Episode 127

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Dave

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About this Episode:
Our main characters have been stuck in this building for a long time now, and the whole time I’ve been waiting for someone to ask what’s on the top floor or why they don’t search for food upstairs (it’s a three story building, after all). I can’t believe it never came up.

Zombie Cliché Lookout:
Some groups just work. Through some happy accident, you end up with a collection of people who just gel somehow, with skills and abilities that compliment each other and personalities that don’t clash. These groups can accomplish pretty much anything they set their collective mind too, and they’ll do it faster and more efficiently than you’d think. There’s only one real problem with this type of group: they’re boring. When there’s not infighting, power struggles, and just general bitchiness, there’s no drama. That’s why every group of zombie survivors is going to have an egomaniac, a wet blanket, a scaredy-pants, a jerkass, etc. These characters help to throw off the balance of the group, make the story a bit more entertaining to watch, and – more often than not – introduce plenty of new threats along the way. So the next time you’re working on a group project and someone is being a royal pain, thank them for the people watching at home.

57 thoughts on “Episode 127”

  1. Typo in Stewart’s word balloon, panel 4! “Going” is repeated twice. 😀

    • Whoops. Should be fixed now. Thanks BrickVoid.

      • Yeah, kinda fixed. I think what you were originally trying to get Stewart to say makes a bit more sense now, although maybe he should be saying “but how are we going to get it out there”. I guess it depends on what lines you originally had planned out for him! 😉

        • Ah, damnit!

          Unfortunately, I’m at work now so this will have to stay like this until this evening.

        • All right, everything should be fixed now.

  2. That’s a good idea! Now what type of music do zombies like…

    • I just finished Stephen King’s Cell, and zombie music is a very big part of the book. Now they’re not really zombies, but in that they tended to like big band music and easy listening. Blech.

      • What kind of ‘boom box’ are you planning on using? The collectable minifigs one or the brick-built one from that 8401 city minfig set?

        • Collectible minifig. Because it’s awsome. I do like the brick built ones as well.

        • I suppose so,because the collectable minifig one would look awesome sitting on piece 4151 surrounded by builder zombies. Hey, that’s an idea. Zeds in hard hats are protected from blunt objects, such as Murphy’s crowbar and Cheryl’s bat. I guess it’s up to Stewart and Shannon to do swift swipes with their axe and machete. Heads are rolling now!

        • Hey, that’s Sam’s crowbar. Murphy’s just borrowing it. 🙂

          Zombies with helmets would be a total pain, wouldn’t they?

        • Ah, I see. By the way, are the zombies going to start coming up the apartment stairs? I don’t know about you but I get creeped out in films when you are safe in barricaded base and the character is about an inch away from a zed on the other side of the wall, or when in Haunted Mansion when the zombies start coming up the stairs. I don’t know why.

        • We’ll just have to wait and see.

          That sort of thing is scary though. Anything that shakes up your perception of safeness is god for that.

        • The zombies-with-hardhats reminds me of the bullet-proofed zeds from L4D 2.

      • Construction worker zombies? Heh, try looking closely at panel 5 of Zombie Outbrick Episode 11

        😉

        • Dun! Dun! Duuuuun!

        • Just looked up the zombie builders on the Left 4 Dead wikia, it says their hardhats do not protect them against any thing. But the picture of the one there looks like he’s doing the iconic ‘job done, dust hands together’ thing you always see builders doing. A bit. :\ And that zombie outbrick thing looks great, but why do the zombies have yellow heads?

        • Well, it’s quite simple: they’re not all zombies… yet. There’s one zombie in the scene, surrounded by a crowd of panicked people running away. If you look very closely, you’ll see his grey hand in the last panel.

          And I know, “What kind of zombie comic only has 1 zombie in 11 episodes?!?”, right? There’ll be more soon…

        • I see. So they’re running away. But seriously the L4D zombie builders. The picture really does look like they are just dusting their hands off. I don’t know how to post a link, but I’ll try.

        • I see what’s happening now! I looked at it again, and I see the white hat man is a zombie and attacking the builder man. I thought he was a paramedic come to help.

  3. Yay… You’re right, we disscus every kind of “what if…” stuff here but we never realized that this building has more than 1 floor. Haha!
    How many zeds could possibly be there? I think they would be able to get that ‘boombox’ without getting killed.

    Now, shouldn’t the ‘speech bubble’ in panel 4 read “how are WE going to…”?

    • ^^ Ah, BrickVoid was faster 😀

      • He sure was. Man, I wish I would have fixed that the first time I fixed the bubble. Off to a rough day here.

        • Part of being a webcomic author is doing your own proof-reading! 😉 If I had to charge for typo spotting that’d be $5 per typo, please! 😀 (j/k)

        • You’d be ten dollars richer right now. Sheesh.

          Of course if I could afford a copy editor of BotD I wouldn’t be complaining.

        • You can always attribute it to Stewart being an unintelligent high school jock-type… and he might forget words here and there when he gets excited or nervous about the zombie situation. 😉

        • Yeah, that’s the ticket. I meant to do that.

          Character development.

  4. What’s on the top floor and why they don’t search for food upstairs?

    • Not a thing. It’s being renovated. I was going to have them go up there and find it empty, but that just seemed like killing time.

  5. Play Michael Jackson’s Thriller for the zombies!

    • Hah! That’s an awesome idea.

      • That song used to terrify me as a wee little lad…I was skerred of Zombies.

        • ditto man ditto.

