Month: November 2010

Netflix Instant is a wonderful thing. For less than 10 bucks a month you get unlimited access in addition to your one-at-a-time DVD mailer allotment, with the only limitation being you need some sort of broadband-enabled hardware to stream it (your computer will do if you don’t have an Xbox or Wii to work with). Only a small portion of their total inventory is available this way, but there’s more than you might think, from new releases all the way back to the silent movie era.

I regret to say I’m not very efficient with this abundance of riches, however. My instant queue has had upwards of 30 shows in it for some time now, and I can’t just excuse that by saying Dawn uses the same account. The classic version of Phantom of the Opera has been sitting there for quite awhile, staring at me with sunken-eyed accusation every time we browse on through to watch another episode of Pawn Stars.

Honestly, part of it really is the fact there’s another person sharing the living space who really isn’t interested in watching Phantom of the Opera at that moment when you have the time and inclination to do so. So it has to wait for that celestial alignment when you have time on your hands, are in the mood to watch, and the roommate/significant other is out of the apartment so that their own mood doesn’t factor into things. The last time this alignment occurred, I still regrettably betrayed the Phantom, and instead fired up some of the leftover zombie movies I’d queued up just prior to Halloween, including George A. Romero’s latest offering, Survival of the Dead.

If you remember my review of Diary of the Dead, you’ll know I feel the father of the modern zombie genre has lost a step (or many steps… perhaps even a leg…) since his early days. Sometimes I feel like one of those grumbling old men complaining it was all better in the olden days, and certainly Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead had their share of cheesy moments and sketchy characterizations. In fact, I’m not even a hater on Land of the Dead, since it touched on the concept that zombies might find a new consciousness emerging on the other side of death, a thought he’d already brought up in Day of the Dead with Bub. Bub is what elevates Day of the Dead to being a great movie for me even through the cheese, partly because Romero managed to make a zombie the most sympathetic character, but also because it was a twistedly hopeful message going beyond the human survivors escaping: Bub doesn’t backslide into mindlessness, even after his “father” is murdered. In fact, he ends up attacking someone in a properly civilized manner–shooting them–with a properly civilized motive: revenge. It’s still markedly antisocial behavior, true, but it’s reasoned behavior, and that implies that somewhere down the road in Romero’s Day of the Dead world, zombies could be reasoned with.

Whether or not that notion is sacrilege to you, it was still an interesting one to leave us with. Land of the Dead expanded upon it, culminating in having Big Daddy lead his horde in a semi-organized assault on the humans that had been “persecuting” them (shades of I Am Legend, there), but after that Romero took a big step back with Diary and started the apocalypse clock over again, in the process telling a story I felt he’d already told, and told better.

Which brings me to Survival of the Dead, a movie I felt was meant as a spiritual successor to Day of the Dead, but one that became very confused along the way. Rather than go into all the details, I’ll refer you to a review that pretty much sums up both the (very odd) plot and my reactions: Click Here

Long story short, at the core of this I think Romero was again trying to explore the idea of somehow reaching out to the zombies and modifying their behavior, but this time the only result is that they decide to broaden their eating habits. Along the way, there’s a lot of half-developed headscratchers, such as two clans of Irishmen fighting over an island within ferry distance of the coast of modern day Delaware. There’s also some zombie wrangling in a sort-of-cowboy-setting, which is of course something I wanted to see, but it’s somehow developed even less than the limited wrangling scenes they did in the original Day of the Dead. Any social commentary message seems to be all over the place, as well as the characters’ motives. The same man will lecture people one moment about not showing proper respect for the (un)dead, then soon after is casually lighting his cigarette off of one he just needlessly set on fire. A teenager met just a few days after the outbreak is inexplicably competent with all manner of weaponry, and instead of getting his back story we get the back story of another man which is not especially relevant or interesting. Not that the teenager’s story would have been interesting either, perhaps, but I wish Romero had at least given a wink to us in terms of accepting his gun acumen.

Maybe I just go into these things expecting too much from Romero, or hoping to see some of the old magic. I admit, I had the same long run with John Carpenter before finally giving up on him… and frankly, even a crappy Romero zombie movie is still better than at least half or more the zombie movies out there, because you can still see the neat ideas wanting to break through. Hell, Romero inverts the Zombie Ranch aesthetic by having a zombie woman riding a normal horse… which I suppose isn’t much stranger than a normal woman riding a zombie horse, but sooner or later people are going to want to know why that’s happening, and probably particularly how a Romero-style uncoordinated shambler can mount and ride a horse successfully. That’s after all one of the big things people like about Romero: he stuck to his guns with his original vision and hasn’t jumped on the “fast zombie” bandwagon… but because of that, there’s some activities his zombies probably oughtn’t to be doing without it being commented on as a big anomaly. Here it’s just “Oh yeah, she’s still riding”. At a gallop. Jumping fences.

