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daviddavidkatzman 's review for:
Ex-Heroes
by Peter Clines
Zombies are easy. I mean, they were old in 1999 as a metaphor. Romero is the original and no one since has really done anything too new with it. I'll admit, I liked the Walking Dead comics...to a point. The torture issue finished it for me, and I never went back. But I did appreciate the theme running through WD that no matter how brutal the zombies were, it was the cruelty of the living humans that was always the greatest. But zombies were old in 1999 when I mocked the gimmick in my first novel, Death by Zamboni, by having the main character riff on how fun it was to beat up zombies. You can tear 'em apart...or whatever...just for fun. See, no one cares if you kill zombies. It's the perfect excuse for violence. We can glorify the violence and excuse the heroes brutality...because they are dead things, after all. Just viruses controlling bodies for inscrutable reasons.
And that brings us to Ex Heroes, a mash-up of superheroes and zombies, which allows for R-rated superhero violence in that exact manner. No one can think badly of them for tearing apart a zombie, right? Well, actually. My gut reaction to this book was that it was racist. I gave it a chance because I thought, it might end up having a racial theme arise somewhere later in the story. But no. Two things made me feel it was racist. One, every time an individual zombie was described (gleefully) as being ripped apart, we were told what race they belonged to. Since this book happened to be set in LA, there were quite a few Asians. He'd also describe if they were blonde or brunette or old or young. But especially the race and especially Asian. Then second, there was the Latino gang that was portrayed as being lead by a single intelligent undead monster. Who could control zombies with his superpower. The gang members were portrayed as animalistic, for the most part, in the most old skool clichéd gang fashion. Like something from a 70s movie like The Warriors or Mad Max perhaps. Their humanity was not really acknowledged by the author.
The racism may very well have been unintentional, and I am not saying the author is personally racist. But I found his book to be racist and expressed joyful detail in tearing apart zombies. Once I noticed it, I felt that subtly, the Asian zombies got it worse than the others. I'm sure it was a...coincidence.
And that brings us to Ex Heroes, a mash-up of superheroes and zombies, which allows for R-rated superhero violence in that exact manner. No one can think badly of them for tearing apart a zombie, right? Well, actually. My gut reaction to this book was that it was racist. I gave it a chance because I thought, it might end up having a racial theme arise somewhere later in the story. But no. Two things made me feel it was racist. One, every time an individual zombie was described (gleefully) as being ripped apart, we were told what race they belonged to. Since this book happened to be set in LA, there were quite a few Asians. He'd also describe if they were blonde or brunette or old or young. But especially the race and especially Asian. Then second, there was the Latino gang that was portrayed as being lead by a single intelligent undead monster. Who could control zombies with his superpower. The gang members were portrayed as animalistic, for the most part, in the most old skool clichéd gang fashion. Like something from a 70s movie like The Warriors or Mad Max perhaps. Their humanity was not really acknowledged by the author.
The racism may very well have been unintentional, and I am not saying the author is personally racist. But I found his book to be racist and expressed joyful detail in tearing apart zombies. Once I noticed it, I felt that subtly, the Asian zombies got it worse than the others. I'm sure it was a...coincidence.