** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Copy received through Netgalley

~

Gung-Ho, Vol. 1, by Benjamin von Eckartsberg, and Thomas von Kummant
★☆☆☆☆
180 Pages
Content Warning: gratuitous teen nudity and sexual scenes, violence, gore


What...even was that? I can't actually believe I finished it, but it was like being stuck in some gross-out, sex-obsessed teen boy's fantasy come to life.

The story was intriguing, at first. There's a post-apocalyptic world, where a compound has been created to house the last dregs of society. Other compounds exist, but this place is like a prison for the worst of those. Two new teen recruits enter the scene – both brainless idiots with only sex on their minds.

My problem is that these are TEENAGERS. From page 2, one teenage girl is being sexually abused by an adult in charge, to pay for drugs. Adult KNOW about this, but decide not to do anything about it, because this adult male is apparently vital and irreplaceable. GROSS.
Both the 16 and 18 yo main characters are sex-obsessed fools, with no respect for death, no concern for others, and a screw-everything-in-sight attitude. They use and discard women with no care for their feelings or the consequences of their actions.
The description of the Japanese characters was SUPER problematic and stereotypical, which they apparently glossed over by making the daughter go from speaking formally to interpret for her father, to being super laidback and chill when the boys are around.
The women are either sex objects, sluts, or being used as tools to promote the male characters, and prove how manly and badass they are. Basically, the women in this book only exist to be fought over and claimed by macho-idiots with only one brain located below the waist.

There is NO story, once the two teens arrive.
We are never once told what year it is, what happened to make this world they're now living in, the history, the back story, or what the “white plague” really is. There is an eventual appearance of savage monkeys, but it's never explained what they are, why they're savage, what their part in the story is, or why they have two different names: rippers or crushers. I assume it's from their behaviour and kill technique, but I shouldn't have to assume.

There is SO MUCH – seriously, way too much – TEEN NUDITY. On page. It was pretty disgusting, to be honest. The women are always naked, but the men never are. And these are TEEN girls. Whoever approved the publication of this book needs to have a serious word with themselves, because this is NOT acceptable. Women are not sex objects, and I don't care if anyone argues that a woman is in charge of the compound. She is a lazy-ass woman, who is NOT taking care of her teen charges, and who is blatantly ignoring sexual abuse. There is not one single woman in this book worth reading about. They're all single-minded sheep waiting for the nearest egomaniac teen boy to come and claim them, while throwing themselves at anything with trousers that moves.

Honestly, I don't care what kind of story they thought they were telling, what purpose it had, or where it was heading, but the gratuitous sex was more than I care to ever read, about teen girls. This was like a teenage boy just saw Deadpool and decided to write his own apocalyptic story that disintegrated into some sick teen-boy fantasy about being the biggest badass ever, and getting all the girls.

Not for me.

I enjoyed this post apocalyptic adult graphic novel. Great character development and great pacing of story. Can't wait to read vol. 2 to see what happened!

The art and graphics of this novel is AMAZING, not so much the immediate way of showing a lot of information in a few pages, which ends up distracting and confusing.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for allowing me to read this!

I was instantly intrigued by the synopsis of this book. This book instantly drew me in, I loved the artwork and it was very easy to follow. It was done very well in this book. I really enjoyed this book and the plot. This author did amazing. I loved the writing style. I need to fin VOL 2 now since I am behind on my reading from a year long reading slump.

I LOVE graphic novels, illustrations and fantasy too much. If you add a little drama to all that, I'm fully on board to embark on a great adventure! Maybe that's why, at the end of this graphic novel, I was very disappointed.
Don't get me wrong, the story has so much potential! I was very struck by both the synopsis and the cover of this graphic novel and I expected a lot more from it, but I think I liked it to some extent but it also disappointed and it confused me. The art is beautiful! It is divine and charming and I adored each page so much, especially for the colors they used and how fanciful the story looked. However, there is a lot of information presented very quickly. Sometimes they mention names or places but they don't explain who (or who) those people are, what is happening and throughout the graphic novel you wonder when you are going to get your answers.
Personally, I think I never got them.

The artstyle was phenomenal. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go through with this. I might come back someday.

I would like to thank the publisher and netgalley for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

This ARC was provided for review, but in no way affects the following impartial and unbiased review:
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4*
THE COLORS, THE ART STYLE, THE WORLD-BUILDING!!! Loved everything about it, beautiful rendition of a dystopian world. The characters are very easy to connect to and the action is amazing! Unfortunately, the women are very much sexualised, apparently even in a post-apocalyptic world.

