‘Zombies: The Ultimate Guide’ (SFX Special Edition)

I’m not one for picking up magazines as a rule. While there are loads of lovely looking genre magazines out there, the ever growing book pile (in the corner of the study) gives me little twinges of guilt every time I think about reading anything else. I really ought to finish what I’ve got before I pick anything else up, surely? You would think that but, every now and then, a magazine appears that has my name written all over it. Well not literally, that would make for a very boring magazine, but you know what I mean... ;o)

I don’t pick up as many copies of SFX magazine as I used to (see the whole book pile thing a few lines up) but I do like to hang around on their forum, best forum on the net as far as I’m concerned, and this is where I heard about their September special and how it was full of everything zombie related. News like that is pretty much like waving a red rag at a bull as far as I’m concerned! It took me a while to bag myself a copy of ‘Zombies: The Ultimate Guide’ but, once I got it, there was plenty of zombie goodness in there waiting to read.

If you call something the ‘Ultimate Guide’ then you’re making a real statement of intent that you’ve got no choice but to back up. To be fair, SFX have a good stab at it with a fairly comprehensive slice of all things zombie related. There’s a little something here for everyone although I personally would have liked to see more about zombies in comics (other than the nod to ‘The Walking Dead’ that you get in the article about the TV show). This is an area that I think there’s a lot of scope for, having read ‘Essential Tales of the Zombie’, ‘Zombie’ and ‘The Mammoth Book of Zombie Comics’ amongst others. I wouldn’t have minded seeing a little more about just how many zombie novels there are out there, waiting to be read, as well. I know I go on about it but there are loads of great zombie novels and I think SFX missed a trick not highlighting some of these (you do get a couple of author interviews though and David Moody’s short story ‘Muriel’ though so I guess that balances things out).

I guess there’s only so much room in a magazine to fit everything in and some stuff will inevitably be missed out. The articles that you do get are really easy to get stuck into and are backed up with the kind of photos that remind you just why you got into zombie films in the first place (heavy on the gore, just how I like it). I really enjoyed the ‘Top 66 Zombie Films of all time’, there were a few films there that I really need to get my hands on now; I wasn’t surprised to see that ‘Hard Rock Zombies’ didn’t make the final cut though... :o)
An ultimate guide to zombies wouldn’t be ‘ultimate’ at all without at least a mention of George Romero and this ultimate guide duly obliges with some reader questions. If you’ve ever wondered whether George Romero has watched zombie porn then this is the magazine that will answer your question. The answer is.... nope, I’m not going to say :o)
I managed to while away a happy few hours reading this magazine and came away with a few more films that I want to track down as a result (‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ for one). ‘Zombies: The Ultimate Guide’ may not have had everything that I was looking for but I couldn’t really complain about what was on offer.