Zombie Cliche Lookout: Setting the Stakes
The zombie apocalypse sets the stakes pretty high in general. All it takes is one mistake for a person to get bitten and eventually need to be killed, or turned into another zombie. With that in mind, another external (i.e. non-zombie) threat has to be pretty serious to register against the general levels of danger people who have survived this long have come to cope with. So what better way to establish a villain than to quickly roll out all the ways in which he is an immediate and major threat that needs to be addressed.
Also, the above is a bit of an overstatement. While the zombies are certainly a huge danger, any of the smaller problems survivors face could spell doom. Run out of potable water? You’re dead. Let an injury get infected? You’ve got major problems. Don’t keep necessary supplies safe and guarded? You’re taking huge risks, buddy.
About this Episode:
So I’m definitely trying to build up Gus as a physically intimidating person. In my mind he’s tall and broad. He might be a bit (or a lot) overweight, but there’s plenty of muscle there under the fat. But here’s the problem: LEGO figures come in basically two sizes. You have normal sized figures, and slightly smaller sized figures. Sure, there have been a handful here and there they skewed the proportions a bit (remember the Toy Story figures of Woody and Jess?), but that’s about it as far as variety goes. I suppose I could put some blocks under Gus’ feet to make him bigger, but that seems like a pretty inelegant solution compared to just embracing the sameness of the LEGO minifigure, and having characters comment to the contrary.
Discussion Question: How Bad Does Gus Sound
So you’ve heard from these characters what Gus has been up to. To be fair, more has been implied than stated outright, but roll with that please. With these facts outlined in front of you, just how bad of an hombre does Guy seem to you?
Typo alerts – sorry they’re late, had a busy Wednesday yesterday – none for Monday’s that I could see. For Wednesday:
“all the ways they he is an immediate” they–>that 😀 Although, I would prefer “in which”, since that is what should grammatically be there. Dave’s choice.
“problems a survivors faces” – Remove “a”; change “faces” to “face”
Dave is getting better at controlling his typos, he’s getting bigger stretches without them! That makes me pleased! 😀
Fixed all, thanks. I’m clearly running behind as well.
I was thinking Gus would be wearing some sort of minifig accessory that would make him seem much more threatening, rather than being physically big. There’s plenty of accessories that could help here, if Dave has access to them. 😀
I do have a couple that make people bigger, but most just don’t work for this situation. The one that immediately springs to mind is the fat belly from the Hobbit.
We also have no idea what Gus is actually like apart from what is being depicted here. How we know for sure these survivors are not over inflating his personality, as bad as it may seem at this stage? 😀
That is a very good point. I guess we’ll have to wait to see when we meet him.
Description of behavior is typical petty tyrant but at least a smart one. He is not killing them instead using them. He must have a base since he keeps coming back. Seems like he has trust issues. Instead of bringing the same people back again and again he shifts them. Are the others dying or being killed and replaced? Is he trying to hide from his own people what they are collecting from his own people? Is he stopping them from forming any connection to outside groups by limiting contact? He is revealing his hand by letting the outside groups see his numbers.
Oh man, I love this breakdown. I’ve given you guys very little actual information, so it’s fun and insightful to see what you can make of it.
sorry for the non-comments; fighting with a disabled password on my email that was linked to my everything.
However there is one Lego figure that might stand out to your expectations:
Axel the Nexo-Knight – (the one with the bionical arms above his head)
yeah, it make take a night to make a knight of sword; the might of the bike, but you have been doing such a wonderful job making this comic.
if you can’t find him I think at some drug and/or dollar stores they are still selling “random” mini-figure packs and Simpson figure packs (hint the type you want may have a different bar-code than the ones you don’t want), there are also the figures that you can get for that game console.
Although i cannot advise you about copy right stuff when using the last 2 ideas.