Q&A with Max Brooks

Writer Max Brooks knows a thing or two about the Undead. The author of The Zombie Survival Guide and the novel World War Z has been dubbed the “Studs Terkel of Zombie journalism.” Now he’s taking on even more of the Undead in his new comic series Extinction Parade, from Avatar Press. The series is about a post apocalyptic world where Zombies stalk the human population, and the Vampires who’ve lived in secret for years are faced with a new threat – the extinction of their food source. (That would be us!) We asked Mr. Brooks a few questions about this all out War of the Undead, and what cultural and ethical issues he hopes to address with his new book.

Geekquality: An early look at Extinction Parade seems to suggest that female vampires play a large role in the story.  What can you tell us about their character, and why did you choose to center the story on them?

Max Brooks: Our two main characters are Min and Laila, two female Euro-Chinese vampires living in what is now Malaysia. Initially they are thrilled at the rise of what they call the ‘subdead’. They love that the zombie-fueled chaos is breaking down all the barriers of human civilization that were increasingly constricting their actions. In the beginning it’s nothing short of Mardi Gras, a feeding frenzy where they get to kill anyone they want. Only later, as the crisis sweeps across the entire planet, do they realize that this is not just some passing blip. Suddenly they understand that the human race, and consequently their own race as well, now hangs in the balance.

With a story like Extinction Parade, there are obvious metaphors of inequality going on, be they racial or socioeconomic. Were any of those issues something that you intentionally wanted to address with this book? 

Inequality is exactly what I was exploring in this story, specifically the notion of privilege. When everything is handed to you, when you don’t have to struggle for anything, it leaves you dangerously dependent and vulnerable. To me that’s vampires: parasites on the dog of humanity, who’ve been handed all these wondrous gifts; strength, speed, agility, immortality, even anonymity. They think they’re at the top of the food chain, and, until the zombies come along, they are. Then one day that chain is being eaten away from the ground up and suddenly they have to confront the fact that they are in a war of survival that they’ve neither imagined, nor prepared for.

You’ve previously discussed a childhood fear of zombies being like “a plague”, rather than a predator.  Now you seem to be pitting one against the other, Zombies against Vampires. In light of recent events like mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut and the tragedy in Boston, are you seeing a more violent world, and is that an underlying theme in your new story?

I don’t think the world is more violent now. On the contrary, it’s statistically pretty peaceful when you compare it to, say, 1916 or 1943. What makes this time we’re living in now so special (and frightening) is that there are very few local problems anymore. We’re all so interdependent on each other that what affects some of us will send ripples through all of us.

Extinction Parade will be available in comic shops everywhere on Wednesday June 19^th, just two days before the release of World War Z.  We’ll have a review of the first issue, and all the latest on new stories in comics, right here in our weekly feature “We’re No.1!”