Max Brooks vs. Max Brooks

Yet another dual/duel review, this time pitting Max Brooks against himself! I guess we know who the winner is going to be for this one, eh? This match-up is a show-down between the “Recorded Attacks” section of Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide (hereafter referred to as TEXT) and the graphic novel version of it called The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks (Hereafter referred to as GN) Let’s breakdown the similarities and differences between the two so we can properly assess which one is the winner.

The most obvious similarity is the author is the same man, Max Brooks. The GN is black and white (a popular choice with zombie comics) as is the TEXT. Both books document the history of zombie outbreaks from 60,000 B.C. to nearly the present day and prepare the reader for the events Brooks covers in World War Z. The stories are nearly identical, except...

The most obvious difference is that the TEXT covers many more events than the GN does, which makes sense. As told in a comic, any story is going to have a much higher page count than in an unillustrated text like the TEXT. Of the 61 stories in the TEXT, 12 survive in the GN. I suppose I could pit the 12 TEXT stories against the 12 GN stories to give my review the oft-desired “level playing field.” But that seems unfair, for the other 49 stories have good qualities and the 12 are visually evocative and have certain advantages when told in a graphical format. Consider these two examples:

TEXT tells of a 60,000 B.C. cave painting that may be a warning or a description of a zombie attack: “On the wall is a painting of a human figure, hands raised in a threatening posture, eyes fixed in an evil gaze. Inside its gaping mouth is the body of another human.” (p183) Compare that description to its depiction in the GN:

Which is creepier to you? For me, the GN version is more unnerving in its specificity--the narrow, uneven slits of the eyes and the frowning shape of the mouth. The text seems so generic by comparison.

Here’s another example from the TEXT speculating about a 17th century A.D. ship discovered at sea with no crew and the hold full of undead African slaves chained to the floor. The discoverers of this horror sank the ship. Brooks speculates:

“...the unfortunate slaves would have to have endured watching their captors devour or infect one another after their slow transformations into living dead, the virus having worked its way through their systems. Even worse is the awful likelihood that one of these crewmembers attacked and infected a chained slave. This new ghoul, in turn, bit the chained, screaming person next to him. On and on down the line, until the screams were eventually quiet and the entire hold was filled with zombies. Imagining those at the end of the line, seeing their future creeping steadily closer, was enough to conjure the worst nightmares.” (pp. 200-201)

In contrast, the GN speculates that one of the slaves was sold (mistakenly or deliberately) to the slave traders while infected and the disease spread through the crew and the cargo hold at the same time. This time I found the GN less horrifying because it seems less likely that the chained slaves could bite each other across the aisle and it seems less likely that the crew would get infected. The GN did have the unnerving payoff of seeing the zombie slaves from the sunken ship walking away on the sea floor.

TEXT (or any text for that matter) relies on the imagination of the reader to fill in the graphic details. Sometimes this is effectively accomplished, as in the creeping doom of the slave ship or in another story where Japanese zombie killers are trained in part by spending a night in a room full of moaning zombie heads (the killers either succumb to or master their fear). Both TEXT and GN acknowledge that a detached zombie head has no moaning ability (without lungs and such) but say it is more the psychological horror of rows upon rows of undead eyes watching and teeth snapping that is the true test. TEXT better suggests the terror than GN shows it in this case, making for a more compelling story.

On the other hand, the GN forces the reader to confront abominable acts being committed in their specificity. Zombies are really rotting to pieces and tearing chunks of flesh off people. The artist may have a more fiendish imagination than the reader and show the reader what he or she wouldn’t think of on their own. The artist here, Ibraim Roberson, does a good job of not being gratuitously gory, only presenting what is needed to drive home the horror of the stories told. The gore isn’t an end in itself. Here it serves to raise the stakes in the story, making a victory more triumphant or a defeat more devastating.

One strength of TEXT is the interweaving of the stories. Some of the zombie outbreaks have sequels of a sort. The Japanese zombie killers are too efficient, leaving World War II Japan without any zombies to exploit as weapons. So when they found some in Manchuria, they attempted to exploit them with bad results. Some of the Manchurian experiments were seized by the Soviets, who also tried and failed to develop them as weapons, leading to the destruction of a Siberian town. Having different stories related makes for more interesting reading and gives a sense of a well thought out and constructed history leading to World War Z.

Boosting intellect may not work out

So if the storyteller is equal and the stories are more or less the same, the discerning reader needs to look to those differences to make an evaluation. If the reader doesn’t want an imagination boost or especially graphic considerations, TEXT is the way to go. If you want a more visceral horror experience, GN is the way to go. For me, TEXT was more enjoyable just for the greater sense of history and number of different stories. I enjoyed GN and its enhancements of some of the stories, but I’d choose to re-read TEXT over GN. Which is not to say that I won’t re-read GN. TEXT wins by a nose (hopefully, an uninfected one).

Winner:


Loser:

Max Brooks vs. Roger Ma

Next up in our dual/duel reviews, we find Max Brooks trying to redeem himself (he lost the last one) against another opponent, The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living Deadby Roger Ma.

