Zombie Cliche Lookout: Introductions
One staple of zombie stories is that characters are often separated from their group, and thrown in with complete strangers. This causes a variety of issues. Perhaps most obviously, they aren’t separated delicately. Often, the remainder of their group – generally family and friends – are the early victims of the zombie outbreak, leaving our character as the sole survivor. This is obviously an extremely psychologically scarring event, and can cause many characters to be less likely to trust and form relationships with others. Combine a few of these scarred characters together, and you have the perfect recipe for mistrust.
This is what makes introductions so important. As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. In the zombie apocalypse, this will become even more important. Give potential allies a reason to mistrust you, and you’re in for trouble. Of course, it goes the other way too. If you spot something off about them, trust your gut.
About this Episode:
I kind of hate introductions in the comic. Every time I introduce a new character, at least one episode has to be dedicated to introducing the characters to each other, and the new characters to the audience. I try to tie these necessary, but kind of boring points into the existing plot where I can.
Discussion Question: Representing Yourself
As discussed above, making a good first impression on potential teammates in the zombie apocalypse is going to be an extremely important survival strategy. If you come off like a weirdo, a flake, or just plain untrustworthy, then you’re not going to get into the group that could potentially save your life.
With that in mind, what would you do to represent yourself as best as possible? Conversely, what would you be looking for in the others that would either make you more comfortable, or warn you away?
Typo alerts: ” leaving our character are the sole survivor” are–>as
“This is obviously an extremely psychologically scarring,” psychologically–>psychological
There doesn’t appear to be a mouseover text for this comic, either! 😀
Fixed both, and added the mouseover.
I do wonder why he just uses his name as his introduction, Becky used “I’m Becky” as her introduction. Has Sam suddenly decided to resort to using one word sentences now? 😀
He’s being very guarded. Short, quiet answers. He’s trying to learn as much as he can without giving away too much, but her question in the last panel is kind of torpedoing that.
I look forward to seeing whether you turn him into a clamshell case, or in other words, if you make him just clam up and attempt to resort to short not very helpful answers. 😀 She might be able to get his story out of him if she’s good, men tend to open up to women if they feel they can trust them, eventually. 😉 I feel as if you milked the effect for a few episodes you could go easy on switching to the next arc, it’s about time we had a bit of real character development from Sam and his new found friend. 🙂
I think it would be best to kill a zombie in frj of the outer person to show that you are not. Scared of them and that you can have thier back if need be. Also, presenting yourself with a vehicle and lots of guns/food could make them greedy, but it could shock and awe them into trust. When I owned a. Gun store, occasionally my psycogy major assistant would point out someone who may have been about to attempt to rob it. When this happened, I casually loaded a high power rifle and cleaned it absentmindedly and when I looked up they would be gone or leaving.
Btw I love how this site is mobile friendly
Hah, everyone needs a psych. major as an assistant. That’s an awesome story!
Glad you like it; definitely something that needed to be done.
As you said you never have a second chance to make a good first impression… So does characters to readers! Everytime you throw a new character in the story we also have our first impression of those new friends… So do we trust Tara so far…? Introducing new characters is never boring… I’d say it’s quite some art! As the creator you have to make us feel something about them. And Tara seem a bit to friendly to me haha.
She is very friendly. It’s funny, I originally intended Tara to be a little more rough around the edges, but the minifig looks a lot like Sara Palin, so I ended up making her folksy and outgoing.
Oh, and just to clarify, it’s not that I like Palin or anything like that; I’m just mimicking her public profile.
HI Dave how.s going
It’s fine if you want to say hi, but please remember to comment on the episode. Dave doesn’t have a lot of free time to answer random hello comments as he’s a busy guy, what with holding down a job, getting his kid ready for the day, and bricking his way through the 3-times-a-week publishing schedule he’s set up for himself! 😀
Oh I don’t care I don’t vote in the US 😀
hey guys u wanna join my Facebook lets chat together