I don’t mean to get on my high horse about this (heh heh), since there’s many bits of the Zombie Ranch world that ain’t been explained yet… but on the other hand, I have the luxury of taking my time with them. The story’s not over yet. Survival of the Dead has 90 minutes to tell its tale, and by the time it’s over the only real reaction I had was “Well… that happened”. Somewhere in there I do believe the themes of Day of the Dead were there, wanting to be revisited in a more modern context… but the story had already been told, and told better the first time around.

This week’s comic delves a bit more into the moral/legal framework of the Zombie Ranch world, which I must admit is one of the main reasons I was excited with developing the concept in the first place. Let’s face it, there’s plenty of zombie fiction out there dealing with the apocalypse as it happens, or the months/years immediately after… but not so much that thinks about what life might be like a few decades down the road. If history (and even pre-history) has shown us one thing, it’s that humanity are a bunch of real persistent buggers, even (or perhaps especially) in the worst of circumstances. Ice Age? Keep going. Collapse of Rome? Keep going. Black Death? Keep going. Even on a smaller scale, you have numerous examples of civilians in war zones somehow adjusting to being bombed and raped and murdered on an unconscionably regular basis, and carrying on. What’s unconscionable, even insane under our circumstances became routine under theirs, sometimes in only a matter of months.

The point is that for better or worse, people adjust. Ask them how they can possibly live like they do, and they will shrug. It’s enough that they live. Morals, law, and philosophy can wait, although if it goes on long enough, new codes of conduct can and will emerge. Eventually, you may get an entire generation who have trouble imagining there was ever any other way. Exploring this phenomenon is, I think, at the heart of a lot of themes of apocalyptic fiction, and I see no reason why a zombie apocalypse should be any different–which is probably one of the main reasons I was underwhelmed when I watched The Quick and the Undead several months ago: a movie purportedly set 82 years after the dead started walking should not really have any angsty scenes involving strangers reluctant to kill other strangers who have been bitten, presuming being bitten = inevitable zombification (and it did).

You can certainly make the argument that The Quick and the Undead was one of those films where you really shouldn’t bother trying to make sense out of what’s happening, but when an outright spoof like Shaun of the Dead makes more logical and emotional sense than a purportedly “serious” piece, well, there’s the heart of the matter. Hell, Shaun of the Dead even gave glimpses into how zombies might be incorporated into daily life once the immediate crisis was dealt with, and while they were meant for humorous effect, on another level they were funny because “Yeah… why *wouldn’t* there be zombie game shows?”

Now is Zombie Ranch meant as some hardcore, painstakingly researched take on how the world really might be once it adjusted to zombies in its midst? Heck no, but on the other hand the surviving folks of the Wild Zones have had a long time to adjust to their situation, and the laws of the new frontier, when they’re enforced at all, grew out of making official what people were already doing from a practical survival standpoint. You have to figure that after the first few years of denial and tears, it got to the point most sane and reasonable folk finally agreed that not killing grandma when she got bitten just put everybody at risk for no good reason.

Sane and reasonable, of course, in the context of this Weird New West. But when everything’s gone off kilter, after awhile it’s only the people on the outside who are going to notice  that the angle’s weird.

And then again, maybe they’re the straight and level ones, and you’re the one who ended up with the skewed perspective?

I’ll just meditate on my novelty nudie pen awhiles while y’all contemplate that.

Last week I had three big zombie-related topics on my mind, and opted to write about our Zombie Ranch outing to Long Beach Comic Con 2010. That left out any more than just a brief mention of AMC’s premiere of “The Walking Dead”, and Rockstar’s DLC release of their Undead Nightmare pack for Red Dead Redemption.

Now, since I did still want to spend some time talking about those, I went ahead and took the rare step of using my other blog space at The Satellite Show to discuss a zombie topic, so if you want to read my thoughts on The Walking Dead, then click on over. Meanwhile, that leaves me free and clear to discuss cowboys and zombies, which as you might surmise is a topic close to my heart.

If you’ve been a regular reader of my blog then you’ll be aware that I liked Red Dead Redemption a lot, and that post was just after first impressions. Finishing the single-player campaign truly takes you through an epic western tale, where you might see certain plot twists and tropes coming, but others could just as easily leave you shocked. If some of the supporting characters seem little more than two-dimensional stereotypes, fair enough, but the main protagonist is a compelling enough man to shoulder the narrative burden and keep you caring about his fate and the fate of his family, even as you take the occasional side trip to rob stagecoaches or skin a bunch of random wildlife. I’m not going to spoil that narrative for anyone who hasn’t played, but I will suggest that if you’re any fan of GTA-style “sandbox” games and/or the western genre, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy.

