Year of the living dead ..
Since I don't have much time to write lately, I've decided to gather here some old, long lost posts that could still be of use. Of course, this one was written before the Twilight thing that seems to be the Beverly Hills, 90210 of the decade, only with (some) blood and pretty, pretty boys ...
"When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth"
So vampires are out! We had our deal of vampire projects both in films (Blade, Underworld, Dracula ...) and comics (20 days of night, I am legend ...) some time ago, but zombies seems to be in now.
Zombies were traditionally soulless bodies meant to obey a sorcerer as slaves, both in chinese and voodoo folklore. However, their rol in horror mostly started in 1968 with Romero's Night of the living dead", where they served no master, but an insatiable hunger for living flesh. Zombie basics were stated here: i) they are awaken by some virus or experiment; ii) they can only be killed by destroying their brains; iii) they are driven by hunger; and iv) if you're bitten, you are a goner. Zombies are dumb and slow, and their strength lies in their number and also in the fact that they are virtually unstoppable unless beheaded. Plus maybe you knew some of them in life ...
"Dawn of the dead" and "Day of the Dead" soon followed and then, for a while, almost everyone did a gore zombie flick. Some people stuck loyally to zombies even in the 90s. For example, Peter "LotR" Jackson did Braindead in 1992 and Raimi's Ash trilogy. I personally enjoyed Tom Savini's "Night of the Living Dead" 1990 remake, with Pat Tallman as a Barbara definitely more lethal than the poor undead. However, the zombies revival would not come until the last years and it was probably another remake, "Dawn of the Dead", that brought them back. The novelty of the film: now zombies ran like hell!
Obviously, the Resident Evil games and films helped as well. RE1 was very cool -as any Paul Anderson film- and had an intelligent plot that absorbed my attention all the way to the end. RE2, however, seemed boring to me and the characters, even Alice, were flat. RE3 was not up to it, either.
I also have a thing for The Undead, but, be warned, you really need a sense of humour to watch this one!
We also had the horrible -in a bad sense- "House of the Dead" and the somewhat different, "Shaun of the Dead". But let's talk comics now.
I guess the current run started with Dark Horse "Zombie World", by Mignola and McEown. Mignola was already well into Hellboy and he wrote the first limited series of this short lived project. An evil ancient priest came back from the dead and tricked humans into blasting him to pieces, despite the efforts of the main characters, a group of paranormal investigators. Of course, his "death" brings the dead back to life and he becomes their king. These series were released prior to the new zombie fever and only lasted for 3 limited series and a few specials.
IDW released Niles and Dwyer's Remains, a very well drawn series with a somewhat simple script. Some brain decides to destroy all nuclear weapons by putting them all together in a so called "nuclear oven" and burning them in a public exhibition, only there's free access to jackasses and a red button with a bright sign "Do not touch me". Obviously, there's an accident and the resulting blast turns everyone around into zombies. The main characters, however, were locked inside a vault in Reno -don't ask- and save their lives only to find themselves surrounded by thousand of hungry zombies. Hungry evoluting zombies.
Next zombie project is a cool one: Kirkman's "The Walking Dead", a very well told soap opera with zombies. The series start like "28 days". Rick Grimes awakes alone in an empty hospital. While he has been in a coma, the world has gone to hell. Somehow, the dead are now roaming the country and eating everyone and he has to find his family in the reigning havoc. However, the series is not about killing zombies, but about relationships, social dynamics and human interaction in a extreme situation. Not that there's no zombie killing, also :)
And now, things I have not read yet ...
-Barbara's zombie chronicles: Barbara was one of the main characters of Night of the Living Dead and, being the main character in these series, she must have been taken from the remake (she did not end that well in the original film), so expect guns and attitude! The art is not my piece, but maybe the story is ok ...
-Containment: zombies in space! Apparently, something goes VERY wrong with hibernating astronauts in a ship ... Haven't seen anything on this one yet.
