Zombies Can't Dance

Original Release Date: October 2009
Total Track Time: 46 minutes
Website: Zombiescantdance.com

“Zombies Can’t Dance” is an ambitious project blending music and visual picture elements to tell its story of the zombie apocalypse. Creator Luke Kuzava has crafted a very unique way to tell his story, and the story itself is very unique as well. ZCD is a compilation of 10 different songs, each telling a different part of the tale in seemingly chronological order. Accompanying each song is an illustration of the central theme of that song, so what you get is essentially a soundtrack, each song with a different musical style, which tells the story, along with a “graphic novel” approach to showing you the visual interpretation of the story. It’s definitely a very different way to experience the story of a zombie apocalypse, and you may find yourself, like I did, getting hooked on the story very quickly and listening to the music over and over – it’s very catchy stuff! I find myself humming “Aim for the Head” and “The Last Party Ever” constantly.

Star Wars: Death Troopers (2009)

Original Release Date: October 13, 2009
Publisher: LucasBooks

REVIEWER’S NOTE: It is nigh-impossible to talk about this book without giving away some pretty spoiler-iffic stuff, especially in the “Star Wars Characters and Locations” department.  I have made the actual Scoring spoiler-free, so if you don’t want to know any of this pertinent info, skip down to that section.  Otherwise,

<<SPOILERS HO!>>

“Death Troopers,” the mixing of a Star Wars story and a zombie horror story, feels a little like meeting a supermodel might: your preconceived notions make you insanely excited for the big event, it seems so amazing and perfect from a distance, but after you spend some time with it, you find out that it’s definitely not perfect and you actually end up a little bummed out.

The book was written by Joe Schreiber, who (according to the book’s jacket) has written a few horror novels before, none of which I have read.  I’m not sure how big of a Star Wars fan Schreiber may have been prior to this assignment, but if he was a fan, I would hope that even he feels a bit disappointed by the way this story turned out.  The whole time I was reading this story, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it felt…rushed.

The full review of this item, including the four-category G.O.R.E. synopsis and Total Score, can be found in the book version of “The G.O.R.E. Score, Vol. 1,” along with over 50 other reviews! Click here to learn more about the book, or click here to view and order the book directly from Amazon.com!

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks

Original Release Date: October 6, 2009
Total Number of Issues: 1 (Standalone Graphic Novel)
Publisher: Three Rivers Press

“The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks” is a graphic novel that gives a “visual” chronicling of some of the recorded zombie attacks from Max Brooks’ quintessential first book, “The Zombie Survival Guide.” This release has taken some flak in customer reviews, mostly from people who don’t understand the genesis of this graphic novel. So, just to make sure everyone reading this review is clear: the stories in this graphic novel are taken directly from the “mini-stories” that Brooks wrote about in his novel “The Zombie Survival Guide.” They are his fictitious accounts of zombie attacks throughout the ages, and “Recorded Attacks” seeks to bring them to life via the comic-book medium.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to read Brooks’ original “The Zombie Survival Guide,” I highly recommend you seek it out immediately. It has essentially became “required reading” for anyone considering themselves anything more than a passing fan of zombies, and his follow-up novel, “World War Z,” is just as amazing, from a totally different angle. But those are stories for another review; here, we need to talk specifically about “Recorded Attacks,” so let’s go ahead and Score it up.