Review of Brainchild: A Collection of Artifacts
Title: Brainchild: A Collection of Artifacts
Writer/Artist: Various
Publisher: Omnibucket, 2005
Specifications: Full-colour, 64pp, Hand-numbered edition of 250
Review by Pádraig Ó Méalóid & John Reppion
Brainchild, as the subtitle suggests, is meant to be a collection of documents and other artefacts found after a zombie attack on America. It’s presented as a sixty-four-page square-bound book, published by Omnibucket, based in Columbus, Ohio, and it’s quite a desirable little artefact in its own right.
From the moment I picked it up and first flicked through it, the thing that stuck me most, and still strikes me, is just how well this is actually presented. The book is a mixture of short stories and text pieces, interspersed with illustrations and manipulated photographs. Some of the stories are simply plain text on a white background, but a lot of the backgrounds for the text have been manipulated to give the impression of crumpled paper, complete with grease stains, or else with lines of coloured text leaning off at odd angles, or random words and phrases highlighted in different colours. This gives an occasional oddness to the words above and beyond their content, bringing further questions to the readers’ minds.
The thing I’m really impressed with, though, and which causes me to pick up and open the book every time I come across it, is the quality of the illustrations in it. There is an extraordinary richness and depth to the images that makes them look as if separate layers of colour were, painstakingly and lovingly, individually printed, building up an extraordinary, almost three-dimensional, effect, that I simply haven’t ever seen in a book before. I could spend hours just examining the artwork, particularly that of David Senecal and of editor Scott Lambridis.
Having said all that, I think I’m probably not the right person to be reviewing this book, as I really never ‘got’ the whole thing with zombies. However, my friend John Reppion thrives on the things, so I sent it to him to read, and to review the actually essential zombiness of it. (I should point out that this is becoming a very well travelled book, having come from Columbus, Ohio to Dublin, Ireland, over land and sea to Belfast, in Northern Ireland, to Glasgow and Edinburgh, both in Scotland (as that’s where we were on holidays), and thence to Liverpool, England, where Mr Reppion lives.)
So, the rest of this review is over to you, John!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you very much Mr Ó Méalóid, both for passing the book on (after taking it on its holidays) and calling upon me in my oft-ignored official capacity as a connoisseur of zombie-related things. Much appreciated on both counts.
Okay, so what are we actually looking at here?
This collection was the brainchild of the remaining survivors of the second wave. The images and writings have been compiled in the hopes of reaching a future generation . . .
So, the premise is that the contents of the anthology are, in fact, firsthand accounts written by those unlucky enough to witness their city/home/wherever being overrun by zombies. Now then, whilst I am pedantic enough to point out that some of the material in this book doesn’t actually adhere to that brief in the strictest possible sense (it being notoriously difficult in reality to pen an account of your own death, for example), I am willing to accept that we should probably have our disbelief set at full suspension whilst reading this volume. Therefore, I will endeavour not to let such things colour my judgement too much. I should also point out that the book is chocked full with truly outstanding artwork but, short of describing and assessing each illustration individually, I don’t see how I can really do them the justice they deserve. For that reason, and that reason alone, I will refrain from explicitly mentioning any of the images contained within; if you want to see the pictures you need to read the book!
Brainchild opens with a couple of ambience-heavy pieces of short, stream-of-consciousness type writing (an untitled piece by David Senecal and The Red Room by Scott Lambridis) accompanied by some suitably cryptic and chaotic artwork (one piece of which is the first of only two photographs of zombies in the book; possibly a bit of a missed opportunity in a book of 'found' artefacts?) It’s a little disorienting at first but it’s supposed to be; we’re seeing snapshots of a world overrun by the undead and reading excerpts from the thoughts of those not yet overcome or infected by the ghouls.
With the tone appropriately set, we come to Running by David Wellington, one of my favourite pieces in the book. Running tells the story of one man’s journey from a suburban rescue gone wrong into an urban centre crawling with the undead. Written in the first person and in the past tense, Running reads convincingly as a journal entry, memoir or transcribed oral account of our unnamed narrator’s past experiences. Featuring eerily believable insights into the central character’s understandably bleak mindset such as, I saw flyers for heavy metal bands pinned up everywhere with winged skulls and disembodied eyeballs, I saw signs saying ten percent off, half off, everything must go, seventy to ninety percent off and I thought they were talking about the Mom, about how much of her had been eaten, the story certainly ticked all the right boxes for me . . .
