Digital Sextant

An Unreasonable Man
Zombies vs. Robots Complete by Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood

An Unreasonable Man vs. Zombies vs. Robots

For my double reviews, I try to pair two texts I’ve finished closely together and review them as if they were meant to connect.  As perhaps my strangest connection yet, I’m now reviewing Zombies vs. Robots and An Unreasonable Man.  First, a bit about each because these texts are great on their own and worth looking at.

An Unreasonable Man
This film takes a hard look at Ralph Nader, his rise to prominence as an advocate for consumer change, his twenty year crusade against the corporatization of Washington, and his two presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004.  Nader is a complicated man who speaks truth to power and has done a lot for the people of our country.  I admire him a lot and nearly voted for him in 2000 (when I lived in Florida!).  I decided not to for political gamesmanship reasons, but I strongly disagree with the people who blame him for Bush.  I feel like the two party system is terrible and we need change, and we won’t get it voting for the same old same old.

My favorite moment in the film is the oscillation between the bitter former Nader fans who blame Nader for spoiling the election and the political scientist who studied Nader’s movements and declared that his strategy was not at all about spoiling.  Rabid opinion versus hard fact always makes for good cinema.

Zombies vs. Robots
Ashley Wood has stood out for a while now as one of my favorite comic artist, based mostly on his anarchic, surreal Automatic Kafka.  Wood wields the same crazy pen and brush in this delicious apocalyptic comic.  ZVR tells the story of mankind’s demise at our own hands, a zombie outbreak that leaves the world populated only by the robots we created to help us before we (un)died.  Amazons arrive to play a role as well, as do other mythical creatures as the story goes along. It’s crazy and silly and grotesque, and I love it.

Double Review
Both works focus on a single character standing alone in the face of insurmountable odds.  In one story, it’s a warbot beseiged by the undead–in the other, it’s a lawyer beseiged by the undead congressional lobby.  The solitary character is painted as both a hero and a villain–Nader’s supporters point to the reams of positive legislation he helped pass and lament his factor in helping Bush gain the Presidency; Ryall and Wood follow the Warbot as he nukes the world to save the planet, and then oscillates between being a savior and a destructor.

• Other similarities — the side characters come and go, leaving only the protagonist to travel the whole story.
• Neither protagonist repents at all; Warbot shows no more regret than Nader does, though some might argue that each helped propagate a lot of death.
• Both ultimately seek to help people, though Nader doesn’t shoot many people and Warbot spends very little time lobbying congress.
• Both stories have a prurient side.  The queen of the Amazons and most of her army are trapped and eaten by zombies in flagrante delicto, while we learn that GM early on sought to smear Nader by sending lovely ladies to entrap him.

Ultimately, both stories focus on the folly of people and our inability to defend ourselves from our own mischief.  “Humans begat robots begat zombies, and together they begat planetwide nuclear holocaust.”  That’s really a summary of both stories.  Only in the Ralph Nader one, you substitute “robots” and “zombies” for “dangerous consumer products” and “aggressive capital lobbies.”  Totally works.