1.5 stars.

I had a lot of issue while reading this. The comic book doesn't really match the sypnosis as it was not as intense. Like the sypnosis all sounds suspenseful and all but then when you read it, there's just sexual content here and there that it felt out of place and nothing really is explained. You just see the brothers making trouble and the attacks.

The white plague are actually monkeys and I don't get how they could take over the human population which is more than 7 billion to the point of close extinction. At this point, I think the zombies would have been much better than the monkeys because infection makes more sense than monkeys loving the taste of humans. There was no explanation so far as to how everything started nor why the monkeys love to attack humans but not other animals instead. To me it felt like more of a plot convenience rather than a solid and logical aspect.

In the sypnosis, there was this hint about the Fort having this huge secret going on but it was just typical corruption from some characters (though I don't know if it happens later but it never happens in this volume).

As for the characters, I honestly didn't care about anyone and actually hated the brothers as they're making all these troubles for nothing really. They go on and on about the rules being strict even though people die right in front of them and in one instance someone died from their actions and they think it's unfair. Wow, very nice.

The background artstyle was great and I loved it but the characters weren't in the same level as they looked funny except for the two brothers. It felt like there wasn't as much effort on every character but the brothers.

Overall, there were many sexual and unrelated moments happening in between the attacks that I obviously didn't think it needed to happen and felt out of place. The only thing that kept me going was the train wreck to see what was the deal with it but it wasn't revealed yet.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with the digital copy for an honest review.

When I picked up the first issue of Gung-Ho from ABLAZE Publishing, I knew it was something special. The mystery, the intrigue, and the fantastic artwork had me hooked. With volume 1 of Gung-Ho, I dive into the whole story of the first series and what a story it is.

By Benjamin von Eckartsberg and Thomas von Kummant, the book takes place in an apocalypse scenario: the world has changed thanks to the “White Plague,” and communities have been fragmented, segmented to their own laws and rulers. Most of the world is a literal danger zone, as villages keep their surroundings on constant watch. For brothers Archer and Zack Goodwoody, their world is about to get changed again. The troublesome teens are shipped to Fort Apache, a last-ditch effort for them. Fort Apache is structured and safe, but that doesn’t mean the two won’t try to get in trouble by rebelling.

We see the two very different brothers trying to acclimate to a brand new setting, with new peers and new love interests. But outside the gates are dangers that the boys couldn’t imagine, like the Rippers. They meet teens like Salim, who is super helpful to the Goodwoody brothers. Holden and Bruno bring more trouble than anything, Tanaka and Yuki- a father and daughter duo who join the book in the second arc and send ripples through the community, and Pauline- who becomes a love interest to Zack. Teens do what teens do, but in this world, that could mean death.

Thomas von Kummant’s artwork is mind-blowing, and that’s an understatement. The book is absolutely breathtaking, unlike anything else on the shelves. It looks so fluid, like an animated film storyboarded out and rendered with the same time and attention as a big-budget animated feature would have. This is a mature readers book, with language and such abound, but it does not detract from the story at all. The action is real, the danger is real, and by the end of the book, we see the consequences are real as well.

Gung-Ho is one of my favorite releases of the year. It’sIt’s a breath of fresh air in the comic book world. ABLAZE has something extraordinary here, and I cannot wait for the next volume to begin.

This has the makings of a solid, if formulaic post-apocalyptic story. A plague has forced humans to live in small, tightly contained cities/towns that keep getting attacked by dangerous zombies... but the zombies are not your run of the mill slow walking human corpses.
Focusing more on the young people of the town known as Fort Apache (which is weirdly located "somewhere" in Europe for some reason) gives the author more chances for fan service and random T&A, which doesn't really do much for the actual plot, but the art is beautiful, if you disregard the fact that ever 15-16 year old girl in this has MASSIVE boobs that they love to flash pretty much all the time.

