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Apocalypse Taco: A Graphic Novel
Stranger Things meets The Last Kids on Earth in Apocalypse Taco, a science fiction graphic novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series.
A sinister drive-through threatens to end the world—and three kids in a beat-up truck are humanity’s only hope!
It’s the night before dress rehearsal, and the school theater troupe is working late and very hungry. Eleven-year-old twins Axl and Ivan—along with their 16-year-old driver, Sid—volunteer to make a late-night fast-food run. At the drive-through, their tacos start to . . . move. And they don’t seem friendly.
Even after they get rid of the food, the world around them isn’t quite right. There are strangely moving cars, buildings, and people—and they seem intent on swallowing everything in their path. Now the trio will have to use their wits, their truck, and even their windshield scraper to escape . . . before they’re replaced by monstrous versions of themselves!
A sinister drive-through threatens to end the world—and three kids in a beat-up truck are humanity’s only hope!
It’s the night before dress rehearsal, and the school theater troupe is working late and very hungry. Eleven-year-old twins Axl and Ivan—along with their 16-year-old driver, Sid—volunteer to make a late-night fast-food run. At the drive-through, their tacos start to . . . move. And they don’t seem friendly.
Even after they get rid of the food, the world around them isn’t quite right. There are strangely moving cars, buildings, and people—and they seem intent on swallowing everything in their path. Now the trio will have to use their wits, their truck, and even their windshield scraper to escape . . . before they’re replaced by monstrous versions of themselves!
128 pages, Hardcover
First published March 26, 2019
194 people are currently reading
549 people want to read
About the author
Nathan Hale
103 books843 followersNathan Hale is the New York Times best-selling author/illustrator of the Hazardous Tales series, as well as many picture books including Yellowbelly and Plum go to School, the Twelve Bots of Christmas and The Devil You Know.
He is the illustrator of the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Rapunzel's Revenge and its sequel, Calamity Jack. He also illustrated Frankenstein: A Monstrous Parody, The Dinosaurs' Night Before Christmas, Animal House and many others.
(He is not the author of Extinction Earth or the other apocalyptic titles listed. That's a different Nathan Hale. If someone with "librarian" status would disambiguate those titles for me, I'd appreciate it.)
Learn more at www.spacestationnathan.blogspot.com
He is the illustrator of the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Rapunzel's Revenge and its sequel, Calamity Jack. He also illustrated Frankenstein: A Monstrous Parody, The Dinosaurs' Night Before Christmas, Animal House and many others.
(He is not the author of Extinction Earth or the other apocalyptic titles listed. That's a different Nathan Hale. If someone with "librarian" status would disambiguate those titles for me, I'd appreciate it.)
Learn more at www.spacestationnathan.blogspot.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 288 reviews
February 5, 2020
Nacho boxes with tentacles! Honda truck monsters! My locker was full of goop! Our mom's face was all messed up! My house was a slimy blob! There were three creepy aliens that looked like us!
Yup! It's a world gone mad when a bioengineering student accidentally unleashes some replicating bee-squid-hummingbird-mole hybrids on a sleeping town. The gross-factor is strong with this one, which I assume most kids will LOVE, however, some scenes may be too intense for younger readers.
I enjoyed this somewhat humorous send-up of old B-movies. And, I couldn't stop thinking about those weird and creepy Cyriak videos my sons used to watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUp... If you can dig some mild horror, and have a quirky sense of humor, I recommend this one.
Yup! It's a world gone mad when a bioengineering student accidentally unleashes some replicating bee-squid-hummingbird-mole hybrids on a sleeping town. The gross-factor is strong with this one, which I assume most kids will LOVE, however, some scenes may be too intense for younger readers.
I enjoyed this somewhat humorous send-up of old B-movies. And, I couldn't stop thinking about those weird and creepy Cyriak videos my sons used to watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUp... If you can dig some mild horror, and have a quirky sense of humor, I recommend this one.
