Greetings, folks. Welcome back to another Book Report.

In 2004 John Ajvide Lindqvist released Låt den rätte komma in in his native Sweden. The book was a huge success and ultimately has been translated into 13 different languages. In 2007 the book hit American shores with the title Let the Right One In.
In 2005, Lindqvist followed his best-seller up with Hanteringen av odöda. Translated into English in 2009, the book is called Handling the Undead.

Handling the Undead falls under the recently popular category of Zombie fiction, although it is by no means a typical zombie story. I suppose “recently popular” is a loose term to use, since zombie fiction has been around for quite some time, especially on film. But it’s nice to see someone do something different with the zombie genre.

For one thing, the book isn’t a gore-fest. Love, especially the love between parent and child, is a major theme here. Rather than the indiscriminate slaughter of undead by a few survivors trying to find a safe place (or the indiscriminate slaughter of living by a mass of zombies trying to find brains), the book explores the period of grieving in losing a loved one and also the shock to the system that could happen when the loved one comes back.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some blood. There’s some horror. But Resident Evil or Dawn of the Dead this ain’t.

I suppose there will be some purists out there who won’t like how Lindqvist toys with the genre, but the book presents a truly wonderful ‘what-if’ scenario and invites you along for the ride. But the ride is more psychological than anything. You get a nice glimpse of the human condition and some believable reactions to an unbelievable situation. There’s some panic, but there’s also denial and dismissal, religious zealotry, and scientific testing to see if death, after all, can be defeated.

So give it a read, and next week I’ll explore some of the more traditional zombie literature.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Last week, I had covered a subject that most people find intriguing: the zombie. Several points were brought up about the metaphorical significance that a zombie has in popular culture. Today, I’m going to go in a different direction and talk about cases of people who claim that they could produce or claim that they were at one point a zombie. So how does one produce a zombie? That is the biggest question in today’s post. We recognized in the previous post that the condition to create a zombie is that a person must be dead and then brought back to life. Is that it? With that kind of definition, Jesus Christ is a kind of zombie. Several competing sources add a person who is responsible for this change, typically a voodoo priest who is able to somehow bring the victim to death (or the appearance of death) and then revive them. But there are other instances, biological diseases, that can also give a person the appearance of being a zombie. Further, there are even animals that adopt this technique of apparent death and reanimation every year to cope with their harsh surroundings. To begin with, let us look at the zombie that is made by a voodoo priest.

Some people believe that the fear or belief in zombies is relegated to a very few in this modern world. But this article here, indicates that in Haiti, the belief in the brain-eating zombie is still practiced by some. The article essentially details a Voodoo priest who was concerned about the burial of masses of people who were killed during the 2009 earthquake. So are there any real cases of zombies being produced? There is man by the name of Wade Davis who was able to track down the process of making a zombie. Rather than try to explain the discoveries that this man has made, there is a documentary that has detailed all the exploits of Dr. Davis. Here are a few clips of what he found.

It wasn’t too long before Dr. Davis found what he was looking for. A man by the name of Clairvius Narcisse underwent the process and recounts his experience. Listen to the process that Davis records from Narcisse.

One of my favorite lines from this video is the line, “You can quickly see how zombification becomes a fate worse than death.” The reason that this man is able to make this claim is the factor of physical labour. The story of Clairvius Narcisse is a stunning reminder of why anyone would want to make a zombie in the first place. Zombie masters are able to reap the benefits out of those that they zombify. So how does it work? How do these voodoo priests turn their victims into zombies, hollow shells of people who are highly receptive to suggestions and commands? Here’s a breakdown based on the research that Davis was able to find, and of course, don’t try this at home. No need to provoke a real zombie uprising … First, there are a combination of drugs that are derived from natural plant and wildlife sources. Specifically, the skin of a toad and the puffer fish. Both of these have toxins and neuro-toxins that are able to drastically reduce the amount of “lifeiness” a person has. Of course, too much of these toxins and the target victim will be dead. Too little of the toxin, and the victim will not go under enough. Then there is a burial in which the person is completely entombed. Finally, the zombie master comes with an herbal concotion that will rouse the victim as well as destroy the part of the brain that is in control of short-term memory. In other words, the zombie retains some of their long term memories, but they are completely malleable at this point. The final step is to make them mad, as in angry. It is unclear what the motivation for upsetting the zombie is, but I believe it probably has something to do with the mental condition necessary to keep the zombie forgetting who he is. Again, why do this? It turns out that zombies are actually a great labor source. Many of those that practice zombification are land owners that run sugar cane plants and the like. So there you have a zombie from the Haitian perspective. What about biology? Aren’t there diseases that have a similar effect?

