Lot’s of zombie in recent days. First off, I’m reading a delightful novel Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament by S. G. Browne. Think first-person zombie Fight Club. Details of steady decay are illustrated with humor and winks o’ plenty. It reads like a classic, as if the book were written years ago despite frequent references to modern technologies.

Whether you’re a hardcore zombie freak or a fair weather zombie friend, you’ll totally dig Breathers. If you’re a preteen girl, you’ll most likely enjoy the angst-ridden romantic tension and profound friendships between zombie friends and lovers.

Also, zombies cameo like mad in web comics…

Z-Props to Tim Rickard of Brewster Rockit.

Haitian Voodoo Zombie: A spicy mix of whip-your-ass missionary technology and several different flavors of indigenous Latin/African religions. They don’t eat your brains but will labor endlessly for the benefit of their master(s). These O.Z. voodoo zombies can carry out complex tasks at the beckoning call. Seriously, you can get these zombies to wash your dirty undies and sell Amway to your neighbors.

Modern Cannibal Zombies: Quite different from the O.Z. (original zombies). These dead predators tend to become overwhelmed with the munchies for human intestines, brains, spleen, etc. Far less intelligent than his voodoo cousin, the modern zombie wanders aimlessly much like an awakened mummy.

Whether your zombie literature of choice dates back to religious mysticism or government-sponsored bioterrism, all zombies are weaponized with eternal existence and a powerful drive to live that most of us shabby humans can only afford after several cups of strong coffee.

Mummy types lay at rest under sand and large sculpture art. Zombie types ponder their dinner 6 feet deep in clay soil with a gravestone atop their heads. If the multitude of literary zombie myths adhere to the consistently singular premise of the medically deceased returning to a quasi-living state, then unequivocally, mummies and zombies exist in the same genus.

Stop hatin’ on my wrapped peeps! Mummies are zombies, too.

Emergency Zombie Procedure

Proper protection from impending zed word evisceration is a wide and expansive subject matter. It goes without saying that one should fill a bathtub full of potable water, as zombie contamination is a sure bet. Destroying the first floor stairs and camping out in the attic is another gimme of Z-protection.

Given access to weapons like a shotgun or a hunting rife, how many of us wouldn’t quickly forget procedure and go nutzo-crazy like Sarah Palin? Problem there: zombies can in fact hear and feel the reverberations of those gun blasts from miles away and will inevitably lumber their decomposing asses (fast or slow) to your hideout. Furthermore, you will run out of ammo before you run out of zombies. Period. Comma. Semicolon.

Fire sure is tempting as a weapon. No doubt a flamethrower would be fun, but again, you will attract more undead hordes. Zombies don’t care if they are on fire, and they will keep crawling inch-by-inch towards that juicy brain of yours until you and your stronghold get burn to a crisp.

Plus, who knows what kind of disease/infection could result from inhaling smoldering zombie fumes.

Day by Day Armageddon (2004)

Sloppy syntax and misspellings fill the 260 page mass of this post-apocalyptic online journal turned print publication, while the narrative follows the survival of one particularly autobiographical U.S. Naval officer. Extensive time is paid to the referencing of Romero scenarios and the listing of cautionary harm-protection involved in surviving a plague of cannibal corpses. Author J. L. Bourne appropriately credits Max Brooks for his thoroughly detailed ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE. Also note the descriptive comments on isolation and alcoholism, not just vaguely similar to Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND.

Time has pasted. President Bush dies at the hands of an undead horde of ghouls, and first lady Laura Bush orders the nuclear bombing of Austin, Texas among other cities. Of course it doesn’t take. Swarms of radioactive zombies crowd the country. Our Texan protagonist then leaves his fenced in home to steal yellows hummers, motor boats and small planes to caravan back and forth across miles of Texas landscape and spasmodically paced narrative.

