The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised

by June Pulliam

05/01/2006

Senecal, David, et al. Brainchild: A Collection of Artifacts. Columbus, OH: Omnibucket Publishing, 2006. 64p.

Brainchild, a publication that defies classification, is a collection of “artifacts” found and compiled by some nameless entity some time after the zombie apocalypse “in the hopes of reaching a future generation, in order to continue the memory of those lost, and so that the fear may diminish in the presence of knowledge” (from back cover). In short, it’s a time capsule from the distant future, to both the inhabitants of an even more distant future, and we in the present who are about to experience the end of civilization as we know it. This limited edition book (I received copy #98 out of a total run of 250) is a high quality collection of original color artwork in various media, interspersed with extremely short stories and even a poem about survivors and now deceased victims of zombies, and in the middle, the text includes an essay on the zombie as literary figure.

The subject matter of Brainchild is now the stuff of horror movie cliché, that end of the world most famously envisioned by George Romero’s Dead oeuvre, and imitated by nearly every subsequent zombie film, graphic novel and story. However, the book itself defies triteness by defying classification: it is neither a collection of fiction nor a graphic novel, nor an art show catalogue. The subtitle “a collection of artifacts” really sums up the assembled contributions, produced by professional writers, artists, and Justin Mills, a nine year old boy, who according to his bio hopes that someday his mother will actually permit him to read the book that published his conception of a man killing a zombie.

The opening stories in Brainchild deal with the first 24 hours of the zombie insurrection. David Secenal’s untitled piece presents the first moments of the zombie attack, when the undead literally shatter the safety of the family home. Scott Lambridis’ “The Red Room” chronicles the frenzied thoughts of a woman trying to save her daughter. David Wellington’s “Running” imagines what it would be like to just try to escape to safety, and Rebecca Brock’s “Black Days: Sandy” describes an office worker in New York making that fateful choice faced by so many humans in other zombie stories—is it safer to shelter in place or to run like hell? Interestingly, the character Sandy likens the present pandemonium to her more recent experience during 9/11. Later entries such as Brock’s “Black Days: Paul” describe the quest to survive many weeks after the apocalypse, or show people honoring the last requests of their loved ones, as is the case with Charles Hogle’s “Book of Matches.” And Scott Lambridis’s “Finnegan’s Scoop: An Interview With Sgt. Phillip McDougall” offers some expert advice about using the latest in zombie-killing technology. Finnegan’s scoop, a combination bayonet, ice-cream scooper, and cattle prod device has proven particularly useful in killing the undead by removing their brain stems. Sgt. McDougall is an experienced zombie killer with several dried brain stems to prove his prowess.

Of particular note is Mia Epstein’s essay “My Zombie Girlfriend: On the Female Undead in Film and Literature.” While the essay is very far from a scholarly and thorough musing on the subject, Epstein hits upon some important themes in zombie literature and film, and doesn’t just concentrate on the female undead as the title would indicate. The rough draft quality of the essay works for this particular collection, as it gives the impression that the piece was written on the fly by an author desperately attempting to preserve for posterity whatever she could remember.

The images reproduced in Brainchild are even more varied than the written selections. Ken Meyer, Jr.’s three water color and pen and ink drawings of zombies are what one would find in a contemporary graphic novel, which isn’t surprising as he works in this medium. Angie Needles’ water color of a zombie woman underscores that creature’s similarities with the vampire in that the subject of her picture takes an obvious pleasure in simply licking the blood from her hands. The image itself has a primitive quality with those fascinating nuances of pigmentation that can be achieved in water color. And David Senecal’s images, the majority of the ones in Brainchild, vary widely in media and subject matter, ranging from the cover illustration, a sort of zombie version of Dracula’s “bloofer lady,” to more abstract prints of the zombie holocaust and of survivors. Also notable are John Moos’ and Gavin Sodo’s illustrations.

This eclectic multi-media assemblage is a testament to the persistence in our collective imaginations of more than just the zombie, but of the apocalypse that must necessarily follow when the dead will no longer obligingly behave according to all known laws of nature and stay put.