Episode 755: 1 of 4

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Dave

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Zombie Cliche Lookout: Obvious Questions

In zombie movies there is often a moment when the characters have figured out some ugly truth, but refuse to believe, or even acknowledge it until another character spells it out for them. The classic example being, of course, “Where is everyone else?”. The answer being “They didn’t make it.” Of course these characters are perfectly capable of figuring that out on their own, but they can take a brief kind of comfort in their denial. It’s stupid, of course, but it’s what they have.

It also serves a dramatic purpose in that it forces another character to verbalize the reality of a bad situation. This is usually done for one of two reasons: to establish that character as a cold realist, or to force them into admitting some manner of wrongdoing.

About this Episode:

I really like this truck model, despite the fact that I didn’t replace the missing smokestack on the front of the vehicle, which makes it look kind of stupid. Despite that, it’s a solid panel truck. That said, it does have one major flaw: the cargo hold of the truck opens with a big gull wing door, rather than in the way a real truck would. This is disappointing, and forces me to work around the flaw in the flow of the comic. In this case, let’s all pretend that Clark just pulled the rear door down as he got out of the cargo area.

Discussion Question: Dumb Questions

Kind of a strange discussion question for today, but I’m going with it anyway. What sort of dumb do you think works to help ease out a larger truth? The question might be obvious to the point of absurdity, but we have to verbalize it just to get it out there.

15 thoughts on “Episode 755: 1 of 4”

  1. The kind of dumb that Clark is going to be very very soon, whether he likes it or not! 😀

    • Gone? Very possible. We’ll see.

  2. Right now you could park a truck in his mouth, it’s that wide open! 😉

    • Hah!

  3. As for the LEGO truck having gull wing doors on it’s cargo, I would have preferred anything to seeing no door at all. There are a large variety of trucks out there, and I’m sure TLG made their design choices on some obvious real world models we just don’t know about at present. 😀

    Or maybe they used designer’s prerogative and just went with what worked best to build the truck and not worry about trying to stay close to something unwieldy and impractical.

    • I suspect it was designed primarily as a play feature, which is fair. This is, after all, a toy.

  4. Cliche:
    Sometimes, these “obvious questions” can be very annoying.

    But, if done correctly, they can be some of the most emotional and heartbreaking scenes.

    About this episode:
    That is one Awesome truck! I love it! Gotta get me one!
    To be the focus of this storyline, you needed a truck that had enough detail to make it pop. But not too much, to where it became distracting. And this truck works perfectly for that.

    I’m not sure, that if it had a roll-up door, if it would look weird or not.

    Oh yeah, I looked it up. And there actually are big trucks like this, that have huge gull-swing doors on the sides. 😀
    They look pretty awesome, and a little silly. 🙂

    For the discussion question:

    It always seems silly, that when fences have been breached and chaos and zeds are everywhere. Someone asks “What happened?”.
    It doesn’t help “ease out a larger truth”, but thats all I could think of. 🙂

    Other:
    I’m thinking, maybe you should have had a “Slam!” sound effect, for Clark shutting the door.
    But I understood it, so maybe you don’t need it.

    • “Oh yeah, I looked it up. And there actually are big trucks like this, that have huge gull-swing doors on the sides.”

      Wait, really? No I need to look this up.

      • Now Pepper Valentino’s got me intrigued, too, because this information didn’t show up at first, but trucks and semitrailers with full height side doors do show up.

        I personally know of at least one truck that’s got a large side door, and it wasn’t a semitrailer, either. It was a very large moving truck.

        Dave, next time we revisit this story arc, I want you to use the door Clark should’ve got out of, to get in. I want to see what this is for myself, and judge it’s suitability, as it seems rather intriguing to me! 😀

        • I don’t know what other styles of large trucks exist that Google would be willing to show me, but Orix is one popular refrigerator truck brand, and falls into the Heavy rigid class of truck from the looks of it. You’ve probably seen the van body or refrigerated truck – visible on the following link – possibly with different cab styling and body trim – lots of times and never thought anything of it! 😀

          http://web.orix.com.au/hire-and-rental/truck.html

  5. Barb looks VERY comfortable in her denial!
    Haha! 😀
    It’s almost like she doesn’t even see the terrified look on Clark’s face. Or else she has no emotions.

    Could it be, that Barb…is a robot?! 😮

    She did look a lot like The Terminator when she was carrying around that shotgun, earlier. 🙂

    • She just might be a terminator.

      • That would explain SO much!

        ; )

  6. Still can’t believe Clark left woman and children behind… I mean I’m not a fan of this character but I never thought he could be that guy…

    OR this is just a smart setup by the author to make us believe (via his Zombie Cliche Lookout) that they didn’t make it! I’m watching Dave!

  7. I’ve used my custom truck before, and I’ll be using it as an important part of an upcoming story, too. I never could get the back of it “just right,” either. Trucks like this would not have had sliding, garage-style doors, but ones that swung open. I really wanted two that opened in the middle, but I couldn’t figure out how to make that work with the colors and space I had available. I just went with a single, swinging door. I needed the frame to help hold the back of the truck together.

    https://ballinabricky.com/lego-delivery-truck/