Comic Review: Jungle Book

A pirate ship carrying four children crashes on the shore of a mysterious and merciless jungle. Each child is taken by a separate tribe of animals as a means to keep the peace between the species. It is a peace that will not last...

Fifteen years later the children have now become young adults and each will have to face the destiny that awaits them in the unforgiving jungle. A place where only the strong will survive. Zenescope brings you their newest reinvention of a classic tale that is going to blow you away!

The Good : 

                The art. Jungles are these beautiful places filled with such details and color. And the team visually creating this series does a great job and recreating the classic jungle. The amount of detail and the vividness of the colors are so eye catching. You can tell that people who actually cared about the project created this.

                The overall story. It takes a while to start but once it did, I found myself wanting to know what happens next. Even though most of the characters are animals, they have this form of dominance versus coexistence that most nations have. There is little backstory, it is just, one group hates the others and you just read to see how the others respond.

                The characters. They are being developed well so far. Mowglii as a female doesn’t really change anything. Baloo is always a fan favorite. The vulture, however, is great comic relief. I just love how he pesters and doesn’t quit. If a vulture could taunt in English, he’d probably be this guy. 

The Bad : 

                The 1^st issue had a few red flags go off as I read it. The opening pages seemed like it could be Wendy’s room from Peter Pan.  There is an explosion that I really didn’t get. I understand that they needed a way to get the boat to the island, but lightning hitting wood doesn’t make a huge boom.

                There is a huge fight and you don’t really know why everyone is killing each other. They have the ability to speak and show diplomacy, but for some reason, they all want each other dead but are able to stop so quickly. That just bothered me.

                Small details. The animals speak but they still say “grrr” in the speaking bubbles. That just bothered me. People don’t say “grrr’ as a word**. One character is wearing the claws of a tiger that died at least 15 years earlier. The claws are still very clean without any sign of mold. That irked me too.

Summary : 

                Give it more than the 1^st issue. This story develops well after issue 1. I found myself wishing they had sent issue 4 when I was done reading. The characters are good. The art, namely the colors, are great. Everyone knows Mowglii, so to have her in the same setting but in a different story, is intriguing. There are still more characters to be introduced and a big show down is inevitable. The story and art are good enough to make me care to see how it all ends.

For more information regarding this or any other Zenescope titles, check out their website and Facebook pages.


** Note from Katie : I totally say grrr as a word!

Life With Katie received copies of these books for the purpose of this review. All thoughts and comments belong 100% to Walter who wrote this review, except for the commentary by Katrina at the end.

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