Weekly Comic

This is page one of Living Dead Things...a teaser from my favorite independent comic triple (?) threat, Victor Dandridge Jr.



Tune in next Wednesday for page two and check out more work from the artist himself @ http://vantageinhouse.blogspot.com/

Day 5: Favorite Quote

Zombie movies are filled with some of the most amazing gems of wisdom ever produced. Some of them are intelligent witticisms that make you laugh ("The first rule of Zombieland: Cardio. When the zombie outbreak first hit, the first to go, for obvious reasons... were the fatties"), sometimes they make you think, and sometimes they bring you full circle.

One of my favorite personal quotes is from a speech in the 2004 version of Dawn of Dead:

Hell is overflowing, and Satan is sending his dead to us. Why?
Because, you have sex out of wedlock, you kill unborn children,
you have man on man relations, same sex marriage.
How do you think your God will judge you?
Well friends, now we know.
When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.

I love this quote because the quote itself is a quote from the original version of the movie made in 1978 and the speech is given by that versions star- Ken Foree. You would never know it if you haven't been exposed to both versions of the movie and it is a nod to the great George A Romero who wrote the original screenplay but had absolutely nothing to do with this remake.

What is your favorite quote?

Day 4: Least Favorite Zombie Portrayal

Children are creepy…agreed. All by themselves, there is always something a little extra disturbing about children in any horror movie. However, my least favorite zombie portrayal is, in fact, given by a pack of kids.
Wicked Little Things is a movie about zombie children were killed (sacrificed) during a mining incident in PA. It's really a fun premise. I love movies where they artists/producers/directors take their personal lives and experiences to create something horrific to share with the world. This was obviously a story someone heard as a child and thought it would make an amazing horror movie- and possibly it could of. I don't blame the kids. I think when you deal with kids in horror movies, there has to be a line that you can't (or just probably shouldn't) cross since kids at a young age can't readily distinguish between reality and the fiction of a movie.
So these kids, with grimy hands and faces painted white wield pick axes and murder their way through the Pennsylvania mountain side. For kids, they did a great job. But it all had kind of a "children of the corn", mob mentality, follow the leader feel. They just weren't great zombies.

So what is your least favorite zombie portrayal?

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Day 3: Favorite Zombie Portrayal

Zombies are zombies, right. They are, kinda by definition, a mindless hoard of the walking dead. However, there are cases where the zombies are actually more, and it is those portrayals that are some of my favorites. Movies like, Collin, Day of the Dead, and Survival of the Dead put a different spin on the plain old mindless zombie. My favorite comes from the 2005 version of Land of the Dead. In that movie, Big Daddy is a leader among zombies. Although most of the zombies in this movie have tried to maintain or recreate a semblance of humanity, Big Daddy goes a step further and seeks not only to create a community among his kind, but also to preserve their safety. He "communicates" with his fellow zombies through grunts and demonstration. He rallies his people to his cause and storms the hub of humanity in attempt to win their freedom from the constant raids and violence that have been visited them.

What is your favorite zombie portrayal?

Day 2: Five facts about zombies

5. Zombies stink! So you can always smell them coming.

4. Fast zombies are the worst. Chubby people beware.

3. Zombie bites are fatal- so if you've been bitten, give up now.

4. If it looks like a zombie, moans like a zombie, and bites like a zombie- it's a zombie.

5 Zombies are like roaches. If you see one, there are a million more hiding under the toaster.

 

So what do you know about zombies?

Day 1: Definition of a Zombie

    Zombies are unique, unlike vampires, werewolves, or creatures from the black lagoon; zombies have alternate origins and definitions. Zombies can be created through either magic (such as voodoo) or science (such as a viral plague). And although current pop culture sees zombies as "the living dead"- occasionally, that mindless zombie feel is attributed to the living. Another interesting aspect is that despite their lack of individuality - zombies have been given individual goals for their afterlife- among them the pursuit of brains, flesh, and spread of contagion.


For me, zombies are the undead- which means that, at some point, they were DEAD. I love the idea that the same power that provides basic reanimation also allows the zombie to evolve past being just re-animated dead tissue with no capacity for individual thought. I enjoy the idea that zombies are driven by more than just the need to feed and propagate. I think zombies are terrifying because of their humanity- not because of their lack of it.


That being said- that is just my definition of a zombie…what's yours?