Next up comes Rebecca Brock’s Black Days: Sandy. Ms Brock is a research assistant for none other than the legendary Joe Bob Briggs who, one assumes, would be suitably impressed with the grisly tale, even with the absence of any actual heads rolling. Sandy is an office worker busily transcribing a recording of Ed Burroughs in some anonymous New York skyscraper on the morning of the outbreak. By the time she removes her headphones the office is already in the grip of a fatalistic panic; the spectre of 9/11 looming large. The streets below are already overrun by the infected; the TV news shows nothing but death and mayhem. How long can it be before the office block turns from a refuge into a tomb?
The Oldest Profession by Scott Lambridis is a dark little tale of what one might term mortis interruptus; some living men are just as powerless to resist the lure of human flesh as the ravenous undead.
Another Black Days story from Rebecca Brock follows, this time entitled Paul. This tale is set some time (weeks? months?) after the initial outbreak and Paul is a survivor travelling alone, foraging for food and seeking out shelter where he can. When Paul finds an all-but-abandoned house (The body he found was so badly destroyed that there wasn’t enough of it to come back, picked down to the bone in some places), he seizes the opportunity to light a fire in the grate, bathe, change his clothes and consume a feast of canned goods. The pause provides Paul with an opportunity to reflect on all that has happened, something he’s been trying to avoid doing for a long time.
Brainchild’s first and only non-fiction piece is a four page essay named My Zombie Girlfriend - On the female undead in film and literature, written by Mia Epstein. It’s an intelligent composition which raises some interesting points about the genre and the role of women within it. Unfortunately, it feels like Mia is just getting started by the time the article draws to a close and I, for one, would like to see some of the topics raised within expanded upon (both by Ms Epstein and others) in the future. The essay is a welcome break from the breakneck horror of the rest of the book; a chance to draw breath and come back down to Earth. Nevertheless, I must admit, I’m not sure if this sudden change of pace and tone actually does Brainchild any favours stylistically. Possibly leaving the article until the end of the volume might have been an idea.
At this point (just past the halfway mark) the book begins to slide back into the montage of disarray that it opened with as the artwork becomes darker and more abstract; it’s as if we’ve had our moment of clarity and we’re descending once more into pandemonium. SPQR (by David Senecal) and On The Western Front (by Senecal/Lambridis) are stories with frayed edges; tales told through gritted teeth that resemble a maniacal grin just as much as a determined sneer. ‘Coping’ means different things to different people.
Scott Lambridis’s Finnegan’s Scoop - An Interview With Sgt. Phillip McDougal is a droll little one-pager telling the story of the Finnegan’s Scoop, a . . . part ice cream scoop, part cattle prod, part bayonet contraption . . . used to scoop out the brain stems of zombies in combat situations. But what of Finnegan himself? Did he wake after his wake? You’ll just have to wait and see.
Book Of Matches is a story by Charles Hogle which takes the zombie myth right back to its Haitian genesis in certain respects; what are the undead if not slaves? Soulless slaves robbed of their humanity, unable to make their own choices or decisions. But all slavers should know by now that servitude is only ever grudging; the workers always bite the hand that feeds. And in the midst of an undead plague the old adage of 'once bitten, twice shy' definitely no longer applies.
The volume closes, as many a good memorial service does, with a short verse. The poem, composed by Mia Epstein, is entitled Death of a Salesman and (and I could be entirely wrong here) seems to me to be about a certain Mister Romero.
All in all Brainchild is an exceptionally well crafted book with a slick and stylish design. Like many anthologies before it, the book suffers from some inconsistencies in terms of quality and overall theme but that’s pretty much the nature of the beast. For my money any such assortment where the good outweighs the bad (or even the mediocre) is a winner and Brainchild certainly tipped my scales most favourably. Whilst any confirmed zombie nut should enjoy this volume thoroughly its appeal is far wider than that; Brainchild is an attractive and solidly constructed horror anthology that shoots from the hip and aims for the head.
