Barnes & Noble names ZOMBIE, OHIO a Zombie Novel of the Decade

Barnes & Noble has named Zombie, Ohio to its list of “Top 20 Zombie Novels of the Last Decade.”

I’ll take it.

Robert Kirkman in the Voice and Jezebel

On Wednesday, Simon Abrams in the Village Voice ran this piece about alleged sexism on the part of Robert Kirkman.  (I hesitate to say sexism “in The Walking Dead.”)  Specifically, it takes issue with a statement Kirkman is alleged to have made in a 2008 interview with the Comics Journal in which he seems to say that men would be better physiologically suited to surviving a zombie apocalypse than women.

Yesterday evening, Laura Beck at Jezebel ran a similarly critical ”attaboy” article citing the Voice.

While I have no position on this particular question– largely because I do not believe a zombie apocalypse would be survivable by anybody– I am fascinated that charges of sexism can be leveled from postulations about pretend, make-believe worlds containing unknowable circumstances and made-up boogeymen.

Kirkman thinks men would be better at surviving zombies than women.  (Will his opinion of their acumen at “unicorn riding” or “wolf-man grooming” or “leprechaun catching” perhaps be similarly scrutinized in the days to come?)  Really, the crucial question is this: Is Kirkman, as an artist, “allowed” to have this opinion?  It seems to me that the Voice and Jezebel strongly hint no.

As I can say from experience, one of the reasons it is artistically satisfying to write about a world of a zombies is that we can only access it through conjecture.  It is not real.  It will never be real.  How we might fare when confronted with shambling, hungry corpses can only ever be the subject of theory.  And yet we are curious.  We are so, so curious.

How would we actually act if the ravenous dead came to life?  Which demographics in our culture would be most suited to survive, or even thrive?  Would we become more humane, or less humane?  Would we become more sexist and racist, or less sexist and racist?

An artist must be allowed to attempt to answer these questions, even if his or her answer is “a bummer,” or concludes something about ourselves or Nature that we wish were not true.

Perhaps one must be an artist to understand this.  The above cited critics of Kirkman do not seem to have brought forth any creative achievement themselves… unless perhaps you count having the most nauseatingly twee personal website I have ever seen.  

zombie ice cream cups

A Kickstarter for zombie ice cream cups?  I am powerless to resist!

Click here to learn more at Kickstarter…

 

 

A bold assertion in the Times

I don’t usually like to just repost MSM articles about zombies, but this piece by Michael Cieply in today’s NY Times makes some remarkably bold assertions with little evidence provided to back them up. Has it really been established beyond all doubt that Kirkman has eclipsed Brooks as the central cultural driver of zombies? Really?  (And, according to the article, this is based upon the reaction of fans at Comic Con?  [Observed by whom?  When?])

Egad.

This just feels like a case where you really want to cite at least one authoritative exterior source (who agrees with you) before making sweeping generalizations.

“How do I know that Kirkman now ‘overshadows’ Brooks? I just do! Am I citing any book sales or media impressions or search engine results to back this up? Of course not! Did I ask George Romero or Matt Mogk or ANY ZOMBIE EXPERT AT ALL to corroborate this assertion? You KNOW I didn’t!!!” (High five.)

Movie Review: Rise of the Zombies

This weekend I watched the Mariel Hemingway zombie film Rise of the Zombies.  It premiered on the Syfy network in 2012, and has just been released on DVD via Netflix.

Rise of the Zombies imagines a San Francisco of the near future in which the ravenous dead have risen and a band of survivors has joined forces to make their stand inside Alcatraz Prison.  Levar Burton plays a scientist bent on researching the “colonial microorganism” that has turned the dead into zombies.  Danny Trejo and Ethan Suplee are survivors who seem less analytically minded than the others.  (At the start of the film, they have burned valuable research samples that would have been useful to Levar Burton’s scientist character.  For some reason.)  Mariel Hemingway plays the de facto leader of their band, though she is not more centrally featured than any of the other characters.

The zombies in this film are fast-moving, ravenous, and hunger not just for brains but any human flesh they can get.  A bite or scratch turns the living into a member of their legion in under a minute.

The imagery in Rise of the Zombies is all over the place.  There was a lot of cartoonish CGI I couldn’t get past, but some of the non-effects shots of the island were really evocative and well-done.  The zombies, for their part, looked excellent.  The zombie acting, however, was uneven.  (Sometimes they just hovered like stuntmen, waiting to be punched.)

Any zombie tale that has survivors holding out in a prison almost necessarily invokes the work of Robert Kirkman.  Will this film replay his tropes, or will it try to build something new and original?  The answer turns out to be “Yes.”  It will do both.