January 25, 2019
Before I get into the book before me, I need to give you a little history lesson. That's a bit ironic since author Nathan Hale is best known for his history comics, but bear with me. So I have in my possession a book called The Seduction of the Innocent written by American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, published in 1954. This is the book that almost single-handedly turned the comic book publishing industry on its head. It’s considered infamous today because in the book Wertham makes no bones about the fact that he sincerely believes comics to be a bad influence on kids and a leading cause of juvenile delinquency. His book is widely vilified in today’s pro-comics 21st century, but here’s the deal: Wertham wasn’t wrong about everything. I’ve read the book and the thing that sticks out the most is that Wertham isn’t taking pot-shots at superhero comics or Archie comics half as much as he is horror comics. His point was that kids were getting some pretty perverted stuff. Needles in eyeballs. Some MAJOR racism and sexism (you have to credit Wertham for calling this out, if nothing else). Horror comics of the 50s were sort of marketed to kids and, by using them as examples, the man was able to paint the entire industry with a big comics-are-bad-for-you brush. Not fair, but there it is.
Fast forward to 2019. Comics are flourishing. Sure they still aren’t being published at a rate that meets the voracious demands of our comic-loving kids, but that old stereotype of sequential art rotting your brain is starting to fall by the wayside. Walk into most libraries and you’ll see newspaper comics, nonfiction comics, action adventure comics, dramatic comics, lowbrow comics, highbrow comics, the works! So what won’t you see in a children’s room? Horror comics for kids. It seems that Wertham’s influence casts its long shadow to this day. You can find adult horror comics (and even Neil Gaiman’s had fun with it with titles like, Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire) and YA trucks with it as well, but children’s books? Unless you’re talking about those weak adaptations of Goosebumps stories (and I am not) the pickings are slim. They're not non-existent, but it would be hard to make a list of the seriously scary stuff.
Which brings us to Nathan Hale. In 2017 Mr. Hale branched out of his “Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales” series, writing a standalone science fiction comic called One Trick Pony. An amazing experiment in concise storytelling, Hale managed to eschew complicated world building, while also coming up with a pretty unique post-apocalyptic landscape. In the book, aliens have attacked Earth and stolen most of our technology. When it takes a third act trip to outer space the book makes a sharp right-hand turn into grotesqueries. Something akin to Hieronymus Bosch ala Space Oddity. I remember reading the book and feeling pretty impressed that Hale was able to get away with something quite that psychedelic in a children’s book. Now, it appears, that was just the warm up. Apocalypse Taco is a straight-up horror comic for kids. Gross and intelligent, unpredictable and a bit of a mess, and really, thoroughly enjoyable. Of course you’ll probably only agree if you’re into smart horror in the first place.
It’s Tech Night at the high school and that means an overnight fest of working on the sets for a production of Brigadoon. Middle schoolers Axl and Ivan get to help because their mom’s in charge of the work, but when the chance comes to make a 1:30 AM burger run with sixteen-year-old Sidney, they jump at the chance. They mean to go to McDonalds but when they find a Taco Bear open instead it just makes sense to buy late night munchies there. It’s funny how the discovery that your food has turned into demon squid taco boxes can really dampen your mood. The next thing they know, Axl, Ivan, and Sidney appear to be trapped in a world of loose, gooey copies. Copies of their school. Copies of the streets. Even copies of themselves. It’ll take rescuing a multi-armed grad student to not only get out of this sticky predicament, but to figure out how it all began.
If you’re a kid who likes horror, you generally get it by watching movies on the sly. There are plenty of twelve-year-olds olds out there that have gorged on It, Stranger Things, etc. When they walk into a children’s room in a library they’re going to want horror in their books and they’re generally going to be disappointed. Horror for kids is a tame affair for a reason. The best horror unnerves, but when it comes to children's book publishing you’re far more likely to find books that truck in the merely spooky. There are, however, exceptions. At first, I wanted to compare Apocalypse Taco not to any children’s comics out there (which are, as I may have mentioned, pretty bereft of horror elements) but to the novel Small Spaces by Katherine Arden. After reading it last year, I was floored by how well it wrapped its horror concepts together. Still, upon further reflection the true companion to this book is, without a doubt, The Nest by Kenneth Oppel. In both cases you have villainous insects. You have a shifting reality where the biological becomes a repository for horror. The tone is a bit different, but that has as much to do with Hale and Oppel’s styles as it does the fact that one is a comic and one a novel. In tandem, they work beautifully. Books to lose sleep over.