(This review originally appeared on Fractal Matter in August 2006.)
Writer/Artist: Various
Publisher: Omnibucket, 2005
Specifications: Full-colour, 64pp, Hand-numbered edition of 250
Review by Pádraig Ó Méalóid & John Reppion
Brainchild, as the subtitle suggests, is meant to be a collection of documents and other artefacts found after a zombie attack on America. It’s presented as a sixty-four-page square-bound book, published by Omnibucket, based in Columbus, Ohio, and it’s quite a desirable little artefact in its own right.
From the moment I picked it up and first flicked through it, the thing that stuck me most, and still strikes me, is just how well this is actually presented. The book is a mixture of short stories and text pieces, interspersed with illustrations and manipulated photographs. Some of the stories are simply plain text on a white background, but a lot of the backgrounds for the text have been manipulated to give the impression of crumpled paper, complete with grease stains, or else with lines of coloured text leaning off at odd angles, or random words and phrases highlighted in different colours. This gives an occasional oddness to the words above and beyond their content, bringing further questions to the readers’ minds.
The thing I’m really impressed with, though, and which causes me to pick up and open the book every time I come across it, is the quality of the illustrations in it. There is an extraordinary richness and depth to the images that makes them look as if separate layers of colour were, painstakingly and lovingly, individually printed, building up an extraordinary, almost three-dimensional, effect, that I simply haven’t ever seen in a book before. I could spend hours just examining the artwork, particularly that of David Senecal and of editor Scott Lambridis.
Having said all that, I think I’m probably not the right person to be reviewing this book, as I really never ‘got’ the whole thing with zombies. However, my friend John Reppion thrives on the things, so I sent it to him to read, and to review the actually essential zombiness of it. (I should point out that this is becoming a very well travelled book, having come from Columbus, Ohio to Dublin, Ireland, over land and sea to Belfast, in Northern Ireland, to Glasgow and Edinburgh, both in Scotland (as that’s where we were on holidays), and thence to Liverpool, England, where Mr Reppion lives.)
So, the rest of this review is over to you, John!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you very much Mr Ó Méalóid, both for passing the book on (after taking it on its holidays) and calling upon me in my oft-ignored official capacity as a connoisseur of zombie-related things. Much appreciated on both counts.
Okay, so what are we actually looking at here?
This collection was the brainchild of the remaining survivors of the second wave. The images and writings have been compiled in the hopes of reaching a future generation . . .
So, the premise is that the contents of the anthology are, in fact, firsthand accounts written by those unlucky enough to witness their city/home/wherever being overrun by zombies. Now then, whilst I am pedantic enough to point out that some of the material in this book doesn’t actually adhere to that brief in the strictest possible sense (it being notoriously difficult in reality to pen an account of your own death, for example), I am willing to accept that we should probably have our disbelief set at full suspension whilst reading this volume. Therefore, I will endeavour not to let such things colour my judgement too much. I should also point out that the book is chocked full with truly outstanding artwork but, short of describing and assessing each illustration individually, I don’t see how I can really do them the justice they deserve. For that reason, and that reason alone, I will refrain from explicitly mentioning any of the images contained within; if you want to see the pictures you need to read the book!
Brainchild opens with a couple of ambience-heavy pieces of short, stream-of-consciousness type writing (an untitled piece by David Senecal and The Red Room by Scott Lambridis) accompanied by some suitably cryptic and chaotic artwork (one piece of which is the first of only two photographs of zombies in the book; possibly a bit of a missed opportunity in a book of 'found' artefacts?) It’s a little disorienting at first but it’s supposed to be; we’re seeing snapshots of a world overrun by the undead and reading excerpts from the thoughts of those not yet overcome or infected by the ghouls.
With the tone appropriately set, we come to Running by David Wellington, one of my favourite pieces in the book. Running tells the story of one man’s journey from a suburban rescue gone wrong into an urban centre crawling with the undead. Written in the first person and in the past tense, Running reads convincingly as a journal entry, memoir or transcribed oral account of our unnamed narrator’s past experiences. Featuring eerily believable insights into the central character’s understandably bleak mindset such as, I saw flyers for heavy metal bands pinned up everywhere with winged skulls and disembodied eyeballs, I saw signs saying ten percent off, half off, everything must go, seventy to ninety percent off and I thought they were talking about the Mom, about how much of her had been eaten, the story certainly ticked all the right boxes for me . . .