Why yes there are! Some of these diseases are really pretty frightening. The first one (and probably the least disgusting) is sleeping sickness. In a BBC article found here, one of the surgeons explains the progression of the disease: “At first it will cause headaches, aching muscles and maybe itching. But in the late stages, when the parasites have invaded the brain, the signs become more obvious and ominous. Victims find it hard to concentrate. They become irritable, their speech is slurred and they stop eating. Their daily rhythm becomes disrupted to such an extent that they can’t sleep at night and find it almost impossible to stay awake during the day. It even becomes very hard for them to do simple mental tasks, such as drawing a straight line. This is an infection that carries nightmarish qualities, reducing many of its victims to a zombie-like state before they go into a coma and die. Those that do survive can be left with irreparable brain damage.” Sounds pretty terrible, doesn’t it? Here is a video that outlines some of the problems that doctors experience with this disease, but the symptoms that the doctor outlines are in line with the description of a zombie.

Another disease that everyone should recognize as a zombie-like disease is that of leprosy. Lepers are probably the most historically recognizable case of the “walking-dead.” They are experiencing necrosis of the dermal layer. Literally, lepers skin is falling off. What does it look like in its advanced stages? Prepare yourself for some true suffering. There is a reason people are terrified of leprosy and consider it a biblical disease. The modern zombie is often depicted more like a leper than they are the Haitian zombie that we have discussed from above. Look at this video and ponder why we make lepers more akin to our famous horror icon. On a personal note, I am in no way trying to spread fear about lepers; conversely, I am trying to make people aware of the diseases in our world that have been truly demonized.

Finally, there are some cases of animals that pull off a zombie trick of apparent death and rebirth. Here is a final video that showcases the “overwintering” effects of monarch butterflies. Some insects are so proficient at this technique that they are speculated to be able to live for thousands of years if necessary. Here is a website that offers more information about overwintering and insect diapause. See you all next week, start believing and pretty soon, you’ll be seeing.

Hey, kids! Welcome back to the Book Report.

I want to talk about about a book that, when it was first published, took the literary world by storm but I couldn’t stand reading when I was forced to get through it in high school. Now that it has been updated and revised, however, it’s an absolute joy to get through.
The book I’m talking about is Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.

First published in 1813, the book was an immediate success. Jane Austen called the work “her own darling child” and spoke of its protagonist, Elizabeth Bennett, “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.” History has, more or less, agreed with her. In 2003, the BBC conducted one of its largest surveys to determine “The UK’s Best Loved Book”, and it placed second behind The Lord of the Rings.
(Side note: Have you noticed how The Lord of the Rings consistently gets a mention in these Book Reports? It’s because it really is that good of a book, and you should go read it if you haven’t yet)
As a love story it works fine, but I am inclined to agree with Charlotte Bronte when she calls the novel “…a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses…Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.” (written Jan 12, 1848 to Fraser’s magazine, in response to their review of Austen’s book)
It is a good criticism. Jane Austen wrote clever characters doing clever things in clever situations, and surrounded those clever people with idiots so they might appear more clever. The trouble is that just because it is clever doesn’t automatically make it any good. Even the main conflict of the story, the squaring off of Darcy’s pride and prejudice against Elizabeth’s (get it?), is more a battle of wits than anything and doesn’t go any deeper than simple miscommunication.
What this story really needs is a conflict of apocalyptic proportions.

In 2009, Jane Austen’s novel got a much needed face-lift (so to speak), when Seth Grahame-Smith updated her “classic Regency romance” to include “Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem” with the newly revised Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And so the story got the conflict of apocalyptic proportions it so desperately required.
The story essentially remains unchanged (in fact, Mrs. Bennett remains almost completely unchanged), the only difference now is that when the story is about to get unbearably boring, a zombie attack (called “unmentionables” in the story) comes around to liven things up.

