Zombie Cliché Lookout:
Ask any man, woman, or child how to dispatch a zombie, and any one of them will tell you, enthusiastically and without delay, that you have to “shoot them in the head”, or possibly “remove the head or destroy the brain”. Zombies are so ubiquitous in our culture that it’s hard to imagine someone not knowing how to kill one. But for some reason we never have difficulty suspending our disbelief when characters in a zombie story have to discover this fact by painful trial and error. In most zombie stories, especially if they center around the beginning of the outbreak, characters will be blissfully unaware of the rules of the genre until they either prove themselves in fire or become a formal member of the cannibal horde.
There are a few movies, like one of the remakes of “Dawn of the Dead”, where the characters should know better but still get confused until another character reminds them.
It’s crazy, isn’t it?
I knew some like that would happen.
And you were totally right!
So, did the zombie actually bite him in panel 2 or not?
Nice photography, Dave! 😉
He sure did, right on the shoulder.
He must’ve bit the clothing then, because that guy sure doesn’t look like he’s got a shoulder wound. I would expect to see an immediate bloody patch on his shoulder. 😉
I haven’t been up on drawing wounds onto characters. It’s difficult to keep consistent and I think the lack of visible wounds goes well with the LEGO aesthetic.
Let me put it this way: I find it very difficult to believe that a guy with a shoulder wound would shoot so straight and accurately if he had got bitten there even at what’s practically point-blank range. Therefore, the zombie only got clothing – at best he may have slightly scratched the surface of the skin. 😉
It may yet infect Officer Mike Skinner, we shall see. 😀
If you look at the second frame, there is indeed some blood.
I don’t think it’s a gaping wound, but with zombies, a dab will do you, as they say.
Also, I think I could hit a man sized target from that distance with a shoulder wound, or with my off hand.
@: brickvoid’s last comment
Well he also has two guns!
One of the bullets went all the way through the spine huh? Crippled Zombie is Crippled.
It probably just came very close.
What about Zombieland zombies? They aren’t actually dead, just enraged, so whatever can kill a human can kill a zombie, just don’t forget to Double Tap.
Good point there, RJ
28 Days/Weeks Later was the same way. In the sequel, most of the zeds had starved to death on their own.
I prefer the classic undead style zombies myself.
Yay!
Good to see some more zombie action!
And sheesh, tough crowd! Expecting bite wounds… on Lego people??? Don’t listen to these silly people Dave, they’re crazy! 🙂
Personally, I don’t like to think about how zombies work too much, I’d much rather just say they’re undead monsters, and just not even consider the fact they (in “real life”) would starve to death, or just rot away and stop functioning, or rigor mortis would set in and they wouldn’t be able to move, etc…..
Anyway Dave, I certainly hope you’re not one of those people out there who would let a policeman zombie still know how to use his gun. Seeing as you’re a classic zombie fan, I’m assuming you aren’t! 🙂
It’ll be a long wait til next Monday…;)
Hah, no way. A zombie cop would just be a zombie in a police uniform.
Thank goodness!
I was just recently scoffing at a Resident Evil game I bought, because there’s one instance where the “zombies” (can barely even call em zombies in the first place, really) set up… a MACHINE GUN! And one shoots you from several hundred feet away with surprising accuracy. That was when I realized the Resident Evil games don’t have “true” zombies in them, at least not anymore if they ever did….
What’s this world coming to anyway?
@the dude person:
If it was Resi 4 or 5, then they weren’t zombies at all. The main enemies in those games are infested with a mutative parasite that’s completely separate from the zombie viruses. The zed viruses were creates in labs, whereas the parasites from 4 and 5 are either naturally occurring or ancient forms of bioengineering; in 4 the parasite is called Las Plagas and was discovered lying dormant in the bedrock of a centuries-old mine. I don’t remember where the parasite in 5 came from, but I do remember that it’s related to Las Plagas.
The Plagas parasite doesn’t exactly control the host in the initial stages of infection, it just influences them. That’s why the infectees are capable of using weapons, forming strategies and such. In the first games, especially those that take place in or near Raccoon City (0, 1, 2, 3, Outbreak 1 & 2) the zeds are actual zeds, victims of the T-Virus that was engineered to reanimate dead tissue. There are non-zed enemies, too, but they are also victims of some artificial virus or another developed alongside the T-Virus.
There was actually a huge controversy among the Resident Evil fanbase when 4 did away with zombies and introduced the Ganados as the primary enemy type. I hear there’s a short section of 5 that has T-Virus zeds in it, but I never made it that far to know, but you’re right that the games no longer have true zombies in them. They used to, but Capcom got bored with them I guess and decided to move away from zombies in the last few games.
I immediatly thought that there was a bite mark. I guess it kinda like some reflex that makes me enjoy the movie/show/cartoon/book/comic. I think if I knew that the “zombies” werre just enraged peolpe I would hole up somwhere with a deep pit and wait till they either starve or someone else kills them. If I didn’t than when I did I would repent for my sins and ask to be forgiven.
I’ve always been of the opinion that the characters in zombie stories are so rooted in their denial that they’re in a zombies story that they don’t “forget” to shoot the zeds in the head, but rather don’t think they need to.
I’ve seen enough zed flicks to recognize the “they’re not zombies, this isn’t the zombie apocalypse, things will go back to normal soon,” mentality when it’s painfully obvious that they’re dead wrong.
Or… undead wrong. Sorry!
At any rate, it usually takes a dramatically obvious event to change that character’s mind, such as having a loved one rise from the dead and try to eat them or another character violently demonstrate the concept (often with much gore) on one of the zeds, such as in Diary of the Dead when the nerdy guy stabs a hospital zombie repeatedly in the chest with a metal pole and screaming, “You see what I’m doing?! I’m stabbing him and he’s not reacting to it! Does that look normal?!” or something to that effect.
In the initial stages of the outbreak, this mentality is especially true, though the media reporting the outbreak as mere “rioting” or “mass hysteria/insanity” doesn’t help the general populace in coming to terms that the world just got sh*t-kicked by the zombie apocalypse and nothing will ever be the same again.
That said, Officer Skinner either doesn’t realize he’s shooting a zombie, or doesn’t want to believe it, thus no head shots. Plus, he’s probably relying on his training to aim for the trunk, not the head, as the trunk of the body is much larger and easier to hit. It’s totally believable that he’d go for body shots at this stage of the outbreak; later though, once the basic rules of zombies have been learned, it’d be inexusable though…
That’d make sense, Darg. And I may have to go back and get some of the earlier Resident Evil games, because I started with 5….Haha, does “Las Plagas” sound silly to anyone else?
Also, I thought I’d let Dave (and everyone else who’s interested in another Lego zombie comic) know that I finally put up a teaser pic for my comic on my site here:
http://newkidontheblockcomics.wordpress.com/
Still haven’t had time to make the first page/episode yet though….
Ooh, looking pretty sweet! I like the composition of the shot and the photo effect.
Thanks very much Dave! I’m thinking of using that effect for most of the comic, although it may end up looking a little more like the banner at the top of my site. I was going for a de-saturated, “fluorescent office lights” feel, with a hint of ominous darkness. I’m pretty pleased with it!
Part of me wants to make this comic a dark, zombie epic, while the other part of me wants to throw in gratuitous amounts of humor (already thought of loads of silly stuff .to put in)… I just don’t know if I can do that without ruining the serious atmosphere I’d also like to convey…
Hopefully I’ll be able to get an episode or two completed by this weekend….
The serious/humor balance is a tough one. It’s hard making a comic with these happy little LEGO guys and keeping it serious. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a bit of humor sprinkled in here and there, but it has to be measured if you’re looking for an overall serious tone.
“Colt M1911 Inefficiency Challenge I: Completed!”
Hah. You gotta shoot’em in the head, son.
Dave, how exactly do you do your Blood? Gimp maybe?
Photoshop brushes. You can find loads of them by searching for photoshop splatter brushes.
Do you reckon Gimp would work the same?
I believe it does. Here’s a tutorial.
Third Slide: This Is B.O.T.D!!!
Thankyou for killing him off first 🙂
I hope you’re ready for another 300-esque epic zombie shoving, because there’s one coming very soon.
Ready and Waiting 🙂
RE shooting them in the head: I don’t believe that it wouldn’t be an ongoing problem. Sure, anyone who has training in using a gun (and therefore hopefully most people who have them) will have been taught to shoot for center of mass, thus will do so until they realise what’s going on. After that point, I can see people shooting them in the body when startled and shooting reflexively, but when taking time to aim even a heavily drilled soldier should be able to take head shots without any great problem.