Zombie Modes are everywhere!

I wanted to share with you an article by one of the editors over at IGN Australia discussing the emergence of a whole slew of upcoming releases that are said to include a Zombie Mode, as popularized by the Nazi Zombie mode in Call Of Duty: World At War, the game that stared it all.

In the article, Editor Stephen Lambrechts questions the necessity of Zombie Modes in video games, now seemingly “a required bullet-point on game development projects.”

Click here to read the editorial.

Creepy!

It’s a tee shirt for AMC’s The Walking Dead featuring this year’s Comic Con exclusive  “movie”poster by legendary artist Drew Struzan, best known for his work on movie posters for both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series, as well as Back To The Future, Big Trouble In Little China, An American Tail, and many more!

Awesome stuff!

(I ended up buying one, of course.)

It began with one isolated incident and from there quickly exploded, faster than anyone could have imagined.

Before long, they were everywhere.  News media outlets ran stories covering the spread, but by then it was too late to stop it…

No, what you just read isn’t an excerpt from some cheesy, new piece of zombie fiction I’m working on.

Rather, it describes the seemingly endless stream of entries in the genre of literary-horror mashup, which began innocently enough in 2009 with Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride And Prejudice And Zombies which successfully merged Jane Austin’s classic with the modern, zombie horror novel.

The Patient Zero of literary-horror mashups, if you will.

Patient Zero

I’ve read Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, or PPZ, as some have taken to calling it.  I enjoyed it and heartily recommend it.

(I’ve never read Pride And Prejudice.  I imagine it’s very much like PPZ.  Only less exciting.)

Turns out, PPZ is actually the first released in a trilogy – chronologically, the second in the series after Dawn Of The Dreadfuls, a prequel – that takes place in an alternative universe, one in which our heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, must navigate the ins and outs of proper society in zombie-infested, Regency-era England.

Dead And Loving It

The third novel in the series, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After, picks up where the first left off.

The official synopsis below gives hope that the third entry will be the last:

The story opens with our newly married protagonists, Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, defending their village from an army of flesh-eating “unmentionables.” But the honeymoon has barely begun when poor Mr. Darcy is nipped by a rampaging dreadful. Elizabeth knows the proper course of action is to promptly behead her husband (and then burn the corpse, just to be safe). But when she learns of a miracle antidote under development in London, she realizes there may be one last chance to save her true love—and for everyone to live happily ever after.

Here’s where we stand today in the genre of literary-horror mashup:

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (can you say, money grab?)

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (read it and was disappointed)

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre (taking place after the events of Jane Austin’s novel)

Vampire Darcy’s Desire: A Pride And Prejudice Adaptation

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies: Dawn Of The Dreadfuls

Jane Slayre

Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter

Mansfield Park And Mummies: Monster Mayhem, Matrimony, Ancient Curses, True Love, and Other Dire Delights

Little Vampire Women

Little Women And Werewolves

Android Karenina

And now, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After, which comes out next March.

There are probably others out there I’ve missed.

Seems to me, the proverbial dead horse is now back on its feet, and the beating’s far from over.

Josh Mirman contributed two pieces, “Zombie Mario” and “Zombie Wario.”  Here’s “Zombie Wario”:

Nicely done, don’t you think?

What I didn’t realize, having never played any of the Wario Land games before, is that Zombie Wario has been around since 1998, well before the current zombie mania struck,  appearing in every single game in the series except for the very first!

Here he is from his first appearance in Wario Land II:

Recently turned from the looks of it. That exposed bone looks, "owie!"

And here he is in Wario Land 4:

Only two games later, looking much worse for wear. Note the purple skin color.

Here’s the thing, which surprised me most: Zombie Wario’s a “powered-up” Wario.

Apparently, if Wario gets touched by certain enemies, say, a ghost or zombie, he too becomes undead, rendering him impervious to damage, able to kill enemies simply by touching them, and, also, incredibly slow, with little or no jumping ability.

Zombie Wario's In-Game Sprite From Wario Land 3

Fortunately for Wario, it’s relatively easy for players to reverse the transformation, by leading Zombie Wario into the light or by dropping him in water.

If only it were that easy in “real life,” right?

You can view more of the artist’s work, including more zombie-fied video game characters, at his deviantART page here.

Brains!? Where?!

Alright, scratch what I said the other day; Jeremy, like every other teen in America, besides being self-absorbed, is also fully aware of his parents’ “Zits Zombie Week”-long condition and is not above exploiting their undead hankering for brains (see above)…

It turns out Connie and Walt Duncan, Jeremy’s parents (for those who don’t follow the strip, undead only until the day after Halloween), do seem to be interested in nom-nom-nomming brains after all!

Jeremy being a bright kid, I wouldn’t doubt that he’s up to the task of surviving six days living under the same roof as his zombiefied parents, especially since they appear to be of the slow-moving Romero variety.

On a related side note, I’m guessing he didn’t get that traffic ticket behind the wheel of the VW Van (unless it was for going too slow)…

The Van, now restored, goes a few mph faster than what's shown above...

Zits Comic Strip From June 13, 2010

While not always “laugh out loud” funny, the popular syndicated strip, now more than 13 years old (it first debuted in 1997), is consistently amusing, with surprisingly insightful and witty observations on the life of a teenager in middle America, often paired with clever visual puns by the uber-talented Mr. Borgman.

So what, if anything, does any of this have to do with zombies?

The answer, my friends:

Today's Strip, Part Of Zits Zombie Week!

That’s right.  The strip above isn’t a mashup or fan manipulation of an existing strip; it’s the first in a series of Zits comic strips leading up to Halloween, part of the second annual (!) “Zits Zombie Week!”

Here’s last year’s strip, kicking off a week’s worth of comics enumerating the “6 Reasons Why Zombies Would Make Cool Parents” (which I somehow missed entirely):

Last year's strip that started it all!

It’s surreal seeing Jeremy’s parents all zombie-fied like this.  Thankfully, though, Borgman and Scott have spared us from witnessing anything too, too gruesome; the Zits Zombies are less concerned with brains than your average undead corpse.

And, of course, Jeremy, as usual, the self-absorbed teen, seems completely oblivious to the fact his parents have joined the ranks of the living dead!

So Now You're A Zombie...

Enter John Austin’s latest, So Now You’re A Zombie: A Handbook For The Newly Undead, which aims to level the playing field a bit with all sorts of useful advice for the zombie newbie trying to get “a head” in this world (and the delicious brains contained within).

John Austin’s new book is the anti-Zombie Survival Guide, chock full of cool illustrations and diagrams intended to make undead living a bit easier.

Case in point:

Hiding in dumpsters... crafty!

Zombie Food Pyramid!

Fun stuff!

Check out the author’s official website here for more.

An undead Lego Zombie!

Lego Brains!!!!

Since then, the artist has put out a “Block Of The Dead T-Shirt/Hoodie featuring the Lego Zombies skull symbol:

Block Of The Dead!

Also, a fan in the UK made this Lego Zombies Halloween costume:

Undead Lego Man Halloween Costume

Fan Made!

Check out more pics of the original Lego Zombies, as well as more from artist Andrew Bell, at creaturesinmyhead.com.  Also, here and here.

Zombie.  Ninja.

Zombie Ninja

Sweeeeet.

(By the by, anybody know who the artist might be?  Looking to give credit where credit is due but can’t make out the artist’s sig…)