Next up comes Rebecca Brock’s Black Days: Sandy. Ms Brock is a research assistant for none other than the legendary Joe Bob Briggs who, one assumes, would be suitably impressed with the grisly tale, even with the absence of any actual heads rolling. Sandy is an office worker busily transcribing a recording of Ed Burroughs in some anonymous New York skyscraper on the morning of the outbreak. By the time she removes her headphones the office is already in the grip of a fatalistic panic; the spectre of 9/11 looming large. The streets below are already overrun by the infected; the TV news shows nothing but death and mayhem. How long can it be before the office block turns from a refuge into a tomb?
The Oldest Profession by Scott Lambridis is a dark little tale of what one might term mortis interruptus; some living men are just as powerless to resist the lure of human flesh as the ravenous undead.
Another Black Days story from Rebecca Brock follows, this time entitled Paul. This tale is set some time (weeks? months?) after the initial outbreak and Paul is a survivor travelling alone, foraging for food and seeking out shelter where he can. When Paul finds an all-but-abandoned house (The body he found was so badly destroyed that there wasn’t enough of it to come back, picked down to the bone in some places), he seizes the opportunity to light a fire in the grate, bathe, change his clothes and consume a feast of canned goods. The pause provides Paul with an opportunity to reflect on all that has happened, something he’s been trying to avoid doing for a long time.
Brainchild’s first and only non-fiction piece is a four page essay named My Zombie Girlfriend - On the female undead in film and literature, written by Mia Epstein. It’s an intelligent composition which raises some interesting points about the genre and the role of women within it. Unfortunately, it feels like Mia is just getting started by the time the article draws to a close and I, for one, would like to see some of the topics raised within expanded upon (both by Ms Epstein and others) in the future. The essay is a welcome break from the breakneck horror of the rest of the book; a chance to draw breath and come back down to Earth. Nevertheless, I must admit, I’m not sure if this sudden change of pace and tone actually does Brainchild any favours stylistically. Possibly leaving the article until the end of the volume might have been an idea.
At this point (just past the halfway mark) the book begins to slide back into the montage of disarray that it opened with as the artwork becomes darker and more abstract; it’s as if we’ve had our moment of clarity and we’re descending once more into pandemonium. SPQR (by David Senecal) and On The Western Front (by Senecal/Lambridis) are stories with frayed edges; tales told through gritted teeth that resemble a maniacal grin just as much as a determined sneer. ‘Coping’ means different things to different people.
Scott Lambridis’s Finnegan’s Scoop - An Interview With Sgt. Phillip McDougal is a droll little one-pager telling the story of the Finnegan’s Scoop, a . . . part ice cream scoop, part cattle prod, part bayonet contraption . . . used to scoop out the brain stems of zombies in combat situations. But what of Finnegan himself? Did he wake after his wake? You’ll just have to wait and see.
Book Of Matches is a story by Charles Hogle which takes the zombie myth right back to its Haitian genesis in certain respects; what are the undead if not slaves? Soulless slaves robbed of their humanity, unable to make their own choices or decisions. But all slavers should know by now that servitude is only ever grudging; the workers always bite the hand that feeds. And in the midst of an undead plague the old adage of 'once bitten, twice shy' definitely no longer applies.
The volume closes, as many a good memorial service does, with a short verse. The poem, composed by Mia Epstein, is entitled Death of a Salesman and (and I could be entirely wrong here) seems to me to be about a certain Mister Romero.
All in all Brainchild is an exceptionally well crafted book with a slick and stylish design. Like many anthologies before it, the book suffers from some inconsistencies in terms of quality and overall theme but that’s pretty much the nature of the beast. For my money any such assortment where the good outweighs the bad (or even the mediocre) is a winner and Brainchild certainly tipped my scales most favourably. Whilst any confirmed zombie nut should enjoy this volume thoroughly its appeal is far wider than that; Brainchild is an attractive and solidly constructed horror anthology that shoots from the hip and aims for the head.
(This review originally appeared on Fractal Matter in August 2006.)