The narrative action really begins when a group of the survivors—who are sick of (literal) wave after wave of zombies washing ashore to attack their prison compound—set off on a raft in search of a better survival location. Many of the well-worn zombie movie chestnuts are here.  Survivors irritably bickering about what they should do next (often with nonsensical reasoning).  A researcher who cannot bring himself to abandon a zombified family member.  A religious adherent who sees ecclesiastical portent in the risen dead.  A romantic couple torn asunder by their zombie-related choices.  A scientist racing to discover the cure.

In fact, we get all of these in the first 25 minutes of the film.

I once saw an Elvis Costello concert where he opened with “Radio, Radio,” then went straight into “Allison,” and then into “Every Day I Write the Book.”  At first I was like “Wow, he’s playing all the hits!”  Then, as a sinking feeling came over me, I thought “No, he’s rushing through them.  Why’s he doing that?  This can’t be good…”  And so, after he had played all the compulsories, he brought on Emmylou Harris, and they did ninety minutes of country songs.  And I had paid to see a rock show.

In the same way, I wondered why Rise of The Zombies wanted to rush through all of the elements that are so often compulsory in a zombie film?  (The only thing missing was a “weaponing-up” montage in an abandoned armory.)  Were they getting these chestnuts over with to clear the way for a new and novel twist on the zombie narrative?  Sadly, no.  The speedy parade of well-worn tropes only cleared the way for action sequences I felt like I’d seen before.

There were a few unique and memorable scenes of gore involving Mariel Hemingway and Levar Burton.  (I’ll let you discover them for yourself.)  But even seeing a familiar actor play against type and go for the super-grisly can’t save this film.

There’s not much character development in Rise of the Zombies.  I often had trouble telling what characters wanted, or why they were doing certain things.  Frequently, I just didn’t understand what was going on.  There are some good performances here and there, and a few satisfying zombie killings, but at the end of the day I really struggled with Rise of the Zombies.  I can’t in good conscience recommend it.

Sauk City and August Derleth

This weekend I visited Sauk City, the hometown of the great American author August Derleth (1909-1971).  He wrote everything under the sun (poems, epic novels, mysteries, science fiction stories), but is best remembered– by me, at least– as a great author of weird fiction and horror fiction…including stories about zombies.

His most famous zombie tale is probably “The House in the Magnolias.”  He also published several collected editions of horror stories in his lifetime.  My favorite is Not Long For This World, which features tales that are as campy, silly, and strange as they are scary– and are often set in Sauk City or contiguous Prairie Du Sac.

While he was an important writer, Derleth was at least equally important as a great American editor and publisher.

If H. P. Lovecraft was the savior of American weird fiction, then August Derleth was its Saint Paul– the evangelist who got the word out.  Derleth founded Arkham House publishers in 1939 to specialize in Lovecraft’s work and stories by related authors.  It sustained this remarkable tradition of writing until the rest of the world began to take notice near the end of the twentieth century.

If you enjoy horror fiction and zombies, I encourage you to check out the work of August Derleth!

Here are some photos I took on my visit:

An August Derleth sign outside Leystra’s Venture restaurant in Sauk City. They have a miniature Derleth museum inside… and some excellent coconut pie!

August Derleth’s final resting place in Sauk City.

A historical marker that EVENTUALLY mentions Arkham House.

A sign for August Derleth Park. (Hmmm. What other weird fiction writers deserve a park named after them? PROVIDENCE, I AM LOOKING IN YOUR DIRECTION…)

Gunnery on The Walking Dead and beyond

Lucky Gunner Labs has put together an accessible exegesis of the sidearm favored by Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead.  Here’s part of it:

It’s an inevitable truth– for some, ineluctable– that creative work related to zombies is likely to involve weapons and firearms.  But how much detail ought one to give when it comes to guns and ammunition?  How far down the wormhole of chrome-lined barrels and articulating-link piston action differentials should an artist go?

I have the sense that sins of omission may be venial, but sins of inaccuracy are straight-up Cardinal.  This is as true of firearms as it is of anything else.

For example, I love the spreadsheet at the bottom of this clever blog entry by Joe McKinney about mistakes writers make when they’re writing about law enforcement.   (I can imagine being moved to make this after reading zombie story after zombie story in which someone is “elected Chief of Police” or “appointed Sheriff by the mayor” or whatever.)

“I ran for detective in the North Minehead By-Election.”

Getting the details right about things like firearms or police– things that most folks have a cursory knowledge of, but some people have incredibly hyperspecific knowledge of– is like paying your bills on time; there’s no reward for doing it, there are just punishments for not doing it.

