The ZRC’s two full-time staff members are both longtime readers of the newspaper comics/commentary site “The Comics Curmudgeon“, so it is with great sadness that we have found ourselves asking the question posited in today’s blogpost title. Is the primary author of said website a Zombophobe, a hater of all things Undead, an enemy of the Differently Animated?

Witness two recent episodes where Mr. Frulinger used the term ‘zombie’ as a crude epithet. First, from August 12th, remarking upon the appearance of a character in Mary Worth:

Oh, look, Mike’s dad exists after all! I was beginning to suspect that perhaps he had died years ago, and Fred was keeping his mouldering corpse in his bedroom and cashing his Social Security checks. Actually, based on today’s strip, that might still be the case: the expressionless face, the shuffling walk, the tattered, colorless clothes, and Mike’s expression of sheer terror all point to Lonnie here actually being a zombie reanimated through dark magic.

Not all Zombies are reanimated through magic, Mr. Fruhlinger, and why must said magic be ‘dark’, anyway? Are you saying that just because a practitioner of powerful eldritch forces wrests a person from the clutches of Death himself through secret blood rites performed under a full moon that said ritual is evil? Are all Zombies just wicked ciphers to you, Mr. Frulinger?

Putting that distasteful episode aside, on the fifteenth we had this diatribe against Zombies and their supposed lack of fashion sense:

Oh, dear, we appear to have reached the point in the storyline that I most feared, when the makeover would reveal the limitations of Frank Bolle’s ability or willingness to depict clothes worn by human females in the year 2010. The dress Margo is holding up in panel four would in fact make Lu Ann look old, and not cute, if by “old” we mean “a reanimated zombie of a woman from the 1910s in her burial dress.”

Why oh why can’t we get past the stereotype of Zombies always wearing their funeral garb to go out and about?

First of all, clothing used in funerals may not be possible to wear out and about, and is rarely suitable for everyday occasions. Secondly, this stereotype perpetuates the notion that Zombies are unfeeling, unchanging and of course un-bathed individuals, reeking and unpleasant, shambling about in pursuit of brains and shopping malls. The burial dress meme is in short nothing less than a living supremacist dog whistle, coded to evoke in the zombie-hating faithful all these iconic images and inspire further dread and fear of the Differently Animated.

We at the ZRC have been deeply saddened and troubled by these events. However, we still extend hope that, perhaps through dialogue and outreach, Mr. Fruhlinger can be shown the error of his ways regarding Zombies. Anyone can make a change for the better, even a curmudgeon.

(A brief mention is in order for our longtime friend and contributor Andrew Leal, who reminded me of the term ‘Zombophobe while discussing this post in its advance stages late Sunday evening.)

Tags: Comics

This entry was posted by John Sears on Sunday, August 15th, 2010 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.