Zombie Cliche Lookout: Separation Anxiety
It often happens that you and the group will come to some sort of impasse. There is simply some issue that you cannot overcome; the party goes one way and you – and perhaps a companion or two – go the other. In zombie stories, these disagreements generally stem from the zombies or infection, with the parties fundamentally divided on questions like whether the infection is curable, and whether the zombies can be returned to normal somehow. Generally speaking, at least one side of the arguments meets a tragic, and often ironic end.
This separation is also a defining act for at least one of the characters, and often for the leaders of both sides of the argument. It is also frequently used to show the folly of not being able to cooperate in a survival situation, as demonstrated in Night of the Living Dead as Cooper and Ben take different stances on how to be deal with the situation at hand. In the end (spoilers, obviously), they both die. Working together, they might have made it through. So essentially: get a long or die.
About this Episode:
Once again, I’m going to lament the lack of LEGO® female faces. The one that I end up using for Sarah here is pretty much the only nervous/scared female face I have. The expression is decent, but the face has freckles on it, which generally denotes a child’s face (at least by LEGO® standards). I would really love to see more varied expressions for women.
Discussion Question: April Fool’s
So here’s the big, serious question for the day: did I get anyone with my silly little April Fool’s joke? I saw a lot of funny comments, but something tells me that most everyone (if not just plain old everyone) was playing along.
Ummmm….
…. for a few hours, yes.
I was really confused when I saw the paint.
Awesome! It seems like everyone does the April Fool’s prank online, so I figured it would be immediately dismissed.
It ended up getting just over 100 comments, which I love.
I have two words . . . . Thank God . . . lol seriously if this was no longer LEGOs I would probably die. . . lol. 3/4 of death in the world is due to April Fool’s jokes . . . xD
I’d feel pretty bad if people died because of my silly little prank.
Oh I just had a deep thought. Sam’s wife is by now slightly terrified of the “bite” and I thought it would be interesting to think of what it must feel like to be “bitten” knowing that there was no way of escaping the fate of becoming a zombie and eating your friends and loved ones within hours. A truly chilling thought.
I’m going to steal this one, Mason. Great thoughts here.
My guess with Sam staying behind was right! Thank God it was a joke. With Space the Comic and Tranquility base on hiatus, this is the only comic I’m reading. Once you get some LEGO, there’s no getting away… Mwahahahah!
I’m the only comic you’re reading? Sweet!
I have to say, it feels pretty good to be in the same company as Tranquility Base and Space the Comic. Those are both fantastic series.
yeah. the post made me do a double-take.
That’s pretty much what I was hoping for: to trick people for a couple seconds before they thought about it for a minute.
Well, it worked. 😛
Yay!
So… This art degree in paint philosophy and study is completely useless after all….
Thank God for that.
Indeed, indeed.
I think you might want to talk to your adviser, Calicade. You might have trouble turning that degree into a career.
I did not buy it but it was a very good one Dave! Just one question.. how long did it really take you to draw these four panels?
My goal was to make this look as terrible as I could, so I only gave myself about five minutes per frame. So it took about twenty minutes or so to do the whole episode.
I have to say, it was actually quite a lot of fun to put together. I rarely just sit down and draw out things, which is a shame. I need to do more of it.
Not bad…
As for sitting down and drawing stuff, I think it’s pretty obvious that you should NOT be doing more of that!
That just about made me spit my coffee all over my monitor.
Well, when I say I need to do it more, I mean just for myself. I should not be sharing my terrible, terrible art with the world.
I about did the same but with a soda not coffee!! haha
I grasped it was a joke.
Poor Sam….
And yeah, with LEGO female minifigures it’s hard to have a variety of faces to use for them. I’ve collected up everyone I can get, but find I’m often working with what I’ve got.
The lack of variety is frustrating. I’d like a fairly balanced cast here, but it’s a lot easier to have multiple male characters compared to female.
I’m going to take a stand against the “get along or die” argument. It seems much too Hegelian to me. I’m not going to compromise what I believe, or more importantly, what I know to get along. That “go along to get along” mentality of the late twentieth, early twenty-first century is what got us into this mess. A WCS scenario is not the time to compromise on principles or knowledge.
It is interesting how much movies are vehicles for political correctness, no?
Oh I don’t necessarily agree with it either; it’s just something I notice in a lot of zombie (and horror/post-apoc in general) movies.