The thing that Apocalypse Taco says to me is that Nathan Hale’s “Hazardous Tales” series must make some good money for Amulet Books. How else would the man have had the clout to get something this wildly inventive into the American marketplace? The book reads like a work of catharsis. Hale’s art spins wildly out of control in a beautifully controlled manner (if that makes any sense at all). One minute he’s creating a melting world, and the next it’s all limbs and hands. There are lots of tentacles, and plenty of teeth, and the whole endeavor succeeds in making you feel that you’ve dropped into a particularly gooey Wonderland. Comparisons to Alice wouldn’t be wrong since there is a dreamlike quality to the imaginings, horrific though they be. Only Alice didn’t have to deal with a world being copied by tiny bees. Not that I know of, anyway.
It’s interesting to examine how much of the book consists of diving down, deep deep into something. I’m sure the Freudians would have a field day with this one, but let’s just think about what this means for kids. Lots of books have created underground worlds. City of Ember, the aforementioned Alice, Gregor the Overlander, etc. Hale uses the opportunity to sink and then rise as an excuse to offer our characters some exposition and back-story. When you’re trapped in a car controlled by goo, that’s as good a time as ever to discuss what’s going on. Sometimes when explanations arise in a novel, they don’t live up to the premise. Hale doesn’t suffer from that particular malady. These may not be the simplest answers in the world, but darned if they’re boring.
Just as the character of Kevin in this book can’t quite keep what’s happening to the world under control, so too does Hale have a small problem keeping everything comprehensible in this storyline. Rereadings help, of course, but I don’t think the book benefits from too close a reading. If you’re looking for plot holes, you’ll probably fall into a couple. I had to read and reread to figure out how our heroes got into Copy Cat Land and I’m still puzzling over what it takes to get out of it. There’s also the fact that beneath Copy Cat Land is the Hive of Goop. It’s easy to get the two confused. About the time Kevin says the Hive of Goop was in his brain I was ready to start all over again. Sometimes a novel without a lot of drive is said to not be a “plot forward” book. I’d say this book isn’t necessarily a "linear forward" comic. You can get forward. You will get forward. But there’s going to be a lot of backing and forthing and upping and downing along the way. There’s a weird comfort in the fact that Hale is perfectly aware of this, though. At one point Axl cries out in frustration, “Hang on? Is this an explanation story INSIDE you EXPLANATION STORY?” You gotta respect that.
If you’re going to be technical about it, the horror comics kids were reading in the 1950s weren’t specifically aimed at kids in the first place. But the creators of those comics knew perfectly well that that was who was going to buy them. With that in mind, it’s probably fair to say that until the last few years, horror comics have never been written intentionally with a child audience in mind, and those that have have been fairly so-so. Apocalypse Taco is therefore a wholly new creation in more ways than one. It opens the door for more kid-friendly horror (whether or not you see that as a good thing is up to you, but the 12-year-old me is pumping her fist right now), blows the roof off the competition, and is a great story besides. I mean, it’s got everything! Tooth monsters. School lockers full of goo. Brigadoon. You name it! I wouldn’t hand it to a kid that doesn’t already love the creepy, but for the right kiddo this will be the answer to their sweet twisted nightmares. A lovely dose of insanity for your local library shelves. Who could ask for anything more?
For ages 10 and up.
Fast forward to 2019. Comics are flourishing. Sure they still aren’t being published at a rate that meets the voracious demands of our comic-loving kids, but that old stereotype of sequential art rotting your brain is starting to fall by the wayside. Walk into most libraries and you’ll see newspaper comics, nonfiction comics, action adventure comics, dramatic comics, lowbrow comics, highbrow comics, the works! So what won’t you see in a children’s room? Horror comics for kids. It seems that Wertham’s influence casts its long shadow to this day. You can find adult horror comics (and even Neil Gaiman’s had fun with it with titles like, Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire) and YA trucks with it as well, but children’s books? Unless you’re talking about those weak adaptations of Goosebumps stories (and I am not) the pickings are slim. They're not non-existent, but it would be hard to make a list of the seriously scary stuff.
