More World-Building And Cool Characters: ‘After The Robot Apocalypse’ #3 Review

I’ve been following the progress of this crowdfunding campaign with interest. One was as a senior editor of Comic-Con, and the other was as High Vis Festival organiser and co-director of Birmingham’s annual street art and graffiti festival celebrating street art. A festival creator of After The Robot Apocalypse Keith “SP: Zero” Hopewell has painted at before and painted at again this year, giving us a great rendition of one of his favourite characters, Milk with a Chainsaw, who appears front and centre in the third issue.

While this is a story of human ingenuity and community, it’s the robots will catch your eye as you read through this third instalment of this enjoyable sci-fi romp. Hopewell has an eye for design, and thanks to some of his more large-scale murals (which he includes as bonus material in the back of the issue), an eye for composition too. And while much of this issue does rely on talking heads to get the story up and running, when he does let loose on a page, or for that matter a double-page spread, it’s impressively energetic and dynamic, all the better to pull the reader in and add that all-important pizzazz into the storytelling. Having the added bonus of professional colourist CF. Lum on hand helps make Hopewell’s characters pop on the page.

As previoulsy, there is possible a little too much time spent on the set-up of this issue and I still feel that much of this could be condensed to allow more action sequences and the progression of the story at a quicker pace. But, Hopewell is learning and across the whole issue there is more than enough to keep readers entertained while continuing to build the mythos around this future post-apocalyptic landscape ripe with foliage and life and colourful characters.

After The Robot Apocalypse #3 is currently running on Kickstarter, but coming to an end this week. Check it out here.