I have always seen is as the uneducated leading the blind. It is sad how many are blind sheep and cannot educated themselves…But this is about to open up politics which has no place on this page lol
While I take a lot of pride in my ability to be self-reliant, I think that some people are just fooling themselves when they believe that they are always better off on their own. Like it or not, humans are social creatures, weve evolved to form social groups, not just because we like each others company, but because we learned that its the best way to survive. All it takes is one relatively minor injury to lay the toughest loner low. Sprain your ankle, and your zombie chow. Even in the most elite branches of the military the smallest operation unit you will see is two men. In any group, the individual members are tied together either though emotional ties and or mutual benefit. If Im part of a group then the group accepts me because I make a valuable contribution to it. If I become injured and require the group to invest resources in my care and maintenance then the group does so because getting my on my feet again requires less effort then replacing me or dividing my tasks among others. “Go along to get along” is not an invention of recent history, its a core survival stratagem that you will find in almost any successful animal population predator or prey. To quote Ned Stark, “When winter comes, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives”
Some good thoughts here, and I like the way you and Bo are developing this discussion.
Sorry Dave, I knew from the get go! When I saw it I though of it as one of your “holiday” panels. However, it was great none the less! SCRIMSHAW!!! Still enjoying this backstory! Can not wait to see what happens.
No worries. When I post my little April Fool’s jokes, I really don’t expect to fool anyone. Scrimshaw was introduced in my very first April Fool’s comic.
One of these years I’ll be more subtle and switch to fleshies or something.
NOOOOO!!! You wouldn’t!!! Would you? Say it isn’t so!!
Outside of a joke? No way.
Thank god! If there was ever was a LEGO good and evil….fleshies are the evil! Wait, does that make us racist!? haha
I hope not.
The yellow faces are supposed to be race neutral. The fleshes are the opposite, so I would argue that we are not racists.
I keep expecting you to do a strip with Fischer Price Little People. The classic ones, not the new stuff.
That would be kind of awesome. Maybe next April.
So so….it was a joke…. and the Lego is back 🙁
Yes sir. LEGO Always.
God damn it Dave! Well played you got me and I completely forgot Monday was April Fools Day.
SWEEET!
You had me up, until Scrimshaw showed up…
I tipped my hand too soon. Curses!
This brings me to a question,wht would happen to the baby? is it dead? or will it still grow, OR will it stay forever inside her? i applaud you Dave,this is a subject i have long wondered about, and i thank you for using it as a plot point. god show sir! and keep up the good work!
o.O
Hmmmm, discussion point for a future comic here. What would happen with a pregnant lady that has been bitten.
In the Dawn of the Dead remake the baby was born a zombie… which I found odd considering all bodily functions as a zombie shut down, so how the hell she give birth… or maybe the mum wasn’t a zombie yet? I can’t remember…. guess what I’m now going to be watching this weekend 🙂
That part kinda made me a lil sick lol to be honest. I think baby zombies are pretty horrific. . .
Baby zombies would be pretty horrific. I doubt we’d see many newborn zombies though. The bite would have to be perfectly timed for the mother to be able to deliver a zombified/infected baby. I would think that in almost all cases, the pregnancy would end.
And now I’m sad.
I am so relived that saying u got rid of all your Legos was an April fools joke because if u only used paint it would take out most Of the creativity that Legos give u the opportunity to do and I probably would of not read the comments much anymorea
I think you could do a lot with Paint potentially. There are some talents artists out there who have done amazing things with it. The only problem is that I am not a talented artist.
Sam going it alone with his bitten wife… I’m liking this back story more all the time. I’m guessing this is Sam explaining what happened to the guys that “kidnapped/rescued” Sam when he was the diversion.
Very cleverly done, and once again you have me impressed Dave 🙂
As for your April fools joke, sorry Dave you didn’t get me with it, was still enjoyable though and it generated a lot of comments! So I call that a success.
Oh, and that face on the security guard makes her come across like a real smug b****, I’ve decided I really don’t like her 🙂
Hah! Maybe your opinion of her will change in the future.
I’m under the impression she’s just trying to do her job quickly as possible.
Not a bad thought.
Thanks Mad!
Hey I kinda hope the cop lady makes it cuz shes kinda cute O.o lol . . . .
Hah!
Something about a chick with a gun……….
That there is.
For me,i yelled out loud “WHAT!” and everyone gave me that look.(was using my phone at mcdonalds) you got me gooood!
What software do you use to make the comics?