Which brings us to Nathan Hale. In 2017 Mr. Hale branched out of his “Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales” series, writing a standalone science fiction comic called One Trick Pony. An amazing experiment in concise storytelling, Hale managed to eschew complicated world building, while also coming up with a pretty unique post-apocalyptic landscape. In the book, aliens have attacked Earth and stolen most of our technology. When it takes a third act trip to outer space the book makes a sharp right-hand turn into grotesqueries. Something akin to Hieronymus Bosch ala Space Oddity. I remember reading the book and feeling pretty impressed that Hale was able to get away with something quite that psychedelic in a children’s book. Now, it appears, that was just the warm up. Apocalypse Taco is a straight-up horror comic for kids. Gross and intelligent, unpredictable and a bit of a mess, and really, thoroughly enjoyable. Of course you’ll probably only agree if you’re into smart horror in the first place.
It’s Tech Night at the high school and that means an overnight fest of working on the sets for a production of Brigadoon. Middle schoolers Axl and Ivan get to help because their mom’s in charge of the work, but when the chance comes to make a 1:30 AM burger run with sixteen-year-old Sidney, they jump at the chance. They mean to go to McDonalds but when they find a Taco Bear open instead it just makes sense to buy late night munchies there. It’s funny how the discovery that your food has turned into demon squid taco boxes can really dampen your mood. The next thing they know, Axl, Ivan, and Sidney appear to be trapped in a world of loose, gooey copies. Copies of their school. Copies of the streets. Even copies of themselves. It’ll take rescuing a multi-armed grad student to not only get out of this sticky predicament, but to figure out how it all began.
If you’re a kid who likes horror, you generally get it by watching movies on the sly. There are plenty of twelve-year-olds olds out there that have gorged on It, Stranger Things, etc. When they walk into a children’s room in a library they’re going to want horror in their books and they’re generally going to be disappointed. Horror for kids is a tame affair for a reason. The best horror unnerves, but when it comes to children's book publishing you’re far more likely to find books that truck in the merely spooky. There are, however, exceptions. At first, I wanted to compare Apocalypse Taco not to any children’s comics out there (which are, as I may have mentioned, pretty bereft of horror elements) but to the novel Small Spaces by Katherine Arden. After reading it last year, I was floored by how well it wrapped its horror concepts together. Still, upon further reflection the true companion to this book is, without a doubt, The Nest by Kenneth Oppel. In both cases you have villainous insects. You have a shifting reality where the biological becomes a repository for horror. The tone is a bit different, but that has as much to do with Hale and Oppel’s styles as it does the fact that one is a comic and one a novel. In tandem, they work beautifully. Books to lose sleep over.
The thing that Apocalypse Taco says to me is that Nathan Hale’s “Hazardous Tales” series must make some good money for Amulet Books. How else would the man have had the clout to get something this wildly inventive into the American marketplace? The book reads like a work of catharsis. Hale’s art spins wildly out of control in a beautifully controlled manner (if that makes any sense at all). One minute he’s creating a melting world, and the next it’s all limbs and hands. There are lots of tentacles, and plenty of teeth, and the whole endeavor succeeds in making you feel that you’ve dropped into a particularly gooey Wonderland. Comparisons to Alice wouldn’t be wrong since there is a dreamlike quality to the imaginings, horrific though they be. Only Alice didn’t have to deal with a world being copied by tiny bees. Not that I know of, anyway.
It’s interesting to examine how much of the book consists of diving down, deep deep into something. I’m sure the Freudians would have a field day with this one, but let’s just think about what this means for kids. Lots of books have created underground worlds. City of Ember, the aforementioned Alice, Gregor the Overlander, etc. Hale uses the opportunity to sink and then rise as an excuse to offer our characters some exposition and back-story. When you’re trapped in a car controlled by goo, that’s as good a time as ever to discuss what’s going on. Sometimes when explanations arise in a novel, they don’t live up to the premise. Hale doesn’t suffer from that particular malady. These may not be the simplest answers in the world, but darned if they’re boring.
