Manga Review: Zombie Makeout Club Vol. 1: Deathwish

By Rose

Imagine walking into a Hot Topic in the summer of 2006. You might hear Before I Forget or Thank You for the Venom blasting out of their speakers, or see an endless wave of fingerless gloves, Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise, and zippers on just about everything. This is what it feels like to crack open Deathwish (or Death Wish, since it appears both ways on various pages), the first volume of the Zombie Makeout Club manga. There's an abundance of spikes, skulls, and black. There's also, much like a Hot Topic, nothing of real substance to be found within the pages. It's aesthetic for the sake of a product. It's content.

To its credit, Deathwish does one thing well. The art is nasty in the best way. Beyond the usual spate of blood and guts one expects to find in a horror-adjacent action romp, we're treated to a plethora of crushed eyeballs, people torn limb from limb, and flesh melted clean off the bone. But even the often eye-catching art feels derivative at times. Everyone's got a gas mask or a school uniform or a cigarette with something written on the side, every key moment feels like it was cut whole cloth from a better manga. There's tinges of Dorohedoro, just a light dash of Death Note and Tomie, maybe even a little Akira. I can't point to anything in here that feels wholly like a Zombie Makeout Club original. And all this is to say nothing of the story.

I'll always be the first person to applaud art that puts vibes above plot. Plot, to me, is the least important part of a narrative work. But Deathwish feels like it wants to tell some kind of story, and I just can't find anything to latch onto. The characters are nobody, just more archetypes dragged kicking and screaming out of the creator's favorite shounen. The action is stylish and fluid, but rarely compelling. I just can't bring myself to care about anything happening on the page, and I forget it shortly after. I read this volume three times in preparation for this review and it just left absolutely no meaningful impression on me. It never commits to the vibes, never lets you live in the pages the way the best plot-light stories do. It feels like it wants you to look at it, say "oh, cool," and share it online before moving onto something else. Maybe buy something in their shop. Hence, content.

Needless to say I don't recommend Zombie Makeout Club. There's more coming, a second volume currently being posted as a Webtoon (just as Deathwish was), but there's not much chance that I'll read it. If you like the art, you can read the entire thing on their official Webtoon page without buying the full volume. If you do find yourself enjoying what you read there, the volume includes a few extra short stories and concept art. You can buy Zombie Makeout Club Volume 1: Deathwish here.

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