-Romero's Toe Tag: A classic. In a nick of time, the undead have taken control of Earth and a few survivors struggle to keep surviving... It's Romero, after all!
Plus there are more projects, included in this zombie comic list.
"When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth"
So vampires are out! We had our deal of vampire projects both in films (Blade, Underworld, Dracula ...) and comics (20 days of night, I am legend ...) some time ago, but zombies seems to be in now.
Zombies were traditionally soulless bodies meant to obey a sorcerer as slaves, both in chinese and voodoo folklore. However, their rol in horror mostly started in 1968 with Romero's Night of the living dead", where they served no master, but an insatiable hunger for living flesh. Zombie basics were stated here: i) they are awaken by some virus or experiment; ii) they can only be killed by destroying their brains; iii) they are driven by hunger; and iv) if you're bitten, you are a goner. Zombies are dumb and slow, and their strength lies in their number and also in the fact that they are virtually unstoppable unless beheaded. Plus maybe you knew some of them in life ...
"Dawn of the dead" and "Day of the Dead" soon followed and then, for a while, almost everyone did a gore zombie flick. Some people stuck loyally to zombies even in the 90s. For example, Peter "LotR" Jackson did Braindead in 1992 and Raimi's Ash trilogy. I personally enjoyed Tom Savini's "Night of the Living Dead" 1990 remake, with Pat Tallman as a Barbara definitely more lethal than the poor undead. However, the zombies revival would not come until the last years and it was probably another remake, "Dawn of the Dead", that brought them back. The novelty of the film: now zombies ran like hell!
Obviously, the Resident Evil games and films helped as well. RE1 was very cool -as any Paul Anderson film- and had an intelligent plot that absorbed my attention all the way to the end. RE2, however, seemed boring to me and the characters, even Alice, were flat. RE3 was not up to it, either.
I also have a thing for The Undead, but, be warned, you really need a sense of humour to watch this one!
We also had the horrible -in a bad sense- "House of the Dead" and the somewhat different, "Shaun of the Dead". But let's talk comics now.
I guess the current run started with Dark Horse "Zombie World", by Mignola and McEown. Mignola was already well into Hellboy and he wrote the first limited series of this short lived project. An evil ancient priest came back from the dead and tricked humans into blasting him to pieces, despite the efforts of the main characters, a group of paranormal investigators. Of course, his "death" brings the dead back to life and he becomes their king. These series were released prior to the new zombie fever and only lasted for 3 limited series and a few specials.
IDW released Niles and Dwyer's Remains, a very well drawn series with a somewhat simple script. Some brain decides to destroy all nuclear weapons by putting them all together in a so called "nuclear oven" and burning them in a public exhibition, only there's free access to jackasses and a red button with a bright sign "Do not touch me". Obviously, there's an accident and the resulting blast turns everyone around into zombies. The main characters, however, were locked inside a vault in Reno -don't ask- and save their lives only to find themselves surrounded by thousand of hungry zombies. Hungry evoluting zombies.
Next zombie project is a cool one: Kirkman's "The Walking Dead", a very well told soap opera with zombies. The series start like "28 days". Rick Grimes awakes alone in an empty hospital. While he has been in a coma, the world has gone to hell. Somehow, the dead are now roaming the country and eating everyone and he has to find his family in the reigning havoc. However, the series is not about killing zombies, but about relationships, social dynamics and human interaction in a extreme situation. Not that there's no zombie killing, also :)
And now, things I have not read yet ...
-Barbara's zombie chronicles: Barbara was one of the main characters of Night of the Living Dead and, being the main character in these series, she must have been taken from the remake (she did not end that well in the original film), so expect guns and attitude! The art is not my piece, but maybe the story is ok ...
-Containment: zombies in space! Apparently, something goes VERY wrong with hibernating astronauts in a ship ... Haven't seen anything on this one yet.
-Romero's Toe Tag: A classic. In a nick of time, the undead have taken control of Earth and a few survivors struggle to keep surviving... It's Romero, after all!
Plus there are more projects, included in this zombie comic list.
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