Plus, there’s now another big, rotting, groaning reason to do so. The core campaign of Red Dead Redemption scrupulously avoids anything actually supernatural (with one exception that’s not part of the main narrative), but several months back I read a blurb saying that Rockstar was in process of trying to develop a zombie-themed expansion pack, set to hopefully debut in time for Halloween. I was of course very interested, but between then and now had just filed it away somewhere in the back of my brain, likely in the dusty realms between my bicycle lock combination from 8^th grade and where I set down my eyeglasses ten minutes ago.

Well, Rockstar didn’t forget. There it was on Xbox Live, right on schedule the week before Halloween. I figured that for about a sawbuck’s worth of Microsoft Points–10 United States dollars to you young folks and foreign types–what the heck, I’d take their Undead Nightmare for a whirl. After all, it’s RESEARCH. Right?

Well, research or not, the game nearly sabotaged my preparations for the Comic Con by being much more awesome than I expected. I suppose I’m used to DLCs just being little patch jobs on top of the main content, heavy on the multiplayer modes, and was expecting maybe some re-skinned (or de-skinned) horses and enemies to roam around and blow away until you got tired of it. Instead, Rockstar put together a whole new mini-campaign that takes John Marston from beginning to end through an Old West style zombie apocalypse, while meeting (and occasionally eating) several familiar faces from the original story along the way. The “random encounters” of the wilderness are all re-worked to provide classic zombie moments, such as a crazed man offering body parts to his chained down, zombified wife while exhorting her to “chew like a lady”, or the sick people asking to be taken to a doctor, only to turn before your eyes and come staggering after you. And the enemies aren’t just re-skinned people… they move in truly creepy ways, the sounds they make are disturbing as hell, and (of course) only a headshot will put them down for good. You will never be so glad to have your slow-motion Deadeye meter as when a half dozen of the riled-up bastards are pinwheeling hungrily in your direction.

On the Zombie Ranch side of things, I was pleased as punch to note a few things such as the ability to hogtie zombies and throw them over your horse (the game actually requires you to do just this very early on)… if only they’d had this expansion out back when we were putting together those reference shots for Comic #42, eh? There’s a zombie horse to be acquired as a mount, and though the game claims it’ll be ornery it seemed perfectly well behaved to me, if not the purtiest thing.

In fact, I was all set to keep the zombie horse as my preferred mount until I realized that Rockstar went further than just zombies and has some “mythical creatures” roaming the prairies, forests and deserts. The presence of Sasquatch in the northern lands left me disappointed in the apparent lack of Jackalopes and Chupacabra in the more southerly areas, but there’s no disappointment to be had when you can find and break one of the Four Horses of the Apocalypse. Let me just say this… War has flaming hooves, mane, and tail, and sets fire to any zombies or other poor suckers you run over with It. Epic. Apparently there’s a Unicorn out there as well, but I didn’t find it so I can’t confirm if Erasure starts playing when you climb aboard.

The various towns in the game are not much changed except for some cosmetic fires and graffiti, but when they’re being overrun by undead hordes you may not be thinking about that much. In an ingenious mash-up of zombie and western, you’re cast as the lone cowboy riding into town to save it from destruction, helping the few holdout survivors sniping from the rooftops and balconies to clear the infestation of their former friends and neighbors. Their location is a big hint as to how you yourself might want to deal with the situation, provided you can make it to a good spot before They get to you. If you can’t, it’s a pretty white knuckle experience, and you really, really want to keep your Deadeye meter full or you’re going to end up a brain donor in short order.

I’ve seen some complaints that certain aspects are too repetitive, but honestly, I didn’t feel that way, if for no other reason than that clearing out Graveyard X can be completely different from clearing out Graveyard Y just based on something as simple as the amount of fences around. They also give you some unique new weapons as you progress, such as a 19th century version of the L4D pipe bomb affectionately named “Boom Bait”. All the original voice actors are back for high quality cut scenes, as such notables as Nigel West Dickens and Seth react to a world gone to Hell (Seth, as you might imagine, seems right at home, in ways that must be seen to be believed). You don’t have to have completed the original campaign to enjoy this one, but I highly recommend it just to get all the references, and because the “ending” will make much more sense.

If you’re a zombie fan, a western fan, or (target audience here!) both, you owe it to yourself to download this expansion. I mean, presuming you already own a copy of RDR and have the requisite game console and network connections… but if not, y’know, Christmas is coming up and the prices have dropped, so it’s as good a time as any to take the plunge. Rockstar promised us an RDR Zombie Apocalypse for Halloween, and they sure as shootin’ delivered.

There’s really just entirely too much to talk about this week, even for me.

