It’s finally here – the long awaited first issue of Max Brooks’ new Zombies vs. Vampires series, Extinction Parade!  Perfectly timed for the theatrical release of World War Z, Brooks unleashes his talents on a new series that takes his familiar and past subject of zombies and adds the elements of zombies. As a huge fan of his book World War Z, I couldn’t wait to read the comic, but is it any good?

Vampires have always been the elite of the undead.  These apex predators have never feared foe or lack of food…until now.  By remaining too out of touch with the modern world they have failed to notice the subdead zombie race turning the tide over the human population.  Now, perhaps too late, the vampires must stop the encroaching shambling dead or find themselves starved out of existence.

I went into the comic brimming with excitement and hoping we’d get Brooks’ spin on the vampire mythos. This story is pretty simple. With vampires existing and needing humans to survive, wouldn’t they protect their cattle from zombies which threaten existence? That makes sense to me, and when I got to the end of the comic I was a bit mixed in my feelings.

The first issue does a lot to set up vampires in this world, and does so in an interesting style. In the full comic, there’s all of 15 speech bubbles on 3 or 4 total pages. The rest of the comic is written as inner monologue. It reads more like a prose book with pictures with that. Next is the motivation of the vampires. It gives us their personality and the world they inhabit, but I didn’t get a sense they were any urgent rush to protect the humans they feed upon. Instead these vampires came off as elitist and aloof. That’s part of the point but instead of actually dealing with the zombie issue in the first issue, they more go on a safari, which was a bit odd to me.

Overall, the story was just ok. I have high expectations for brooks, especially when he takes on the subject of zombies. He’s shown a mastery of the subject, but also a new way of telling stories about them. This comic doesn’t have that. There’s a different voice in that there’s little dialogue between characters, but that makes me wish he played with the storytelling elements even more so.

If you’re a fan of vampires or zombies it might be worth checking out the series, but overall for me, it’s pretty average.

Story: Max Brooks Art: Rauolo Caceres
Story: 6.75 Art: 6.75 Overall: 6.75 Recommendation: Read