But I also think you have to watch out for the other side of the coin.  I’ve read a few zombie stories– all of them were, not-coincidentally, horrible– where the authors clearly expected a carnal appreciation for firearms to be the driving force that kept his/her readers turning pages (as opposed to, say, compelling characters doing interesting things).  I am not entirely unsysmpathetic to this pitfall.  I understand the impulse.  I’ve just learned to restrain it.  (To wit, I’m a drummer and I love drums and cymbals.  My last zombie novel featured a drummer as one of my three main characters.  I could write 5,000 words in my sleep on the history of ride cymbals, Avedis Zildjian’s influence on classical  music, or the evolution of die-cast snare drum hoops.  I find that stuff fascinating.  Know who doesn’t?  99.99% of zombie novel readers.)

“That’s two pages on zombies… and now twenty pages on the changes to Massachusetts environmental laws that forced the Avedis Zildjian Company to indefinitely halt production of their Platinum cymbal finish after 1997.”

I am writing for other people.  I must surrender to this fact.  I am not only writing for me.  And while other people might have deep-running appreciations of drums or cymbals (or handguns or police procedure), most probably don’t.

At the end of the day, your technical details must be right, but people aren’t reading for the technical details.  Remember that.  They are reading because you’ve just sidled up to the bar and said “Okay everybody, listen up.  I’ve got a good one.”

Oh yeah?  Lay it on us.

Zombies on WGN

I had the opportunity to talk zombies and Zombie, Illinois on the Bill Leff show on WGN Radio this morning.  It was great fun!

Click here to take a listen.

Movie Review: The Grapes of Death

This weekend I watched the 1978 French zombie film The Grapes of Death.  Some Francophone zombie fans had recommended it to me as the best French zombie film after The Horde (which is one of my all-time favorites) and a classic among French zombie fans.  I was eager to check it out.

The Grapes of Death opens with a shot of serious-looking men in breathing apparatuses grimly going about some sort of outdoor work.  It could be right out of a contemporary post-apocalyptic zombie movie.  After a few moments however, one realizes that these are simply vineyard workers spraying pesticide.  Even so, it is a stern opening that nicely sets the tone of the film.

Only their hats are jolly…

The Grapes of Death is about a mysterious flesh-rotting disease that strikes agricultural workers in an unnamed area of rural France.  The protagonist is a young woman traveling by train on a vacation to Spain with her friend.  When a strange man with rotting flesh enters her traincar and kills her friend, our heroine is forced to flee the train and run into the countryside (in a wine-making region) looking for a gendarme to whom she can report this horrible murder.  Instead, she finds herself in a wasteland of mutilated bodies, local residents driven to murderousness, and a strange infection that turns people into sleepwalking killers.

There is a mystery to be solved here, and—without giving too much away—let’s just say that wine is involved.

It’s fun to watch a zombie story set in the French countryside, with its quaint villages, ancient farmers’ cottages, and rows and rows of grapevines.  It’s a not a background in which one frequently sees—in movies, books, or video games—zombie outbreaks represented.  Instead, it’s the kind of backdrop where you keep expecting the camera to pan over to reveal Allies and Nazis fighting one another.  (Perhaps in this way, it reminded me of my first viewing of the 1966 Hammer zombie film The Plague of The Zombies, which was—to my knowledge—the first film to set zombies in a rural English village.)

There are many satisfying sequences of horror and zombie-violence, but the special effects shots in Grapes of Death may leave you remembering that it wasn’t made in 2013.  (One decapitation was rendered so poorly that I wondered if I was supposed to think a mannequin had suddenly been introduced.)  The Grapes of Death is at its most effective, however, when it dispenses entirely with effects-shots and delves into representations of group psychosis and the uncanny.  A sequence of the protagonist fleeing from a horde of zombielike creatures—who slowly totter toward her with outstretched arms and bloody mouths whilst moaning “Je t’aime…”—was perhaps the most eerie part of the film.

Zut alors, this head looks fake!

In addition to some poor effects shots, I can’t recommend The Grapes of Death unreservedly because I think many contemporary zombie fans might struggle with the pacing.  The action in The Grapes of Death is often strange and halting.  I had trouble telling how much of this was just “Frenchyness” and the style of 1978, and how much was the intended effect of the filmmakers.  But whatever the cause, it takes some getting used to.  Some modern viewers may not have the patience.

“Don’t just stab her immediately. First, pose like that for a LONG TIME… for some reason…”

Still, if you’re in the mood for a very different kind of zombie movie—in an unusual setting—The Grapes of Death might just be your cup of tea/wine/zombie-blood.  With a few reservations, I recommend it.