The author is dead, long live the author.

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Clint

So there’s a new review of the comic out, courtesy of the fine ladies over at Girls Like Comics. I thought the reviewer had some interesting things to say, particularly the notion that Zombie Ranch could be thought of as one of the ultimate takes on the over-saturation of the zombie genre: the idea of the zombie being commercialized, mass-marketed, and ultimately tamed.

There’s no question in my mind that back in 2009 when I started putting this story together, I was only willing and able to do so because I felt this particular take might have something new to say in the midst of what even then was arguably a crowded market. I had no intent of capitalizing on the trend, because trends are damned fickle things, not to mention they can be a double-edged sword (Alan Kistler  outright stated back in 2011 that he refused to look at any review submissions he got that had anything to do with zombies, regardless of other factors). Anyhow, whether the “zombie bubble” collapsed in a few days or a few years, I still figured we had something unique that could outlast it. That was important to me.

But although I certainly haven’t shied away from a certain amount of social commentary in my writing, and I certainly had the notion that zombies were potentially being done to (un)death, I never actually had the intent of thematically equating the taming and processing of our zombie herds (for profit!) with the glut of zombies in popular culture.

Does that make the reviewer wrong? Nope. Actually, it’s kind of a cool interpretation, and it didn’t stop her from recognizing some of the more intentional dramatic and satirical themes I’ve put in. It wasn’t that long ago that I brought up the concept of Death of the Author, where the creator’s intent is not the end-all be-all of a work. It’s a particularly interesting phenomenon in the context of serially produced webcomics, where a fan often is able to just up and ask the creator(s) what they meant a certain scene to convey or even give their own theories on why things are happening or what a character’s motivations are. I’m quite guilty of responding to more than one instance of this with a Word of God in the interest of limiting confusion, and sometimes I wonder if that’s a good habit or a terrible one.  Maybe I should be content to leave more things up to interpretation rather than speaking out with a voice of (potentially stifling) authority.

After all, sometimes the alternate interpretations can be pretty interesting stuff.

2 thoughts on “The author is dead, long live the author.”

  1. the leaking pen

    Clint, I’ve run into similar, and I never complain, because it makes me look smarter than I am, often. For example, we did a parody of Oprah, in a D and D setting, and had Ograh, an ogre. At one point we did a play on the whole car thing that happened a while back, YOU GET A CAR, AND YOU GET A CAR! only in this case, Ograh was giving out smashings, not cars. Two bystanders ran and cryed in fear of their lives, and one bystander yelled that they couldnt afford the taxes (a play on the issue with a lot of people who got the free cars having to sell them to pay the taxes. ) Thats is, simple gag.

    Until someone pointed out that the two things people were afraid of was death, and taxes. Did I intend to use that old saw? Nope, didn’t see it in the slightest until it was pointed out. Take credit for a more subtle joke? Heck yeah! Lol.

    (also, I totally assumed the same commentary about commercialization of zombies with ZR. You should have taken credit, its a good bit. )

  2. Clint

    There’s that writing maxim that sometimes you don’t know what your story is really about until you’ve finished it. It’s not too far a stretch for an author to admit that even then they may have subconsciously been telling a story they weren’t consciously aware of.

    And then there’s serial works like this which could be considered “living documents”, meaning even if I don’t claim credit for an idea, I can certainly weave it in as a more conscious theme now that I’ve been made aware of it. It’s not even really a departure from what’s gone before, since it was already coming through enough to be picked up on by others.

    I like giving credit where credit’s due, though, I have enough subtext to try to keep track of already!

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