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Let's get one thing straight; Max Brooks knows there are no such things as zombies.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared, though. Just in case.
The 39-year-old writer has made a career out of the undead, writing two New York Times bestsellers, 2003's The Zombie Survival Guide and 2006's World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Both examined zombie invasions, with the former laying out a course of action should the dead rise (which also was recently addressed by no less than the Centers for Disease Control), and the latter documenting the aftermath of a fictional plague that almost overran the planet. That makes him the perfect expert to speak to these issues at this weekend's Metrocon in Tampa.
"To be ready for a zombie attack is just disaster preparedness," he said by phone from Los Angeles. "It's like having an earthquake survival kit."
In fact, given the length and threat of hurricane season, he says Florida is already one of the more prepared locations in the country. His appearance at the largest anime convention in Florida, then, is tied to Metrocon's theme of Hunters vs. Monsters. And while it's billed as "10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack," Brooks says he prefers a Q&A format over a lecture.
Surely some questions will focus on World War Z's pending theatrical adaptation, the rights to which Brooks sold in 2007 to Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment. The A-list actor is also signed to star in the project, which is awaiting a screenplay, but is being directed by Monster's Ball and Quantum of Solace helmer Marc Forster.
In the meantime, he's working on a book he can't talk about, a movie idea that might be ripped off and is consulting on another movie project. It's a busy laundry list for a guy who was dispatched from his job at Saturday Night Live after two years, despite being part of a group that won an Emmy in 2002.
"I liked writing for SNL the least. I'm not a writer's room guy," he said, explaining the culture wasn't right for him, since he prefers to work out his thoughts by himself in an office. "The two best things Lorne Michaels did for me is hire me and fire me."
Instead, he took his Gen Xer-style love for zombies and other childhood obsessions to the bank. After working on a 2009 graphic novel, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, sort of an illustrated companion to his breakout book, this affinity for the surreal served him well on G.I. Joe: Hearts and Minds, a five-issue comic book miniseries he wrote for IDW Comics last year.
The series focused on a staple of his youth, G.I. Joe characters like Firefly, Doc, Blowtorch, Major Bludd and Deep Six — but with very adult twists. That is, as adult as the character-license holder, toymaker Hasbro, would let him be.
"Hasbro was weird," he says, noting that while the company was okay with depictions of violence, it didn't want the violence to seem too real. That meant things like waterboarding were out, but something supposedly unrealistic, like shoving a character's head in a bucket of water during an interrogation, was fine with them. "So wait, I can decapitate someone with a laser, but I can't talk about an IED?" Brooks said.
His stories focused on the darker aspects of ostensibly warlike characters, examining questions of morality and mortality. He continued the trend by editing and contributing to G.I. Joe: Tales from the Cobra Wars, a collection of prose stories that IDW published in April. "We need our characters to grow with us," he said. "War isn't cute anymore, like it was in the '80s. We need to talk about things like PTSD. My guys need to get hit."
But what's with the fascination with zombies and disasters and the end of the world? Brooks had a relatively normal upbringing, even with famous parents like writer and comedian Mel Brooks and late actress Anne Bancroft.
"I think it's because I didn't have a horrible childhood," he said. His interest is borne from dealing with the great unknown, which, as it turns out, may not be as unknown as most of us think. "I grew up in Los Angeles in the '80s. We had earthquakes and floods and fires and riots and Rodney King. How could you not always be thinking about how to survive?"
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