Just as the character of Kevin in this book can’t quite keep what’s happening to the world under control, so too does Hale have a small problem keeping everything comprehensible in this storyline. Rereadings help, of course, but I don’t think the book benefits from too close a reading. If you’re looking for plot holes, you’ll probably fall into a couple. I had to read and reread to figure out how our heroes got into Copy Cat Land and I’m still puzzling over what it takes to get out of it. There’s also the fact that beneath Copy Cat Land is the Hive of Goop. It’s easy to get the two confused. About the time Kevin says the Hive of Goop was in his brain I was ready to start all over again. Sometimes a novel without a lot of drive is said to not be a “plot forward” book. I’d say this book isn’t necessarily a "linear forward" comic. You can get forward. You will get forward. But there’s going to be a lot of backing and forthing and upping and downing along the way. There’s a weird comfort in the fact that Hale is perfectly aware of this, though. At one point Axl cries out in frustration, “Hang on? Is this an explanation story INSIDE you EXPLANATION STORY?” You gotta respect that.
If you’re going to be technical about it, the horror comics kids were reading in the 1950s weren’t specifically aimed at kids in the first place. But the creators of those comics knew perfectly well that that was who was going to buy them. With that in mind, it’s probably fair to say that until the last few years, horror comics have never been written intentionally with a child audience in mind, and those that have have been fairly so-so. Apocalypse Taco is therefore a wholly new creation in more ways than one. It opens the door for more kid-friendly horror (whether or not you see that as a good thing is up to you, but the 12-year-old me is pumping her fist right now), blows the roof off the competition, and is a great story besides. I mean, it’s got everything! Tooth monsters. School lockers full of goo. Brigadoon. You name it! I wouldn’t hand it to a kid that doesn’t already love the creepy, but for the right kiddo this will be the answer to their sweet twisted nightmares. A lovely dose of insanity for your local library shelves. Who could ask for anything more?
For ages 10 and up.
February 27, 2023
Wow - what an original concept! When 'copies' of everything start multiplying everywhere Sid, Axl, and Ivan have to try to bet to the bottom of what is going on - even as the copies seem to be 'refining' their relation to what is being copied...reminded me of Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation - excellent story and art!
January 29, 2021
Woah!! What a weird, nightmarish graphic novel! This is like Junji Ito for kids. If you like body horror and crazy visuals, check this out!
October 20, 2019
So fun! So creepy! So WEIRD.
Classic Nathan Hale, basically, and I loved it!
Classic Nathan Hale, basically, and I loved it!
April 24, 2019
I love the historical Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales series, but Nathan Hale's science fiction and horror works like One Trick Pony and this book just don't work for me, maybe because they are too weird and too dark. This one was placed in the children's section at the library, but I think several sequences of body horror and cannibalism and that ending might freak out some young readers.
Read
May 17, 2019baby’s??? first???? c-cosmic horror?????
Read
April 27, 2019What did I just read???
December 14, 2019
Unique horror/humor comic suitable for kids. Probably best for 12-and-up, but my library puts it in the child section, probably because the author has a popular series of kids books on American history.
Some kids go out at night looking to buy fast food but find themselves sucked into a nightmare world with soft, gooey buildings, cars with legs, a creature made mostly of teeth, and a friendly monster made mostly of arms, which she can detach and project at enemies.
It all turns out to have a completely rational scientific explanation (involving ) but too far-out for me to call it science fiction.
The art is good and wild and crazy. The story is fun, though maybe scary for some. The text size, though, is not friendly for old people!
Some kids go out at night looking to buy fast food but find themselves sucked into a nightmare world with soft, gooey buildings, cars with legs, a creature made mostly of teeth, and a friendly monster made mostly of arms, which she can detach and project at enemies.
It all turns out to have a completely rational scientific explanation (involving ) but too far-out for me to call it science fiction.
The art is good and wild and crazy. The story is fun, though maybe scary for some. The text size, though, is not friendly for old people!
May 30, 2019
This is a 'Stranger Things' fan read-alike if I ever saw one! I expected this book to be fun, I did not expect it to revolve around a science experiment and ethics that would actually make this a great book discussion title for a middle school book club.
