Zombies

I’ve always been a big fan of zombies, so it has been fun to see them really rise in pop culture over the last however many years.  So it may surprise you to learn that I have never actually participated in a zombie crawl.  I know people who have and I’ve witnessed a crawl in progress, I’m interested in them, I came close once, I just haven’t done it yet…Maybe some day.

Some of you may be asking “What is a zombie crawl?”  It’s when a bunch of people dress up like zombies and walk through the streets, acting like zombies.  Sometimes it involves a party or viewing a zombie movie, a lot of the time it involves going to going to bars.  They are sometimes called zombie pub crawls.

They are trendy events enjoyed by hip young people, and thus a great way for me to work zombies into this comic.  Of course they are also pretty ridiculous and ripe for satire.  Oh, I also really liked the idea of making a cartoon hipster zombie teddy bear.  Someday I’d love to turn these characters into toys.  The zombie ones could be series 2!

I think Kingston looks pretty funny here as well.  Can you guess what famous character I based his look on?  I’ll give you a hint, he’s a desperate salesman in a well known play turned movie.  Kingston’s little speech was my way of poking fun at the way zombies are often over analyzed and used as analogues or metaphors.  Sometimes it can be pretty heavy handed.

You may not know this, but I’m a horror movie buff.  I’ve pretty much seen them all.  The good, the bad and the terrible.  Well, they’re mostly terrible…But I love them.  And the zombie ones are often my favorites.

And if you are wondering, I love The Walking Dead.  It is one of my favorite shows.  And I started reading the comic over the holidays, volumes 1 and 2 to be specific.  I enjoyed them as well.  It is disappointing that they switched artist, though.  I really don’t like when series do that, but this is a really good example of how that can effect a comic negatively.

Tony Moore‘s art in Days Gone By has a simple yet precise beauty to it, which makes Charlie Adlard’s work in Miles Behind Us look so much more crude in comparison.  It is just so rough and unrefined.  The people look sloppy and disproportionate, and their character models just seem way off.  It is really unfortunate.

The writing overall was very good, though some of the dialogue was really odd and seemed like people were speaking out of character.  It is also a bit uneven and stilted at times.  Much like the show, the best parts involve little or no talking.

The thing that really jumped out at me was the way the passage of time was handled.  It jumps forward constantly, without any warning or hand holding.  There are no captions to fill you in on how much time has passed, or where you are or who you are looking at.  At times it can be a little disorienting and confusing.  Sometimes that can actually be a good thing, especially in this type of genre where the characters are meant to be feeling out of sorts and it basically makes the reader feel the same way.

I don’t know if it was intentional, but it made the pacing pretty thrilling at times.  I could see it turning off some people, and there were a couple times where I didn’t care for it, but overall that was my favorite part of the comics.  I plan on picking up volume 3 sometime soon.

I didn’t actually plan on doing a mini review of The Walking Dead here, just discussing my overall love of zombies.  I intend on working them in whenever I can, so at the very least you can expect some more zombie crawl fun in the future!