I got this on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review!
I love Dystopian stories, so therefore it didn't really take a lot for me to enjoy this as well! I am really interested to know more about Fort Apache, the apocalypse, the various characters, and what will happen further along in the story. I can feel that there will be a shift in the next parts, and I am REALLY excited for it!!!
One thing I was missing was to really get to know the characters and get more of a relationship with them as a reader. I feel like we have only scratched the surface for all the characters, and it is, therefore, hard to feel any REAL connection to them. This may happen to a bigger extent later in the series, but I wish more was included so far as well.
It is also REALLY obvious that two men created this by the random boobs and the fact that almost all of the female characters wear tight-fitting and cropped tops. I am very sex-positive, and like that this includes stuff like blowjobs etc, but especially with the random inclusion of boobs it feels like it includes boobs JUST to include boobs.

So, overall this was a good dystopian graphic novel, and I will be reading on! It's probably a 3.5 star from me!

Gung-Ho seemed interesting and I'm so glad I picked this up! It's set in an apocalyptic world where the white plague has killed most of humanity and people live in secluded and barbed wire towns mostly without enough supplies. Zach and Archer Goodwoody are orphaned brothers that end up in Fort Apache, a colony. The boys don't fit in and they want freedom, but end up fighting the monstrous apes and people are bound to die. There's teenage angst, crushes and sex even, all the teenage shenanigans you could dream off and the price is high. The whole setting is awesome and all the characters have their own personas and reasons, which makes this very realistic too. The teenagers are annoying and the adults have hard time with them and we don't know enough about it all, which is great. The pace is awesome and Benjamin von Eckartsberg surely know how to build the story. The problematic content makes this disgustingly delicious.

The art is beautiful, color vibrant and nasty at the same time. It highlights the brutality and the beauty of the nature at the same time. The panels are structurally clear with a painting like beauty in them. I do like the cover, but perhaps it doesn't convey the story in the best way possible. This is so much more. Gung-Ho is dark and bright and everything else that's contradicted. A really great read indeed, I need to check out the continuation too!

This seemed like a promising story about a post-apocalyptic compound trying to survive amidst a world full of monsters with two rebellious brothers at its front and centre, however I found this graphic novel to be super problematic.

First of all, this volume was full of teenage boys & men being sex crazed and treating women like objects. Underage girls are constantly shown topless, doing sexual things, or just straight up sexualized with their character designs. It completely took away from the main plot and it made me extremely uncomfortable. Even a teenage girl who’s being sexually abused by an adult in the story is drawn like a sex object. The depiction of Japanese people also rubbed me the wrong way and was ridiculously stereotypical. For example, a Japanese man (who is, of course, the martial arts teacher) speaks with unrealistic broken English and one of the main characters jokes that he misses their old teacher and his grammar (the old teacher was white, by the way). On top of all this, there’s a ton of fatphobia in this. The main character insults someone for being “tubby” and the same boy is later bullied by a teacher for being fat and forced to work out without any commentary being made about why that’s probably not okay.

Clearly, I didn’t enjoy this one. I normally try to sugarcoat bad reviews a bit but I do not understand how something like this is being published in this day and age. I do not recommend this one and there’s plenty of other non-problematic graphic novels you could read instead.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Diamond Book Distributors for giving me an eARC in exchange for an honest review*

The highlight for me was without a doubt the art. The art style and colour palette worked so well to bring this overgrown and crumbling post-apocalyptic setting to life. It felt every bit the outpost settlement that struggles to cope with the imminent danger lurking around every tree and over every wall. I thought the way the illustrations did a job well done at conveying character emotions.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ablaze/Diamond Books for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. 2 stars

I'm all for post-apocalyptic stories and even better when it's about terrifying rabid man-killing beasts rather than a typical zombie apocalypse. On the blood-thirsty savage beast aspect, Gung Ho really knocked it out of the park. This was a brutal, gory, and terrifying! As if I wasn't already scared enough of monkeys/apes, this one solidified that for me 😂 Sadly though, while the art was every bit as amazing as I expected it to be, the story itself was ultimately not my jam.

The highlight for me was without question the illustration. The art style and colour palette worked so well to bring this overgrown and crumbling post-apocalyptic setting to life. It felt every bit the outpost settlement that struggles to cope with the imminent danger lurking around every tree and over every wall. I thought the way the characters were illustrated was well done--their personalities, their facial expressions, etc., were well-defined.

