Comic Review: The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks
The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks
Three Rivers Press
Writer: Max Brooks
Artist: Ibraim Roberson
Reviewer: Bryce Holland
George Romero: You’re on notice. It looks like there’s a new “King of the Living Dead”.
If you haven’t heard of him (and if you haven’t, where the fuck have you been and what are doing visiting this site?), Max Brooks is an Emmy award winning, former “Saturday Night Live” writer, and the son of comedy legend Mel Brooks. Oh, and he’s also the writer of arguably the two best books about zombies, and the dangers they pose to the human race, ever written. His first book, the straightforward-titled The Zombie Survival Guide, was a tongue-in-cheek, meticulously researched field guide that offered practical tips for if you should ever be confronted with an attack by the walking dead. For his followup, Brooks went back to the undead well and produced the instant classic World War Z. Written as an oral history, World War Z was a collection of interviews with survivors of an apocalyptic zombie plague that decimated the majority of the planet. The unflinching realism of the narrative, combined with its parallels to actual current events, made this book a must-read. Now, three years after his last foray into living dead fiction, Brooks has returned with a new graphic novel, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.
Recorded Attacks could actually be considered a sequel to, or maybe more aptly an offshoot of, Brooks’ first book. One of the most memorable aspects of the original The Zombie Survival Guide was a section in the back that detailed “actual” attacks by zombies in various parts of the world throughout history, going back as far as 60,000 B.C. For this graphic novel, Brooks has taken 12 of the most memorable accounts he wrote about, featuring locations as diverse as central Africa, feudal Japan, the Caribbean, and even Joshua Tree National Park in California, and translated them into graphic form.
Honestly, I’m not sure what to say about the writing displayed in this book. I mean, it’s not bad by any stretch, but it’s nothing that I quite literally haven’t seen before. Rather than pen any new stories to fill this volume, each of the vignettes featured here are word-for-word reprints of ones found originally in the Survival Guide. Plus, the entire book is dialogue-free and there aren’t any characters for you to latch onto. With that said, though, Brooks’ skill at crafting believable scenarios involving zombies is second to none. Seriously, if you were to show these accounts to someone that had absolutely no idea what zombies were or whether or not they existed, it’s not hard to believe that they might develop a reasonable fear about being attacked by reanimated corpses. Brooks is also a clear student of world history. The sheer amount of detail he plugs into each chapter makes them read and feel like they were plucked from a truly interesting history text, while still remaining incredibly entertaining. It’s nice to see a writer that is able to craft a story involving zombies that doesn’t succumb to the whole “band of people trying to survive the apocalypse” cliché.
As good as Brooks’ writing is, I think the real selling point of this book is the art. I’m not familiar with anything newcomer Ibraim Roberson did before this, but hope publishers and creators everywhere are paying attention. This guy’s pencils are amazing. His zombie renderings actually look like rotting corpses, as opposed to the more stylized, monster-ish drawings that a lot of other pencillers produce. He also has a real knack for producing some very cinematic panels with a ton of diverse settings. His art style is very refreshing also because of what he doesn’t show on the page. He really ratchets up the tension and suspense in certain chapters by letting the reader fill in a lot of things themselves. I know this may sound like he’s being a little lazy, but believe me, this style totally works and kept me completely glued to the stories.
If you’ve already read the “Recorded Attacks” portion of the original The Zombie Survival Guide, you might find this graphic novel a bit repetitive. But if you haven’t read it (and you really should), check this comic out. Roberson’s art is spectacular, Brooks’ writing is still top notch, and this is a zombie story that plays against all the conventions of the typical tale of the undead.
