Macoy x Ardie Aquino Edition
Illustration and Story by: Macoy and Ardie Aquino
(4/5 ★★★★☆)
"In post-zombie apocalypse Philippines, life is good! Or at least as good as you can expect in a third-world country with 80's technology and an everpresent zombie plague. But as Maki and her friends will soon discover, just getting to school in the morning can be a real killer.
SCHOOL RUN is a tongue-in-cheek zombie story with everything you look for in the genre: humor, action, social commentary, and the undead munching on kids."
The Good:
After almost a decade, School Run is back as Macoy made a collaboration with Ardie Aquino.
This update is thrilling to see in so many ways. It now comes in color with the dialogues updated from Filipino to English.
The cover has been changed to show a crowd full of zombies with some of the main casts in it. Also within the hoard are the creators so one would find it amusing to try and guess which one are they among the zombies.
The previous panels and script originally drawn by Macoy has been given a new look by Ardie. The details that can be seen at the background of the characters are worth to look at. Knockoff logos of familiar companies and brands can be seen like Food Panda, Angkas, Skull Head, and Meralco. An added bonus was the additional signage stuck on a post promoting Ardie's Home Massage Service beside a Mackoy Plumber post.
The story describes of a post-zombie apocalypse world that occurs in the year 2035. It still gives a fun and fresh look of the Philippines with young children as the main characters.
The Bad:
One of the biggest concern with this post-zombie apocalypse version is the NZP or the anti plague medicine that everyone appears to be taking. The presence of this item, which was also present in the original version, leaves a lot of questions. It insinuates that by forgetting to take this pill will turn you into a zombie aside from the primary means of exposure to a contaminated blood or body fluids. It begs to question if the zombie virus was also airborne. It is also appalling that no new drug has been invented yet in order to increase the interval time for this medication be taken by the general population. The need to take a pill every 4 hours is going to be a tiresome chore because it means setting an alarm so you could wake up from your 6 to 8 hours of sleep just to take this anti plague pill.
The Verdict:
Zombie apocalypse themed stories is still a nice story to dwell on. This updated version is more child friendly in comparison to the original one. This can be seen as the head of one of the characters pop up at the back of the school bus. Looking at it in black and white back then gives a more chilling scenario in comparison to the current multicolored zombies in the series.
Most of the original fans would be pulled back to rediscover the story of Maki. I just hope we can finally see the ending of this series.
More of the creators' works can be seen at:
Ardie Aquino:
Instagram: @chikidoodledoo
Macoy:
Twitter: @komiksnimacoy