December 5, 2018
Apocalypse Taco is super weird and creepy, but I like it! On a food run for the high school drama tech crew, Ivan Axl and Sidney run into trouble. End-of-the-world trouble. Creepy creatures and giant monsters are making copies of people and things, and it's all centered around the local Taco Bear fast-food place.
If you liked Spill Zone, you definitely want to check out Apocalypse Taco!
If you liked Spill Zone, you definitely want to check out Apocalypse Taco!
February 3, 2020
This book was really confusing, but it was a fun read! I really enjoyed it, but it ended on a cliffhanger, and I'm pretty sure there isn't a sequel :( .
April 19, 2019
Apocalypse Taco creeped me out far more than I expected it to. After reading Hale's first American history book (excellent!) and Rapunzel's Revenge, which he illustrated, I expected Taco to serve up a similarly prancing and mostly silly experience. Not so, Nacho.
The story is still an adventurous romp, and it delivers a generous amount of humor. But its genre is undoubtedly horror. Meant for teens, maybe. But still horror. And it horrified me, even past my expectations going into it of an unbelievable fantasy from which I sat removed. All this to say, it pulls it off fantastically. It's a tight, engaging story told well.
I also want to comment on its format. I'm not well-read in graphic novels. There are conventions that whisk over my head and probably subtleties I don't notice. I noticed as I was about halfway through that there were only about 3 colors used in the printing. That surprised me, since the shading and expression in each panel expressed so much -- and since I had not even realized I was not viewing this in full color! I've also found myself, in other graphic novels, stumbling incessantly over the word bubbles and direction in which I was supposed to read across the page. I had some of that confusion in this book, but much less than in others.
Overall, I have to conclude that Nathan Hale tells a story well, especially with pictures. I appreciate his style, and I would recommend this book to anyone over age 12 looking for a strange and fun fright.
MPAA ratings: PG-13 for violence and scary images.
The story is still an adventurous romp, and it delivers a generous amount of humor. But its genre is undoubtedly horror. Meant for teens, maybe. But still horror. And it horrified me, even past my expectations going into it of an unbelievable fantasy from which I sat removed. All this to say, it pulls it off fantastically. It's a tight, engaging story told well.
I also want to comment on its format. I'm not well-read in graphic novels. There are conventions that whisk over my head and probably subtleties I don't notice. I noticed as I was about halfway through that there were only about 3 colors used in the printing. That surprised me, since the shading and expression in each panel expressed so much -- and since I had not even realized I was not viewing this in full color! I've also found myself, in other graphic novels, stumbling incessantly over the word bubbles and direction in which I was supposed to read across the page. I had some of that confusion in this book, but much less than in others.
Overall, I have to conclude that Nathan Hale tells a story well, especially with pictures. I appreciate his style, and I would recommend this book to anyone over age 12 looking for a strange and fun fright.
MPAA ratings: PG-13 for violence and scary images.
December 10, 2019
Super high concept for a kids' graphic novel, but what the reader doesn't understand of the story, the art more than makes up for. I mean, it's crazy grotesque and yet entirely age-appropriate. I didn't quite understand it all myself, but I understood enough to feel confident that if I read it through again the internal logic would make sense. You don't see this sort of thing in kids' comics too often, and it's a shame. So it works as kids' horror, but it also works as straight-up horror. It's rare for me to feel unease/suspense when reading comics, but this definitely has plenty of it.
December 10, 2020
My son saw Nathan Hale speak last year and came home with the story that Hale once ate both Taco Bell and McDonalds in one evening, then wrote Apocalypse Taco inspired by the dreams he had that night. I haven’t looked it up or tried to verify that story, but it was enough to make me want to read the graphic novel! Very creative, I really enjoyed it.
September 18, 2019
I have no idea how to rate this because it was so so very weird. Like, I try to rate and review with the kids I would give a book to in mind, and this one.... I mean I know some weird kids, and they'll love it. But how exactly I'll book talk it to them is a whole other story. Anyway, creepy, weird, genetic modification, and lots of goo. That's what I'll say.