  6. Who here thinks a Zombie-based lego theme would be cool? It would be up in the older age group like technic, and features common town scenes with lots of zombies and stuff! You could get starter sets with about 5 zeds in them, and a big £80ish set with a hospital. I discussed it with my friend today, any ideas?

    • Man, I’d love it. Unfortunately, I just can’t see LEGO making gun stores, military checkpoints, etc. I guess we’ll just have to keep re-purposing Town sets.

      • I agree.I guess that’s what makes Lego unique from other brands. There’s hardly any violent combat. They’ve come close, with themes like Dino Attack and Agents but no modern war. But this would be in the 12-up area. I would rather like it because we would’nt have to resort to the same old collectable minifig zombie face/darth vader head. There would be girl zombie faces too.

        • A bigger variety in zombie faces would be greatly appreciated. I’m just not up for using decals and I’m not talented enough to paint any myself.

        • What’s wrong with decals, Dave?

        • There’s nothing wrong with decals; I just really suck at putting them on straight and without air bubbles.

        • Ah. That’s why I prefer paper “decals.” Just use a little bit of washable glue stick to get ’em stuck on for a while, then you can take them off without damaging your original LEGO item. Not to mention, all you need is regular paper and ink if you ever want to replace them or make more (no fancy decal paper or anything like that is required, obviously.)

          Every major character in Zombie Outbrick so far has a chest “decal” (just printed paper,) with the exception of Karen the secretary. I added a layer of clear, shiny packing tape on the black suit decals, it made them look a little more like real LEGO I think. Could you even tell? 😉

          If you’d like to consider using paper decals in BotD, I have some fairly good zombie decal designs I’d be willing to send you. I’ve only done 1 zombie so far, but I’ll probably do more soon. The one that’s done already will soon be seen in Zombie Outbrick. (He’s the one in the “teaser” picture that became my sig on the BCN.)

          Just let me know.

        • I’ve not tried those. I only have a B&W printer at home for the time being, but if/when that changes I might have to give the paper ones a shot.

        • Ah, I suppose the printer would be a problem, then.

          If you gain access to a color printer at some point, just let me know. 😉

    • @ Miles.Right there with you but I agree with Dave. I was reading about their stance on military and violence in general from one of their managers and I believe it was something like “we don’t want to make war seem like fun” or maybe it was “we don’t want to make war seem like play”….anyway you get the idea. Altho it does seem like that is slowly loosening as you look at the Indiana Jones and pharaoh sets since they all have realistic guns that come with them.

      Their Architecture series is definitely aimed towards adults (if you know anyone who does any sort of architecture you will for sure find a current or previous LEGO fan) but that series, in my opinion, is very dull and highly over priced. The most interesting one is the Tower Bridge but unfortunately its not to mini-fig scale and the towers are hollow. Thats a huge drawback and makes the $250’ish price tag unbalanced IMO.

      And to continue on with my ramble I cannot use decals either…I was considering making a Zombie/FEMA scene and making my own FEMA stickers but I know I will be a disaster, so to speak.

      • About the decals, I have some paper ones that I got in a big sheet off eBay. There’s some good things and bad things about them…
        Pros
        -They look good
        -The zombie ones feature blood that Lego would never dream about putting on a minifig
        Cons
        -It’s a real pig trying to get plain color torsos to stick them onto
        -I can never stick them on without having a tiny ripped spot in the corner (any decaling advice???

        • Well… see, you’re probably thinking of actual decals (i.e. on some sort of transfer/decal paper.) Those usually have transparent backgrounds, and require “blank” pieces… however other decal methods do not.

          What I’m talking about using, is just plain printer paper. The standard stuff, like you’d print anything else on. Works well enough, I think.

          It’s not quite permanent, and it doesn’t look as nice/official as actual decals do, but it’s cheap, easy, and mostly hassle free.

          The other way to do it is to use some sort of sticker sheet, or mailing labels.

          If you couldn’t find blank LEGO pieces to apply decals to, then instead of using clear mailing labels, you could always use white mailing labels.

          Mailing labels look more LEGO-esque, I think, but it can still be a pain finding stores that carry them (at least the clear ones.) I mean, you could theoretically order them from somewhere, but I’m just too lazy for that.

          So I reiterate, standard printer paper, applied with washable glue-stick, then covered with some shiny tape works like a charm for me!

          (Although I don’t apply tape to head decals, usually – I find it makes them too thick to fit hairpieces/headgear over them.)

          As long as the decal design is made with colors that approximate the color of the LEGO brick they’re being applied to, and you have a printer that can replicate those colors fairly well, then printer paper or white mailing label “decals” should work just fine. 🙂

  7. Well I’m waiting for the Rick Astley song to come up so the Zed’s get Rick Roll’d

    • *chuckle*

      • Even I’m not that cruel.

        • Yeah, what kind of jerk do you guys take Dave for, anyway? Think of those poor zombies…

        • Dave did call me a “doody head” so he isn’t an angel thats for sure…

        • that’s the ultimate way to kill every zombie ever!

    • Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down… 😀 😀

  8. are’nt they on the second floor?if the 3rd floor is renovation then what floor is the tan hallway on?and if it’s on the first floor would’nt zombies be breaking the windows?im confused about the floors……please clarify thanks.

    • They’re on the second floor, which contains two apartments. The tan hallway is on the same floor. Downstairs is a small grocery store, which was looted, and the third floor is under renovation, so there’s nothing there.

      • ok thanks.

  9. throw the boombox off the roof problem solved!

    • I suppose the sound of the boombox smashing into a thousand pieces would distract the zeds for a moment or two 🙂