What Is It about Zombie Books?
“The thing that readers of any zombie book need to have in common is at least a medium tolerance for violence.”–Library Journal (July 2013)
You need to have more than a medium tolerance for violence to read my zombie books. You need to be downright bloodthirsty.
The Library Journal is trying to figure out why zombie books keep coming back from the dead, so to speak, in their July issue. They seem to think that zombie comedies are superior to straight zombie horror books. Therefore, I would definitely not recommend my zombie books to the Library Journal.
And I take issue with their view that zombie comedies are superior to zombie horror taken neat. Certainly zombie books can have funny dialogue and funny scenes in them, but the main thrust of the zombie book should be horror, not comedy. Zombie comedy books that play zombies strictly for laughs are not appreciated by the true connoisseur of zombie books.
The same could be said for zombie movies. Not only is the comedy Zombie Land inferior to a true zombie horror film like Night of the Living Dead, it’s not even in the same league. It’s nonsense to even compare the two. Their only similarity is that they both happen to have zombies in them.
In short, zombie books aren’t about comedy. They’re about horror. As Lenin famously said about terrorism, “The purpose of terrorism is to terrify.” First and foremost, a true zombie horror book needs to horrify. Zombie books need to get back to their roots and scare the bejabbers out of readers and shed buckets of blood in the process.
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More than a medium tolerance is required for any sort of zombie fiction. In one issue alone of The Walking Dead, a guy had his head smashed in. It was certainly a horrific sight to behold. Then there is Shaun of the Dead...yeah I know it is a zombie comedy...but some of the violence was extremely grotesque...such as the guy who got pulled out of a window, with the zombies immediately proceeding to disembowel him. We also cannot forget Peter Jackson's (another zombie comedy) Braindead (Dead Alive in North America), though I think in this case much of the grotesqueries are there solely for humor.
True. You do need more than a medium tolerance of violence, even in the comedies. But the comedies are so idiotic, the violence doesn't cause fear, though it does cause revulsion. Peter Jackson's Braindead was totally revolting. Even though it's a comedy, the violence is graphic. You sort of laugh when you feel like regurgitating at the same time.
