The Lowdown: If you’re looking for a continuing narrative, this is not the book for you, however if you are a history buff that likes a good twist you may want to run to the store for this one.

Max Brooks is famous for many things, almost all of them zombie related. This book continues in that same vein, helping to add to the world he has created in an intriguing way. When you pick up Recorded Attacks, it doesn’t feel the way a comic ought to. There is no real narrative, no real dialogue even. Most of the book is action and historical speculation brought to you by the captions the author included.

What Max does is add to the world established by Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, helping to explain things like the origin of the virus as well as what humanity has done both in past and present to defend against it. The most interesting sections involve humanity’s willingness to survive.

In the Rome section, for example, we discover the origins of “Army Order 38,” a defensive plan against a horde that may or may not return. In homage to 300, we watch brave Roman soldiers face the horde. Some make it, some do not. What is most astonishing about this particular section is that it sets the stage for how humanity perceives the plague as a whole.

There are so many different reactions to the zombies. In Rome, they are smart enough to understand the bites are infectious. In the Caribbean, however, the whites do not understand the nature of the plague and this leads to some catastrophic events.

With Ibraim Roberson handling the art (famous for X-Men Origins), the book has a polished feel many may not be accustomed to. Mostly what you get with this book is realistic pencil art, awesome shading and rendering and some horrifying imagery. The stories are interesting in the historical sense in that it allows the reader to see the cleverness and stupidity of other races in the past.

Of course a major theme is that history repeats itself, so if you’ve read World War Z, you can see the significance of this book in a much larger context. The whole presentation feels like it’s a study of how the world has coped with the Zed war, and the fact that they have never really left us. We even get glimpses of some experimental applications of the undead from the Japanese and the Russians.

A lot of this is predictable, but never the less interesting. This book is not necessarily about surprise twists so much as it is a survey of the human reaction to impending doom. This a series of triumphant battles in a war we will never win.

Perhaps this idea is best expressed in the French Legionnaire siege. Imagine a 3 year forced incarceration at the hands of an enemy that requires no resources to survive and cannot be reasoned with. This is the very definition of psychological terror and as is the case with many of the scenes shown in the book, Brooks creates a palpable feeling of tension.

The bottom line is that this book is an expansion of the Brooks Zombie realm. You will appreciate this so much more if you are familiar with his Zombie series as a whole, so think of it as part of a continuing investment in an author that is more than deserving of your money.

Richard Bashara
Rich@comicimpact.com