Samhain Publishing

Since opening on October 2nd, 2009 Zombieland has made back almost three times its production budget domestically. When it opens in the foreign market it will break the 100 million dollar mark, guaranteeing a sequel of some kind or another. The 2008 film Quarantine did less than half of that, but that’s still nearly four times the production budget and Quarantine II is shambling down the long road to a theatre near you. On the literary front David Wellington’s Monster Island did so well it spawned Monster Nation and Monster Planet. And one cannot speak of zombies on the page without speaking about that lovely gem Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith with Jane Austen credited as co-author. Left 4 Dead, the first person perspective cooperative shooter game for Windows and Xbox360 is set in post apocalyptic landscape with four survivors fighting against an infected zombie horde. Since its release November 21st, 2008 the game has sold some 3 million copies and has a sequel coming November 2009.

These few drops in the Great Lake of the zombie genre are among the many to incite the phrase “zombies are the new vampires” time and again. They’re not. Really.

Okay, admittedly I’m a little grumpy, perhaps even disoriented from being off line for so very long, (back three days and counting so still recovering); it’s the kind of thing that could leave a person in a less than generous mood. I also may or may not, (definitely may), possess a deep and abiding bias on the subject as a long time paranormal fiction fan, so take it this in the best way possible—zombies are the dumbest horror movie monster concept ever!

The idea of a rotting, putrid creature shambling about eating and/or infecting every human it comes across because it hungers for brains or flesh irritates me to within a half mile of hostile. You are not hungry Mr. Zombie because you are dead, not undead, dead-dead! You have no digestive system, no nerves endings sending impulses to the brain of hunger pangs, no survival instinct that causes you to defend yourself and no desire to propagate your species because by being dead none of these things are possible. There is no pack mentality that keeps zombies from attacking each other because they are not a pack and possess no mentality! Creatures form packs for survival— as a zombie, you have already failed the survival portion of this program!

Now I know there have been “living zombies” to come out in the last ten years where an infection of one type or another causes rage induced rampages or an irresistible draw to the lifeforce of others (28 Days Later, Left 4 Dead). There’s also the standby of curses, necromancers, and dark magics afoot in mysterious lands, (White Wolf Games, The Mummy, anything concerning Cthulhu). I’m okay with all of that. Magically/supernaturally compelled corpses running about like a horde of undead locust to destroy their master’s enemies and consume all life works simply by the fact that preternatural forces are at work. In turn, a still living creature chemically, psychically or supernaturally enhanced can in fact possess a survival instinct, pack/mob mentality, and hunger both for food and the destruction of all things. I can suspend disbelief in these scenarios and root for the heroes or feel sorry for the poor victims that can’t be saved.

But the shambler, even when the shambler is a runner, is beyond me. The traditional zombie, magic or otherwise, and it’s slathering living infection-spreading cousins will never touch the enduring love/lust/longing inspired by the vampire mythos. Ever. Zombies are not the new Vampires!

I know that just like brown and grey were the new black; shapeshifters, demons, angels, witches, wizards, ghosts, faeries, and more will be declared the “new vampires” every time a book or movie in the genre does well. And if the success of movies like I Am Legend and Thirty Days of Night, and books like David Wellington’s Thirteen Bullets, 99 Coffins, Vampire Zero and 23 Hours are any indication, the biggest contender for “New Vampires” are “Old Vampires”.

While young girls and women swoon over the likes of Twilight’s Edward Cullen and True Blood’s Eric Northman (Alex Saarsgaard), young boys and men are taking a bite into the vampire’s origin as nosferatu, a monster to be feared and hunted to save the damsel in distress and the very world. The romantic figure is replaced by the horrific one, a guy’s monster with enough violence and gore to justify the price of the popcorn or protect against male-bonding, (read harassment) when his friends find out he actually reads for pleasure.

But in the end, no amount of resurrecting the ghoulish origins of the vampire or embracing its distant cousin the zombie will ever erase or replace the modern vampire as valid object of lust, and therefore as romantic or erotic fodder. The Edwards, Erics, Angels, and Ashers are here to stay. And even if a world in flux with fear for the future should repress the heat-filled hero for a while, it will only ever be temporary. Our fanged wonderboys, (and girls), will always be able to bring sexy back—zombies or no zombies.