Awakening Omnibus

Awakening #1-2

by Nick Tapalansky, Alex Eckman-Lawn

The once peaceful city of Park Falls has been tainted by a series of missing persons and gruesome murders. Town crazy Cynthia Ford comes forward to speak with retired police detective Derrick Peters one January afternoon with information about the strange happenings, claiming that they're connected. But does she hold the key to unlocking the mystery, or has she gone completely insane? To Derrick's disbelief she utters one Zombies. The answers await Derrick, federal scientist Dr. Daniel Howe, attack survivor Sandra LaFayette and the rest of the city, but will they lead to salvation or the end of life as we know it? Investigate the mystery and dive into the horror of the critically acclaimed zombie noir series, Awakening, now collected in one giant volume, including a short story, production extras, guest pin-ups and more.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Horror

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 2, 2011

About the author

Nick Tapalansky writes some comics you should totally read, including A Radical Shift of Gravity, Awakening, and Cast No Shadow, a fall 2017 Junior Library Guild selection. His work has also been included in the award-winning Popgun and Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard anthologies. He currently lives in New York with his wife and daughter.
http://nicktapalansky.com

Reviews

[Xisix · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was adequate but didn’t quite do it for this lad. Adopted ‘30 days of Night’ style but artwork seemed stiff and uninspiring. Characters felt formulaic which sucked air from balloon. Appreciate typical zombie pandemic genetic awakening danger. Questions of mankind and baser instincts but ...

[King · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining, but the zombie trope has definitely turnes into a shambling mass of cliches.

[Damon Holland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. The story sucked me and didn’t let go until the very end. Art was chaotic and gorgeous.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I'm just getting a tad tired of people trying to come up with new ways to approach the zombie genre, but this approach didn't work well for me. It's never really explained why people get zombiefied (well, it is... sort of... but not very well), there's an odd subplot of our main character's previous casework with his partner, there's some history alluded to between characters but never really fleshed out... it felt very unfocused. The art, at times, didn't help much making it hard to tell what was going on and to grasp the emoting of characters, but at other times it was absolutely gorgeous.

If you're really hankering for a zombie-noir graphic novel, then this should do it for you, but don't get your expectations too high.

[Tony Pietra Arjuna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noir of the living dead: A zombie apocalypse unfolds within the framework of a dark detective mystery. With religious overtones and a serial killer subplot to boot, "Awakening" looks and feels like "Se7en" meets George Romero. Newcomer Nick Tapalansky's narrative style is both simple and sophisticated. The nightmarish atmosphere is effectively evoked by Alex Eckman-Lawn's murky and disorienting artwork. This bleak graphic novel should appeal to Steve Niles fans.

[Nathan Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The artwork is fantastic but the story is less-than-fantastic. If it wasn't for the art then I'd probably give it two stars. I found it hard to discern or care about the characters because they were often hard to distinguish through the stylized backgrounds.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only reason I purchased this book: Alex Eckman-Lawn's artwork.

The only reason I gave this book 4 Stars: Alex Eckman-Lawn's artwork.

[Emm Bee · Rating 2 out of 5]

What story I was able to glean from the patchy text was indecipherable; the artwork was very good. That is about all I have to say about this book. Skip it.

[Leslie Jonsson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really did not like this-plot did not flow well-illustrations hard to make out, and did not define the characters as in other graphic novels.

[Kimberly Pinzon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid three stars. The artwork is great, the story line is interesting. The ending is pretty open to interpretation, as to how the outbreak started and what causes it.