One thing I really appreciated about the book is that it helps clarify the satire in Austen’s original text. Hiding just beneath the love story is subtle humor poking fun at the superficial lives of the landed gentry. The trouble is, it can be difficult to tell exactly how superficial they really are when the main conflicts of the story scratch barely beneath surface-level problems. Watching the rich, land-owning elite of the early 19th century resolutely hang onto their “manners” in the face of global apocalypse in the updated version brings out the satire to the point of hilarity.
It doesn’t hurt that the book has kung-fu in it now, too.

For those who prefer their literature in video format, there’s good news for you, too. Richard Kelly (the writer and director of Donnie Darko) and Natalie Portman (do I really need to list any credits?) are set to produce the film version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with Portman to star as the historically popular heroine. The project is still under development, but I expect you’ll hear more from Sgt. Angle as things progress on this front.

That’s all for this week!

Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Happy Holidays, kids! It’s Akatzen here with a special holiday edition of The Book Report, and two books I’d like to talk about.

In addition to the warm, fluffy feelings people often get around the holidays, there is a lot of humbug too. Charles Dickens recognized this and wrote one of the most memorable Christmas tales in history.
No, this book report is not about Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but it is about finding the delight amidst all the humbuggery this season (and humbuggery is not what you are thinking, so get your mind out of the gutter. Oh hell, who am I kidding? The image I’m getting in my head right now is actually pretty funny).

Both books I’d like to mention follow a similar theme, beyond even the obvious Christmas one. The theme they have in common: Zombies.
Yeah, you read that right. (What do you expect? My favorite two Christmas movies are The Ref and Die Hard)

The first book is by literary funny man Christopher Moore, The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror.

“Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.”

The premise of the book is simple (and awesome!). In the small town of Pine Cove (setting of quite a few of Moore’s books), a young boy witnesses the death of a man dressed as Santa Claus. Profoundly disturbed, the boy prays for Santa to be resurrected. An angel named Raziel (last seen in Moore’s book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal), given the task of answering a single Christmas prayer, answers the boy’s request perhaps a little too literally and soon the town is being ravaged by the undead. Let the holiday hysteria ensue!

Appropriately enough, Christopher Moore wrote the introduction to my next holiday offering, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies: A Book of Zombie Christmas Carols, by Michael P. Spradlin (and illustrated by Jeff Weigel).
With the prevalence of Zombie Literature hitting the market in recent years (such as The Walking Dead graphic novels, The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), all pointing to the imminent zombie apocalypse, it’s comforting to know that our holiday traditions will persevere, even if the lyrics need to be updated to fit the unsettling times. A few of my favorites: “Deck the Halls with Parts of Wally”, “Have Yourself a Medulla Oblongata”, and “Zombie Claus is Coming to Town”.
Spradlin’s book is reassuring proof that even when civilization goes down the tubes, civilization’s holidays will continue on, bringing hope and cheer to whoever is left alive to enjoy it.

Greetings all!

As Mr. Wolff so eloquently pointed out yesterday, Halloween is fast approaching. The time for dressing up and garnering free candy for yourself is indeed at hand. Everybody loves free candy right?

With that in mind, I have a special Halloween-themed list for today. Now, you could make a case that in super-hero comics, everyday is Halloween, but there have been special occasions throughout the years where these characters have decided that the usual spandex just isn’t enough, and another costume must be donned. Today’s list is ten super-people who have had their own, special, Halloween parties. Let the fun begin!

1) Batman dresses up as Dracula: This one makes a whole lot of sense. Batman dresses up like a bat, Dracula turns into a bat. Ok, so there was a story behind this, but it was as simple as “Batman gets bit by a vampire, and gets exrta creepy”. Presto! Sparkle magic Batman!

2) The Punisher dresses up as Boo-Berry (?): Ok, Frank might not have dressed up like the weird ghost thing that hocks cereal, but he wasn’t far off. At one point The Punisher dies, only to come back as a ghost hunting ghost. Like a sell-out Ghostbuster. Boo to you Frank.

3) The Marvel universe dresses up as Zombies: Zombies are hot right now, so why not have a comic where everyone is a zombie? This is why Marvel sells more books than anyone.

4) The Thing dresses up as a pirate: What would you do if you were made of rock and wanted to fit in? Would you go back in time, don a fake beard and play pirate? If you were The Thing you would. Strong work Benjy!