May 29, 2020
Short, but interesting, and on the border of slightly plausible.
too bad all the bees are dying
dnf
March 3, 2021DNF @ 15 pages. I thought this could be funny or good, but it’s not. Trying to get better at DNFing instead of forcing myself to read what I don’t like.
November 27, 2019
Pretty disturbing for a kids comic. Also, not enough tacos.
April 2, 2019
A whole lotta Cronenbergian apocalyptic fun!
March 19, 2019
Hmm. Not sure about this one. I feel the near-Akira level of body horror is too much for the 8-12 age range it's marketed for, but the story lacks enough substance to engage an older reader. Moments of action spliced with moments of exposition, but not a lot of cohesive storytelling. This review seems to be a minority opinion, though, so YMMV!
April 15, 2019
Eww.
Well done, I guess, but eww.
Well done, I guess, but eww.
Read
April 25, 2019Wow, that was...unique
May 3, 2019
Um. Wow. What was that?
April 17, 2021
Did I buy “Apocalypse Taco” because of the title? Yes. Yes, I did. To be fair, however, I was already a fan of Nathan Hale’s comics, having previously read his wildly imaginative sci-fi freak out, “One Trick Pony.” The question remains, though: was it possible for “Apocalypse Taco” to live up to such an awesome title? No, not really, but it was still a lot of fun to read. The plot of this psychedelic graphic novel concerns a trio of high schoolers on a late night food run who stumble upon an insidious invasion of mutant bee creatures. It’s absolutely an unique premise with lots of possibilities for goopy body horror-y art experiments but the whole thing came off a little bit undercooked, story-wise. Maybe it’s ridiculous of me to ask that a comic about genetically-altered insects replicating everyday objects in an effort to replace humanity be a little more logical but, yeah; I wish the pieces fit together a little better. Still, it’s a wild - and I mean, WILD - ride and it once again proves my theory that nothing associated with tacos can be bad.
May 9, 2019
Nathan Hale's overall idea for Apocalypse Taco was good- the book itself? The absolute weirdest and scattered book I've ever read. It's all over the place- was it all in their minds? What happened to the bee cloning system? How did the roommate become the way he was?! WHAT WAS IT ALL LEADING UP TO?!
In any case, I congratulate Mr. Hale on being scatterbrained and hardly readable. Definitely recommend this to people who are into books that are complete weirdness.
In any case, I congratulate Mr. Hale on being scatterbrained and hardly readable. Definitely recommend this to people who are into books that are complete weirdness.
July 28, 2019
Apocalypse Taco feels like a work written by a 14-year-old, stuffed in a desk drawer, and then pulled back out and published with few revisions by the grown-up author. It's bonkers in a bad way and the art is nowhere near as good as Nathan Hale's non-fiction works. I skimmed the second half of the book and don't regret it.
December 23, 2019
This is a super weird read, and a very good choice for a kid/teen who wants something scary. It's gross and definitely goes in surprising and baffling directions, but it's not particularly violent/gory just extremely weird. And full of tentacles. And a person made out of teeth. I was left deeply unsettled, basically, and I think our middle school kids will love it.
January 10, 2021
Art⭐️⭐️⭐️ Story⭐️⭐️
The artwork was fairly skilled but the body horror was way too chaotic for this monotone, small format book. It gave me a headache. There was so much packed into this creature feature storyline that it lost all cohesiveness trying to explain itself. It’s marketed as juvenile sci-fi horror but seems likely only to appeal to a fairly small audience who happen to be obsessed with the ridiculous yet gruesome.
The artwork was fairly skilled but the body horror was way too chaotic for this monotone, small format book. It gave me a headache. There was so much packed into this creature feature storyline that it lost all cohesiveness trying to explain itself. It’s marketed as juvenile sci-fi horror but seems likely only to appeal to a fairly small audience who happen to be obsessed with the ridiculous yet gruesome.
August 4, 2021
Nathan Hale has become one of my favourite graphic novel artists! Wow, this was cool. It made no sense, but the story was all over the place in a good way and I really enjoyed trying to figure everything out. I love how it ended... I have no idea if the main characters are gonna be okay, but that's something I'll have to deal with. Ugh I need more Hale NOW
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