GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE: RECORDED ATTACKS by Max Brooks

Max Brooks took the horror world by storm with his breakout novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. This novel was a “how to” on surviving a zombie apocalypse (should there ever be one). It was hugely popular not only with horror enthusiasts but with mainstream audiences as well prompting the release of his next novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which documented all the historical encounters that mankind has had with the living dead. What made this second novel so popular was the fact that Brooks adopted the style of having all the stories being recounted by survivors and witnesses of a zombie outbreak.

Now we come to the newest addition to the ever growing zombie world that Brooks has created with the graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks. This graphic novel goes through history documenting stories that may have been “in reality” zombie attacks. Stories range from 60,000 B.C. to the present day and stretch from Central Africa to Siberia to Japan and to the United States. Like in World War Z, Brooks takes the time to cover a lot of ground even in the short span of this graphic novel.

Illustrated by Ibraim Roberson the stories recounted in the graphic novel are lush and so realistic that they pop right off the page. The black & white artwork is reminiscent of an old newsreel and evokes the dread of film director George A. Romero’s original 1968 Night of the Living Dead. Little to no dialogue is spoken between the characters depicted in the stories as Brooks maintains the feeling of his previous novel by evoking the “oral” tradition of storytelling. It is as if we are being told these stories from a first hand account and Robinson’s artwork brings those oral stories to glorious life.

This is a fine achievement in both storytelling and illustration and a great compliment to Brooks’ other two works. If you’re a fan of his other novels (or just a zombie fan at heart) then you’ll love what he’s done here in the comic book medium.