general idea is solid enough, but the execution is extremely weak. There's no way around it, this title is very poorly written. Relying extensively on flashbacks and stilted exposition to deliver the narrative and character motivations. I really could not wait to be done with this.

Warmadillo
It's a cold day in hell when On the Desk and I agree but that's where we find ourselves. In theory this is a story that should appeal directly to me as a lover of horror and edgy content. Unfortunately, Zombie Makeout Club fails to ever evolve beyond a collection of pictures. At no point did this become a cohesive story that I could get invested in. The characters are all shitty people without any of the depth to justify it. I understand that they are meant to be products of a traumatic past but it never feels earned. It's just tragedy for the sake of it.

Warmadillo After Dark
While I do agree with both of you, I do want to say that there are some decent illustrations to be found in this book. The Ito and old Japanese cyberpunk film influences are felt clearly throughout the title. The problem is that those influences only reflect on the surface level. It's just a thing that you recognize rather than a meaningful homage.

Executive Warmadillo
The book strikes me as the worst kind of edgelord content. I hate to use this term but the only word I have for it is cringe. Even so, that is something I can normally forgive or look past if it means there's slick action set pieces or fights to feast my eyes on. Zombie Makeout Club offers none of that. Fights are over in a page and the lines of motion do not scan properly resulting in a lot of "Wait, what happened?" moments.

Warmadillo On the Left
One final thing that I want to point out is that the actual page composition leaves an incredible amount to be desired. Almost every page is one of three different templates. You have: flat character illustration, two or three dialogue panels with a half-page illustration at the bottom, or three horizontal panels with an unconnected illustration in each. There's very little to keep the eyes engaged.

Mid-Point
Warmadillo
Well it sounds like none of us had a good time so I'll go a head and start with the closing statements.

Warmadillo
I know we've said a lot of unkind things here today, which isn't something we like to do. It's hard to get work published and scary to put it out in the public eye and I do sympathize with that. However, this book is not good. Thumbs down.

On the Desk
Agreed. It does not bring me any joy to tear into this work, especially when the creator is so clearly proud of it, but I hope our criticism comes across as constructive rather than mean-spirited. Thumbs down.

After Dark
I like most of the character designs as well as the sentiment of the work, but not much else. Thumbs down.

Executive Warmadillo
Same here. Thumbs down.

On the Left
Thumbs down.

Warmadillo
And there you have it, with 0 votes in favor and 5 against, Zombie Makeout Club is Warmadillo Inc certified - Not Recommended.

Intriguing premise, but the story was a bit hard to follow. The character intro page was absolutely necessary because most of the interactions didn't speak for themselves or make a lot of sense during the story. Personally I prefer more character and context development, but this was mostly just a lot of fighting and gore stills. Not something I would choose to pick up again.

I loved the artwork! The story has potential, however I found it a little hard to follow and a bit edgy for my liking unfortunately. Would like to see where this goes and give it more of a chance though!

This first volume sets up the series by posing ALOT of questions/storylines without much context. Zombie Makeout Club follows a group of people who have become zombies and their interconnecting stories. The art was great throughout, with clean lines, and great gore - aiming to shock as much as possible. Not sure if I was intrigued enough to continue with the series though.

TW: A lot of weird eye stuff and unaliving

I find myself admiring the art more than actually understanding the story. The artwork is 4.5 out of 5 with the only docked marks is that some of the smaller panels were blending too much with the black background. There were so many characters that I didn't know who they were or why they were introduced. But the art is really great.

This was definitely not my cup of tea.

The summary seemed interesting, but the actual story is... hard to follow. I completely understand that the author meant to create a conceptual and experimental comic - the vibe is definitely there - but it felt like it was trying too hard to be unique and edgy, only to become non-sensical and confusing. There was a lot going on, but no explanations whatsoever as to: 1) what, exactly, was going on; and 2) why was it going on. The cheesy one-liners didn't help with my overall impression either...

I'm giving it two stars only because the art is great. The character designs were awesome and the gritty tones of it all matched well with the theme.

And as usual: Many thanks to Netgalley & Publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange of an honest review.

A high school student who committed suicide is brought back to life in an unknown facility while trying to understand her past and what's happening.
The first thing to attract me to this book was the cover, and when I read the title I was already sold to it. The art style matched perfectly the story and I found the character design really nice, principally Shinobou and Crow, it seemed to fit well with what was demonstrated of their personalities.
However, I must say that I was lost for a good part of the story, the part on the Demon zine dealing with the lore helped me get a bit of it. While it is the first of a series and I imagine it will make sense in the following volumes, I think it could keep away some readers.
It's an interesting tale of suicide, death, life and violence, and it makes me interested in reading the next editions and understanding where the story goes. I think it's a great pick for fans of psychological and horror mangas.

It was okay not entirely my cup of tea, however, I enjoyed it for what it was. Also a great read for Halloween.

Very very strange.
I found this hard to follow and understand, but it's 'abstract' so maybe others caught the vibe? I don't know. To me it felt like there was no plot or storyline, although the art was neat.

I loved the graphics of this graphic novel. But the story line was a bit confusing. I wasn’t able to follow the storyline very well at all.

hmmm… i had high hopes going into this. the art is insanely cool, it’s based off of the clothing brand/webtoon “zombie makeout club” and it really does have so much potential. but the story fell flat, and i honestly didn’t have much of an inkling on what was happening the entire time, which isn’t ideal… i think it could’ve been cool to explore individual characters and their backstories before trying to build a cohesive story including all of them. it was just a bit chaotic.

This manga was not my favorite at all. At one point I had to look up how to read manga to make sure that I was reading it correctly and even though I was, it sometimes still didn’t make sense.

The art was my favorite part with it all being incredibly well done throughout the whole thing.

Unfortunately, it was too all over the place and at many points the art was too much and I couldn’t tell what was going on. The idea of the manga was good but the execution was lacking.

Prior to requesting this title I had no knowldege of the ZMC brand. I can see how it works well with this little snippets of lore, on grunge clothing, being in and all. It's a cool brand I'd say. Reading this however, it felt like just that - a brand representation instead of an actually fleshed out graphic novel. My stance is this: the art is hella cool, the ideas presented are definitely worth being explored, but in the overall product, story-telling fell flat. It felt rushed, and very superficial. It already was a successful webtoon before being published in this form, and yet I think it's best appreciated as a webtoon, fitting the vibe better and all.

Sadly the execution of this wasn't quite on par with the concept for me, and I think the fast pace and jumps between perspectives made it difficult for me to get my bearings enough to get fully invested in the story

I was looking for something quick and fun to read around Halloween time, so I really wanted to like this. Unfortunately only the art style worked for me. I thought the illustrations were amazing and did a great job of showing the gory nature of this story. However, the actual story/plot was a struggle. It moved too fast and chaotically to actually be able to understand what was going on. Even the character list at the beginning doesn't help to clarify anything. This deals with not only death, but suicide particularly and I'm not sure how I should feel about that. At the very least I felt it was unclear what the author is trying to say/accomplish. Is there even an exploration of "life, death, suicide, and the other side" as it says?