5) The X-men dress up as aliens: So the X-men didn’t dress up as aliens so much as get infected and turn into aliens, but you get the drift. Work with me here.

6) Spider-man dresses up as a Transformer (several times!): Spidey has a serious Transformer fetish. Every few years, he decides to try out a new robo-costume, each one as more suck-tacular then the last.

7) Kang dresses up as a pharaoh: The dapper gent with the blue face is Kang, a man from the future with an invisible chair. What does Kang do with his vast technological superiority, time travel skills, and nifty costume? He dresses up like a Pharaoh, goes back to ancient Egypt, and hopes that no one notices he is the only white guy for miles around. Oh Kang, you silly beotch.

Superman dresses up as a communist: In an Elseworlds special called RED SON, Superman lands in communist Russia instead of America. The big difference between worlds? Superman wears drab clothing. And probably has to share his super-powers with everyone.

9) Speedball dresses up like an S&M creeper: For those that don’t know who Speedball is, he’s the rather silly looking man with the bubble trail. Well, a while back, Speedball felt rather contrite about some shenanigans he had gotten into and decided that the best way to pay for his sins was to dress up like a human pin cushion. Good choice Speedy!

10) Power Man dresses up like a Pretty, Pretty, Princess: Luke Cage. The baddest bad man on the streets. Superfly wishes he were this cool. Shaft dreams of being Power Man. Sho Nuff (The shogun of Harlem) has nightmares about getting his @$$ kicked somethin’ fierce by the Hero for Hire. But no one can explain why this man wore a tiara, bracelets and and flowing shirt for over a decade.

That’s it for today folks, thanks for stopping in and have a great weekend!

Good Monday everyone,

It is time for another list, but today we are going under the radar a little. I often talk about how much I enjoy independent comic books, but I spend a lot of blogs writing about big comic companies. So, today I am giving a list of 10 small press/independent comic book publishers that I enjoy. We are talking small here, not Oni press, not Fantagraphics, not SLG. Many smaller publishers are only sold at the local LCS, so you might never have heard of any of these guys, This isn’t a top 10, per se, but 10 smaller guys that I really like. So away we go:

1) Red 5 comics: These guys have a small but diverse group of titles, each of which is very strong, both in story and in art. Their ATOMIC ROBO series was the darling of free comic book day this year, and they are definitely a company on the rise.

2) Law Dog Comics: Law Dog doesn’t put out a ton of titles, but what they do put out is great. These guys do only OGNs (original graphic novels), and each one they put out is highly enjoyable. TERRITORY 51 was a lot of fun, pitting cowboys against aliens, and TOLLS FOR THEE looks very slick.

3) Ancient Squid Media: Three words. Zombies Vs. Schoolgirls.

4) Bad Karma Productions: A newer publisher, these guys have a great energy and great sense of humor. The big title for BK this year is JESUS CHRIST: UNDER THE GUN, where in Jesus goes throughout history righting wrongs.

5) Lobrau Productions: These guys do not put out much work, but have a great attitude. Their company slogan is “Home of  the world’s most mediocre entertainment”.

6) Crispy Comics: Crispy has one of the most innovative marketing/ distribution plans that I have seen, as they release their property, SUPER KAIJU HERO FORCE, as an iphone app. Very creative and very fun.

7) Mad Yak Press: Diversity is the name of the game here, with a large amount of both single issue comics and OGNs across a wide variety of genres. This company has high production values and some very superb stories.

803 Studios: Originally started as a company to sell anthology books, 803 has moved into more comics, THE SCIENCE OF SIX is a great read. The art on TRENCH COATS, CIGARETTES & SHOTGUNS is just beautiful.

9) Archaia Studios Press: One of the bigger guys on the list, Archaia is home to MOUSE GUARD (which has its own RPG) and a wide variety of other titles.

10) Top Shelf Comix: A company quickly moving up in the world. Alan Moore (yes, that Alan Moore) published his latest LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN through Top Shelf, and one of the company’s original properties, THE SURROGATES, is now going to be a major motion picture starring Bruce Willis!

So that’s my list list. Please let me know if I left your favorite small press publisher out.

Thanks for stopping in everyone, and I’ll see you tomorrow.