Yet with as much as I loved the illustration work, I'm disappointed that the story didn't work for me. I felt that it pretty much just boiled down to a bunch of rebellious, unruly and horny teenagers with their hormones running rampant and calling the shots. It was a lot of ego and while maybe it's a cliche depiction of teenagers being teenagers in post-apocalytpic settings, it made it incredibly hard to care for them and their survival. Honestly though, I feel like everyone, including the adults, was a bit of a hot mess in this comic. No one was shown to have any redeeming qualities and the one character who I thought seemed okay at the start, ended up getting culled very early on.

Another point that I took great issue with was the sexualisation of young women's bodies. It was pretty jarring because these are young girls (the main ones being ~16yo) and to see only the female bodies so openly objectified was more than a little uncomfortable. While I've mentioned being a fan of the artwork, the way these young womens' bodies were drawn in an overly sexual style did not sit well with me at all. The bulk of the story ended up focusing on Zack, who is also a minor, and well, the whole arc there ends up focusing on the hormones of a horny teenage boy, and the scenes of a sexual nature involving him also felt wrong. In addition to the sexualisation of minors, there was also some really mysognynist comments, and fatshaming as well.

In the end, while I'd hoped for a story that would give me more worldbuilding for this post-apocalypse setting, what we got instead was a story with a little bit of your typical corrupt and power-hungry post-apocalyptic politics, weapons and survival trainings, and everyday life in the settlement, that all ended up being overtaken by a huge dose of teenage hormones. Quite disappointing, especially when I loved the illustration work so much!

I have mixed feelings about this. I liked some of the characters, and think they were quite interesting. The world was also quite cool - an interesting take on the post-apocalypse. I'm glad to see that for once, it wasn't a zombie tale. But I'm also disappointed in this due to a few things - sexual content involving minors (which, in a graphic novel, feels like a no go, especially when it's mostly teenage girls' bodies that are shown or sexualized), along with fatphobia, and an adult/minor relationship (more like exploitation of a minor).

The graphics legit so pretty, I was mesmerized by every small detail the illustrator worked into. So captivating and deliciously taken in. However, the story itself isn't something that I like. Mainly because so many implied underage sex in the story which ultimately put me off. There's an extreme prejudice towards women, contributing most to the plot. I understood that the world the characters living in almost in the throes of extinction, thus driving some characters to the edge of their sanity--rebel. Somehow, i found them incredulous because all of the characters shared the same brain cells--sex and rebel. Would be interesting if each of them has a different personality.

I unfortunately received this book in the archive date and netgalley shelf and the file download wouldn’t work for me to be able to see the content. I really wanted to review it so I’m quite sad.

Gung-ho is a post-apocalyptic, dystopian comic for adults reminiscent of the Walking Dead series. I was intrigued by its beautiful asian inspired cover, and even though I am getting a little tired of the survival genre, I was curious as to what take it would have on the topic.

The stories followed two orphaned 16 and 18 years old brothers, Archi and Zak, trouble makers who have been kicked out of every colony. Their last chance is in a fringe human camp, very close to the monster plaguing this alternative reality. The stakes are high from the get go: survival in a corrupt camp, and added to the mix is a strong tension between teens and adults. The cast in fact is mainly composed of teens, but this is a mature audience read only, with graphic depictions of violence, sex scenes and hard core themes.

The illustrations are amazing. They are very realistic, with an immense stock of digital textures. The colours are vibrant, the style very urban and wild. There is something that reminded me of Cyberpunk 2077. It fits a post-apocalyptic world perfectly… I just wish the story had been different.

I was never taken in, all the characters were detestable to me, the younger brother could be ok, but everything about the story was so grim and depressing, the bullies so cliched, the sex for drug trade so over-used, and the older brother so annoying and girl-obsessed, that getting to the end of the comic felt like a chore.

This is just not my style of story, I imagine the audience would be principally new adult male. I guess I need texts infused with a little more hope and characters that talk to me, and if they are not, like something similar to “I am Legend”, they need to have complex enough characters and intriguing messages to keep me gripped.

The art of Gung-Ho is one of the most stunning I've ever seen-5 stars alone for the artstyle! I don't know why, but it gave me Total Drama Island vibes, which I loved as a kid.
We follow two brothers who are shipped out to an outer sector settlement in a post-apocalyptic world somewhere in Europe. There's gore, splatter, reckless teenagers and flesh-eating monsters. It was a truly fascinating world to dive into.
However the plot wasn't as great as the artstyle, and even if I want to give a comic 5 stars just because of the art, I unfortunately can't. Therefor I'm settling for a 4 stars, which is still quite impressive!