Scenes of high action erratically push the story along long lengths of description about the hero’s elaborate new plans, most of which are never acted upon. Although Bourne makes sure to include plenty of dashing but unclear 007-style escapes, one notable example involving parachutes and automatic weapons, the bulk of DAY BY DAY ARMAGEDDON reads like awkward online fan fiction in the mask of legitimate horror.

What saddens me the most is that this book could very well have been an awesome read if the author took the time to trim the fat, cut the overt homages and hire a proofreader. The genre of ‘self-published fiction’ doesn’t have to be the scary red flag that sends horror fans running home to their old Dean Koontz novels.

I give it: 3 radioactive thumbs down (badly decomposed of course).

DEAD WEST is a pulp comic tale of reanimation and revenge penned by Rick Spears and inked by Rob G.

A young Indian named Little Cub rides away from the blazing inferno that once was his tribe’s village. Since westward-moving immigrant cowboys are to blame, the young Indian decides to avenge his family’s death with some wicked hoodoo voodoo, first killing his horse and then performing seppuku in the graveyard at the outskirts of a small western town.

Dead West (2005)

Dead folks start popping up from the ground like crazy (some in full garb, top hats and bonnets included). A hard-boiled cowboy protagonist tries his best to protect the town inhabitants with little success.

Dead West is short on words and heavy on narrowly penciled hash lines, sharply emphasizing broad motions, blood spatters, and the sloughing of rotted flesh with a level of harsh contrast that makes the wild west look as grimy as it should. The pencil style is so fast and loose in moments of glorious gore, the reader tends to finish the ambiguous flash of blood and guts with his/her own imaginings.

Expect the most expected of western subplots, thank Sweet Zombie Jesus the addition of living deadites works brilliantly with the old cowboy conventions.

I give it:

• 3 burning corpses
• 2 legless torsos
• 1 undead pimp who pops out the grave wearing a top hat

I am legend (original cover)

While not technically about zombies or the reanimation of dead flesh, Richard Matheson’s third novel I AM LEGEND (1954) plows fertile soil for the roots of modern zombie fiction. Isolation and routine are the painful truths that accompany a world where the human race is, by all signs, extinct.

I am Lengend (second print)

Lead man Robert Neville struggles in a prison of his own home. Reinforced and decorated with garlic, Robert’s house takes a beating every night when the vampires come to scream and chuck rocks at him. If that didn’t suck enough, Robert has to wake up every morning to face daylight and the total absence of other human life. The cities are empty. All of the material products that human society had to offer before the monsters took over means nothing to Robert without companionship. No doubt, George A. Romero shared writer Matheson’s insight to a purposeless consumer society in his brilliant and heavy-handed DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978).

Omega Man (1971)

Robert Neville’s growing alcoholism and sexual frustration eventually takes a toll on his judgment. The endless daily errands and vampire defense measures wear on Robert’s commitment to survival, alone in a world of monsters.

Charlton Heston turns the acting knob up to 11 with his own brand of tweak out grimaces in the OMEGA MAN (1971). Sadly, this film stands the Hollywood quick-telling of Matheson’s masterpiece. Plus, someone replaced all of the cool vampires with creepy guys in robes, which is creepy but makes no sense.

Vincent Price was responsible for the most accurate iteration of Neville’s character in the original adaptation called THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964).

Last Man on Earth (1964)

Tragically, Hollywood’s third and worst version I AM LEGEND (2008) modified the original story beyond recognition, relying on sexy Scientologist Will Smith and slick CGI to tell the story. When will people learn that 3D animation is never 1/3 as scary as latex, chocolate blood, stop motion and creepy camera angles?

When compiling literature that explores the struggles of the post-zombie-holocaust, after the panic and smoke has settled, I AM LEGEND cannot be left out, along with WORLD WAR Z and the WALKING DEAD series of course. Both in narrative technique and social commentary, Richard Matheson’s enduring undead vampire myth has been referenced and ripped off by the even the best of zombie visionaries.