Yeah, I’m serious. “The Walking Dead” premiered as a series on AMC, the Undead Nightmare expansion came out for Red Dead Redemption, and then of course there was Long Beach Comic Con. I could probably do a whole blog on any one of those topics… for now I’ll just chime in with most everyone else on The Walking Dead pilot being really, really good (including some LGZ goodness right up front!), I’ll state that Undead Nightmare is insidiously fun, and then let me move right along and talk LBCC.

If I told you the Convention was a huge money maker for us, I’d be lying. I’d also be lying to say that we had a lot of traffic at our table all weekend. What we did have, though, might best be exemplified in a picture like this:

That’s me, the meat in an Amanda Conner/Jimmy Palmiotti sandwich. She provided the clothespin as part of her whole Skunk costume motif. The knife is mine, and fills up with blood if you hold it point down… I never imagined so many people would be so fascinated by something that cost me $8 at the local seasonal Halloween store, and that includes Jimmy and Amanda.

Anyhow, it’s one thing to get your picture taken with these guys, and another to get your picture taken after closing time on Sunday when you’ve been their table neighbors all weekend. We managed some quality time, even though Amanda had a sketch/autograph line pretty much from bell to bell all three days she was there… hell, we apparently made a good enough impression that she asked if we’d stow and look after her bags while she did a panel, and if you’d told me a year ago that would happen, I’d have called you overly optimistic, if not a damn liar. Miz Conner, if you happen to be reading this, I swear we didn’t lick anything.

Jimmy was great, too, inviting me to pull up a chair and go through his latest Jonah Hex issue and ask him questions on how he scripted it. I repaid him with an unintentional videobomb of his ComicVine interview (shown on this page) when you see Dawn applying my Zombie Ranch brand tattoo about 3/4ths of the way through. People probably are wondering if that dude in the Batman shirt has a fever. I suppose I could have turned towards the camera and gotten the tattoo on film, but I was being a good boy.

But anyhow, I’m finally starting to feel like we might belong amongst all these established people, especially if we keep working at what we’re doing. We didn’t sell a lot of our print comics, but we did sell more than one to people I’d never met, some of whom had never even run across the comic until the convention, but after a look felt like it was worth shelling out $5 of their hard earned cash for. That was very, very encouraging to us. Similarly, our panel had what I considered to be a damn decent crowd for a Sunday afternoon, especially since the amount of faces I didn’t know outnumbered those I did. All the audio-visual stuff worked fine and we gave out a lot of information I hope was useful to people… and there were lots of nods and note takings and even a couple folk who came by our table after to ask more questions, so I’m guessing that indicates a yes.

I didn’t even mention yet how well treated we were by the organizers. Martha Donato (the head organatrix) came by on Friday to personally introduce herself and chat with us, then the head of programming came by and gave me a guided tour of the panel area at my request. Small things, I guess, but it made me feel important. A convention where they have people like Amanda Conner and Mark Waid on the floor, and they’re bothering to talk to us and show me around? Niiice. San Diego had best approve our Small Press application this time around, so that I can be humbled into buglike insignificance again. Then again if they deny us that should serve the same purpose… but we won’t be chained to a table the whole time.

So while from an economic and promotional standpoint LBCC wasn’t stratospheric for us, from a confidence and connections standpoint Dawn and I were on Cloud 9. It was great to start seeing some familiar fan faces from prior appearances, as well as a couple of new ones. I went walkabout with my forehead brand, which was quite the conversation piece–most people were wondering if it was the ‘OZ’ logo, but that just gave me opportunity to explain the true significance… and a couple of times that I did that, the response was “Oh! Zombie Ranch! That’s you?” Loved that. In reciprocation of that recognition, I particularly would like to mention Shane and Chris Houghton, the brothers responsible for Reed Gunther, and Rick Marson, the mad Dr. Frankenstein of handmade stitchery behind the ZOMs. Rick had a very flashy (literally!) zombie costume for Halloween, which actually ended up winning Image’s Walking Dead promo contest, but let’s get back to the ZOMs. Rick has somehow managed to make zombies cuddly. This shows he is very talented, and on top of that he’s also a treat to “talk shop” with in regards to the undead.

I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but like I said, just too much to talk about. Maybe I’ll get to Red Dead Redemption and The Walking Dead next week. For now, I wanted to share the impetus for the title of this blog… I personally wasn’t there this time so I only have Dawn’s word for what happened, but apparently we had another adorable little girl incident (the first was documented in my blog from LBCC ’09). This time around, though, the girl was far from silent as she declared her enthusiasm for all things monsterly. She ended up haranguing her dad into buying a Cthulhu that Dawn sketched, dismissing her father’s attempt to guide her towards the sketch of a witch instead. According to Dawn, the exchange was more or less as follows:

“Don’t you want the witch? It’s Halloween…”

“Pfft. Witches are Halloween. Monsters are Halloween and EVERY DAY!”

You just can’t argue with logic like that.