As you may remember from the previous smack down, the best section of Mr. Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead(hereafter ZSG) was the historical review of zombie outbreaks from prehistoric times to the present. The rest of the book was consumed by practical advice and exhaustive (and exhausting) reviews of different situations, weapons, etc., involved in a zombie outbreak.

Roger Ma’s work is more focused: after separating zombie myth from fact (e.g. he resolves the issue about whether zombies can run), he discusses their strengths and weaknesses, how we can prepare ourselves for combat, how to choose weapons and the best combat strategies and techniques. Sprinkled throughout the book are “combat reports” which are interviews of people involved in a recent world-wide zombie outbreak. These interviews help to illustrate the previous discussion. For example, after discussing important physiological concerns in combating zombies, Ma has an interview with a dentist from the 7th Combat Sciences Group (part of the American government, naturally). The dentist describes how zombie teeth are different from human teeth and how he works with the government on ways to combat the zombies through science, like trying to make their teeth rot and developing specialized weapons (like for removing teeth or jawbones).

Clearly Ma is inspired by both ZSG and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Waralso by Brooks. Adding the oral history component gives Ma more human interest throughout the book, so it isn’t all dry descriptions with wry humor like the early part of ZSG. Ma certainly has much better use of illustrations (some are step-by-step depictions of how to use particular weapons to behead, de-brain or otherwise incapacitate a zombie) and includes twenty pages worth of child protection advice (for which any underage zombie overlord is grateful). Plus, you’ve got to love quotes like, “Evading the undead can be an exhausting war of attrition, against an enemy that will not attrite.” (ZCM, p. 269)

Even with all these strengths, Brooks’ dry humor is a lot funnier than Ma’s dry humor. And Ma’s zombie outbreak is only describe in snapshots taken from the different interviews, so there is no big, cohesive picture or narrative. Also, I found the interviewees in Ma to be less well-rounded and believable as people. Some bits of dialogue read okay but seem like they’d be clunky if someone actually spoke them. So in this round, the winner is Max Brooks with his one-two punch ZSG and World War Z.

You may say it isn't fair having two books beat one, but when has zombie combat ever been fair?

Winner:





Loser:

Max Brooks Vs. Daniel H. Wilson, Ph. D.

 Inspired by the recent non-successful Scott Pilgrim vs. the World movie, I’ve decided to write a couple of dual reviews that will also be duel reviews. Today it’s Max Brooks’ seminal work, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (hereafter ZSG), against Daniel H. Wilson’s How to Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies (hereafter HBRA).

Max Brooks, son of famous film maker Mel, wrote for Saturday Night Live for three years. He has also made a name for himself in zombie pop culture. In addition to ZSG and its graphic novel spin-off ZSG: Recorded Attacks, he’s written an oral history of a world wide zombie outbreak called World War Z. The story has been produced as an audio book and is on its way to the silver screen. He’s the sort of expert who you want to have quoted on the back of your zombie novel or reference work.

Daniel H. Wilson, Ph.D., received his doctorate from the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University and has written several other humorous tech books like How To Survive a Robot Uprising and Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived in addition to writing for Popular Mechanics magazine. He knows the latest in state-of-the-art robotics. He definitely has the technical savvy for helping us deal with the undead.

Both books are humorous looks at practical advice for extreme disaster preparedness. ZSG is more thorough in this regard, looking at what causes zombies, what weapons work best and how best to deal with the hordes when on the defensive, on the run or on the offensive. The humor is very dry and far too sparse for my tastes. Brooks apes the survival guide style a little too well. The book is almost too serious and too thorough. Consider the list of public buildings reviewed as possible defensive strongholds: office buildings, schools, hospitals, police stations, retail stores, supermarkets, shopping malls, churches, warehouses, piers and docks, shipyards, banks, cemeteries, capitols and city halls. No less of an authority than my wife agrees with me that the best part of the book is the imaginative history of zombie outbreaks (starting from pre-historic times ending with 2002 A.D.) that follows the practical advice.

Wilson’s HBRA obviously focuses more on the current and expected development of robots. From pet robots and vacuum cleaners to micro-bots and unmanned vehicles, each bot is explained thoroughly. Then Wilson describes (less thoroughly) how to alter them for defense or offense. His humor is more constant and made me laugh out loud in several places, something I don’t remember while reading ZSG. He has a natural conversational style that is engaging and fun. The zombie content is pretty low but on the money. Consider this piece of advice: “Suffering a zombie bite is emotionally traumatic for humans--so let a cold, impartial robot make the logical decision to take you out. The robot will dispatch you with surgical precision and none of the sappy dialogue that usually accompanies violent partings between wives and husbands, best friends, or owners and pets.” [p. 163] Wilson definitely has his finger on the pulse of current robotics and current pop culture, with advice on how to use robots against aliens, vampires, Godzilla, werewolves, great white sharks, asteroids, ninjas, mummies, pirates and zombies. Clearly, he saved the best for last.

My conclusion is that Wilson’s HBRA is the more entertaining and technically astute read, while Brooks’ ZSG is a better preparation for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. If you can read only one, I’d recommend How to Build a Robot Army.

Winner:


Loser: