Zombie Cliche Lookout: Priorities
Desperate times might call for desperate measures, but they also call for a cool head to dial into what really matters and act quickly and appropriately. You have to prioritize both the problems at hand and your resources, because any time wasted spinning your wheels on inconsequential matters is sure to give the zombies extra time to break down your barricades and eat your face.
Unfortunately for those cool headed folks, they generally have to deal with plenty of others who can’t quite stay rational during a crisis (most of us, really). This can, sadly, prove to be the undoing of many groups of survivors. Consider the characters in the original Dawn of the Dead. The rational thing to do was leave the mall for the rampaging bikers, but certain people wanted to defend all their useless luxuries and end up messing things up big time.
There’s probably some sort of message buried in there.
About this Episode:
I don’t know why, but I always like to show characters picking stuff up before moving on. It’s probably a bit unnecessary, considering I could simply start a new episode where everyone is carrying what they need to be carrying, presumably picked up in the interim between the previous episode and the current one.
I’m quite happy with Gene picking up the knife and handing it to Clark (handle first, of course). Yes, I am easily amused.
Discussion Question: Spreading the Zombie Plague
In your imagination, how does the zombie outbreak spread? Is it only through bites? Any sort of fluid transfer? Tainted meat (this one seems to get used a lot these days)? Are we all infected? Is it supernatural and automatically reanimates any recently deceased person? There are loads of different options, and I’m always interested to here a unique take on it.
I really hope they don’t let Clark wander off by himself, well, at least not before having the nurse thoroughly check him out! 😀
I’m sure he’s fine. People get hit by cars all the time!
I’ve been hit, I was fine… granted I was only 2 or 3 at the time and had just a big black tire mark on my stomach where I bounced off when I collided with it.
So it is possible to be really lucky and not have anything bad happen.
Good lord, Fox. How did you get hit by a car as a toddler?
The only problem I have with that attitude is that all too often they never get themselves checked out by a doctor. Car accident damage can take years to show up and is often never diagnosed because people think they’re okay, and put off seeing the doctor until years later when the doctor finally figures out something happened to them.
Get hit by a car? Go see a doctor right this minute, doesn’t matter if it was last week or last year, and it’s especially important if you got hit in the head! You never know what might be wrong until it’s far too late!
I apologize if this seems out of place for a webcomic, but people never think to check what happened to them and leave it only to wind up in aged care or nursing care homes when the damage finally becomes evident. Growing old is one thing but being put into a nursing home because you didn’t check something is a completely different story!
The Walking Dead pretty much sums up my favorite kind of outbreak; ambiguous source but everyone is a carrier and will reanimate either through death or being exposed to active virus.
I never really liked the supernatural zombie infection because using that opens up too many other ideas that become more and more ridiculous, not to mention contriving a cure through some sort of half-assed mysticism always feels like a cop-out at best and a deux ex machina at worst (and let’s face it, the writers never go for the best in those cases).
So yea, some kind of virus that we all have but lies dormant in a percentage of the population, but no one knows where it came from or if it can be cured. In fact, I think that’s why I prefer viral zombies to supernatural zombies; the promise of a cure somewhere down the road is probably the only reason to keep going once it’s revealed that everyone is infected, but for the outside observer (the readers), getting to the point where they can even study the virus to begin finding a cure is what makes the story interesting.
I generally prefer that the cause of the outbreak is never identified as well. It’s rarely done well (28 Days Later is just about the only exception I can think of).
I hate hippi zombies, kinda like the one that clark didnt kill, id give anything to run him over with my van.
Those are some pretty strong feelings.
meh, people hated them 30 years ago, now everyone thinks that hippi’s are like the greatest thing ever! this generation sucks!
It’s amusing how they are all looking at Ted like they just might be considering leaving him behind for the zombies…..
Favorite sort of spread of plague… if it’s gonna be more recent… viral or bacteria. It could start with the meat supply. And like that it’s not a case of everyone is infected, gives a chance for there to be some sort of hope.
I think ultimately, a writer should know, even if its something they don’t tell in the story, if at all or later on.
“I think ultimately, a writer should know, even if its something they don’t tell in the story, if at all or later on.”
I’d agree to a point. I don’t think the writer necessarily has to have a genesis mapped out too specifically, but they need to know exactly how it works.
The Infection would be as easy to spread as Ez-Spread Infection (copyright). You might get bitten and have the virus enter your blood stream, drink contaminated water with the virus, or (as The Walking Dead shows us, or at least the game) we could all be carriers, and the virus is is just waiting for us to die so it can reanimate us.
Is Ez-Spread Infection one of those wizard-based installers? Because I’ve had problems with those in the past.
I like the subtley in this episode… Gene picks up knife, blade first, lets get in the van and then we can cross the bridge of hitting Clark, then hadns Clark the knife handle first so as to show “no hard feelings” and the trust factor.
So Gene is the cool calm collected one in this episode for sure.
Very nice episode… I sense a calamity of some description coming up!
hey mad, youre probibly a guy from comic fury, i already know that.
Comic fury? Don’t even know what that is…. I’m just a guy from New Zealand who loves Lego and Zombies.
Came across Bricks of the Dead recently due to a blog entry at the brothers brick, sat here and read all Dave’s work and now keep an eye on the site for updates 🙂 Very impressed with Dave’s work… and perhaps one day I’ll get off my back side and start doing some “situation” photography of lego minifigs getting into mischief.
Thank you, Mad
I’ve been thinking of writing my own zombie story, set in suburban NJ (a.k.a. my neighborhood). I’m not sure who to make it about, maybe me and some people I know, or maybe I’ll just make some people up…
Give it a shot! If nothing else, you can develop ideas and improve your writing.
To me it doesn’t matter what causes the zombification, whether natural or supernatural. What I like is that everyone is “infected”. When you die, you turn. Doesn’t matter if ya get bit or slip and break your neck. Dead=zombies.
I like the idea of prions causing it, bovine spongiform encephalopathy to the nth degree.
Or what if it came from a passing comet?
(Bonus cool points if you’re old enough to catch that reference)
What was that one where the father hung himself and turned? Dude should have known better. Guess he just didn’t care about his family.
That one I can’t place. Sounds pretty damn creepy.
That would be Night of the Comet.
“Daddy would have got us an uzi.” (I probably butchered that quote.
I remember watching a documentary about how zombies could exist not long ago. Apparently, if rabies could be spread through the air and it’s incubation time was faster then we would have something like man-eating undead creatures. If anyone can engineer that virus, it’s gotta be a genius; in a sick, twisted way, that is.
You don’t happen to call what it was called, do you? Sounds like something I’d review.
It’s called “The Truth Behind Zombies”. This show is on NatGeo, if I am correct.
I’ll have to try to find that.
There was a fellow on NPR on Halloween talking about the truth behind monsters. He wrote a book about it. It was a cool segment. Two of the diseases that figured prominently in his research were rabies and tuberculosis. I’ll see if my Google-fu can find the book.
Dave- have you considered renaming the “Zombie Cliche Lookout” to “Zombie Trope/Idiom Lookout?” The definition, per the Merriam Webster Dictionary, is “a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation.” A trope, on the other hand, is just a familiar situation used in writing fiction, not necessarily good or bad. Your comic certainly isn’t hackneyed, so why give it the connotation of being negative?
Indeed I have. I started using “cliche” because that’s what I originally intended to discuss, but it quickly morphed into tropes. I guess I haven’t changed it because I’m do damn used to typing “cliche” three times a week.
Just a bite. All the best zombie thingies go like that.