It’s fun to follow what movie monsters are currently tapping the cultural zeitgeist. Back in the 90′s everyone was ga-ga over vampires. Anne Rice was churning out novels on a regular basis, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was one of the most anticipated movies, Gangrel and the Brood were appearing out of flaming circles in the WWF, Sarah Michelle Gellar won the hearts of America with her vampire-hunting ways, and Wesley Snipes was just getting his fangs fitted for his first Blade movie. In recent years, though, vampires haven’t done much to capture the nation’s imagination outside of the latest Kate Beckinsdale movie. I blame this precipitous fall in stature on overly serious goth kids and the existence of actual vampire cultists who really do drink human blood … which, let’s face it, is totally gross.
No, in 2000, it’s all about the zombies! They’re like the party-hearty alternative to the even mopey vampires … not unlike how, in the world of Trekkies, the more sociable fans dress up as Klingons rather than as the stuffy and austere Federation officers. Vampires are always writing sad, tear-stained poetry about guilt over their bloodlust. Zombies, on the other hand, are pure id, chomping on flesh with gleeful abandon. Putting a vampire on a gameshow is rather confusing and probably a Christ allegory; chained up zombies on a gameshow where they chase fresh meat (as seen on Shawn of the Dead) … that’s comedy gold, baby! And, as Michael Jackson proved, zombies are kickass dancers.
Even I have not been immune to the charms of these gentle reanimated corpses. I’ve enjoyed both the new Dawn of the Dead movie and, paradoxically, the laughably awful House of the Dead, directed by the notoriously awful Uwe Boll. I even liked I Am Legend, which was basically a sanitized zombie movie for the masses. I’ve been both a zombie minion and a hapless survivor in the free online text-based MMORPG Urban Dead (which, by the way, inspired a short but fairly decent webcomic called Necrophobic). There’s even a movie about zombie strippers which .. well, honestly, would get me kicked out of the house if I ever rented it, but it’s OUT THERE PEOPLE!
So what culturally precipitated this shift of affection from vampires to zombies? I’ll leave it up to CNN and Fox News to speculate whether or not it’s a reaction to fears and anxieties stirred up by 9/11. My own absolutely unsupported analysis is summed up by pretty much the same answer I give to explain any youth-centered phenomena in our current decade: video games. Specifically, first-person shooters. We like to have plenty of faceless bad guys to mow down without worrying about whether or not we were committing murder. And which monsters are more faceless than zombies? Vampires are generally depicted as intellectual equals. On the other hand, zombies are already dead and are more animal than human. Time to turn off your conscience and fire up that rail gun!
This theory of mine, soon to be published in reputable scientific periodicals under the name “The El Santo Awesome Theory of How Everything Works,” is put to test in the subject of today’s Webcomic Overlook: Jenny Romanchuk’s take on the zombie apocalypse, The Zombie Hunters.
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Good evening, boys and ghouls. You may notice a hastily composed icon inhabiting the recesses of this review. Yes, it’s Terror Week. It’s like Shark Week, only TERRIFYING. Welcome to the a season where pumpkins grin from every porch and children beg for candy. But it’s all in good fun. Here at The DEADcomic Overlook, we will be looking at three webcomics dealing with things that go bump in the night.
