Posted By John Sears on May 21, 2010

Randomly caught this older story about some seemingly clever hackers breaking into those light up textual warning signs along the side of the road, changing them to ‘warn’ people about Zombies ahead.

Must even hackers, themselves a poorly understood subculture, turn on the Differently Animated?

Why not a hacked sign that reads “Zombies Ahead, Please Drive Carefully” or “Zombies Ahead, Do Not Be Afraid”?

Is it so much to ask that Zombies be spared these pranks in addition to all the other indignities they must suffer in our society?

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Posted By John Sears on May 20, 2010

Just an update to say we’re getting a nice bit of traffic from all these web ads, and we welcome any new readers to the site. Feel free to poke around, use our resources, and if you feel up to it, of course, you can buy a shiny Lurch shirt and donate to a good cause.

Not that the ZRC isn’t a good cause, but we’re not going to help cure cancer over here. Just saying.

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Posted By John Sears on May 19, 2010

Sorry for the sparse posting today; the ZRC spent the day finalizing the paperwork on a move to a new, larger, snazzier location.

IE, Jenny and I are moving to a nice house instead of a run-down, poorly maintained apartment.

Hence the light posting. We’ve also received some questions about the whole Lurch thing that, for some reason, our Lurch page doesn’t make clear enough. Which is cool. I can be too verbose.

Thus:

The Lurch for the Cure is a real charity fundraiser for a real, IRS-approved charity that funds groundbreaking anti-cancer research, the Lynn Sage Cancer Research Foundation. We really do donate all proceeds from the sale of Lurch merchandise to them. (I have a totally awesome spreadsheet to track it all to the penny, then we round up and kick in ourselves to be safe) No matter what you think of Zombie Rights as a cause (and it’s an awesome one), you can buy and wear the shirt in complete confidence. It’s also a high quality garment made here in the USA featuring original artwork and personalities.

So whether you think we’re insane about Zombies or not, feel free to help fight cancer, which nobody likes. Not even jerks.

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Posted By John Sears on May 18, 2010

The full review below the cut. Warning: Disturbing images accompany this post

(more…)

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Tags: Movies, Review, Romero

Posted By John Sears on May 18, 2010

So George Romero’s latest zombie flick has chosen to take a slightly unusual approach to getting an audience. There will be a limited theatrical release, but before you can see it in a theatre, there’s the option of renting it in your own home.. for about 12 dollars. Ouch.

It’s not exactly a painless process either; the HD version of the movie weighs in at 6.5 gigs, so it takes quite a bit of time to download. If you must watch the latest Romero ‘masterpiece’, I’d suggest downloading ahead of time. Hours ahead of time.

That brings us to the rental part. You have a 6.5 gig file to download, say, on your Xbox, but you don’t get to *keep* it. Rather, you have 2 weeks to watch the movie; once you start watching, you have 24 hours to complete it. In cost-terms, it’s better than the good old days of Blockbuster, but nowhere near Netflix. On the other hand, this is pre-cinematic release, and probably represents a lucrative alternative to the DVD rental market for independent types like Romero.

So the ZRC helped fund his *next* movie… great…

The video quality and sound on the file is very good, however. Since we chose the more expensive, HD version, the ZRC got to evaluate the movie in full HD, with gorgeous colors and crisp, clean video. This might be the best way the movie is ever presented for home viewing, since regular DVDs don’t support HD, and Blu-ray is still pretty rare for horror films, as I understand it.

I’ll leave it there for now; we’ve entered a brave new era in zombie movies, with Romero again a pioneer in the genre, prying open a pre-release digital distribution format that, despite its slight inconveniences, delivers on the promise of a high quality, easy to use product in the privacy of one’s own home. The remaining question is, “What has Mr. Romero chosen to say about Zombies with this unprecedented high-tech platform?”

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Posted By John Sears on May 17, 2010

Adorable Zombie urchin? That’s our gimmick… err…. angle?

Blast.

At any rate, there’s another new zombie comic to consider, the aforementioned ‘The Littlest Zombie’, being published by Antarctic Press, created by artist/author Fred Perry. This comic is told from the perspective of a young and perpetually hungry zombie child making his way in the Post-Apocalypse. Civilization has fallen, zombies roam the land eating survivors, it’s got a Walking Dead meets Day of the Dead feel going on. Mad Max style raiders and slavers in the wasteland, dodging each other and the ever-hungry zombie population.

The comic is a bit confusing, for us here at the ZRC, both as readers and activists. In the introductory material the author states that he thinks of Zombies as having roughly cat-level intelligence, and seeing the living humans as their food, to play with and devour, like small birds or rodents. As lifeist as that conception of the Differently Animated is, it would seem to conflict with our youthful zombie narrator, who speaks quite eloquently about his struggles to find food and general loneliness, even as he remorselessly devours the Survivor population. Cats don’t have thoughtful inner dialogues or understand human speech and behavior, at least, not the last time I checked.

If the zombies in this comic are so intelligent, why do they act so… mindless? I mean, the Littlest Zombie is able to observe the obvious limitations of their strategies for capturing and eating people. He can learn new behaviors, understand the language of the Survivors, form plans, anticipate the future and decipher the history of the past. He knows the survivors are intelligent entities. Yet he ruthlessly, even cheerful dismembers and devours them.

The other zombies in this comic book world show no signs of intelligence at all, at least in the first issue. They seem to be your typical Romero movie zombies, relentless and mindless at the same time, fixated only on eating tasty human flesh. Is the ‘Littlest Zombie’ some sort of outlier? Has he retained an extra measure of intellect, but is for some reason incapable of empathy, of understanding why it’s wrong to, say, rip someone’s head off and devour their brains against their will?

So this first issue has been both outrageous and confusing. It’s as if the author wants to say, ‘Sure, zombies aren’t like the movies – they’re actually worse, because they’re smart enough to know what they’re doing is wrong, but compulsive and selfish enough to do it anyway, thoughtlessly.’ Thus attempting to create a new, possibly even more hateful stereotype while abandoning some of the old ones.

We here at the ZRC don’t condone that sort of behavior. We feel that you can fight anti-Zombie prejudice with honesty and respect for both the Living and the Differently Animated, and this gory, blackly humorous comic serves at best to perpetuate the core of the worst Zombie myth of all: that you cannot peacefully coexist with the Undead, no matter how cute they are.

The ZRC begs to differ.

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Tags: Comics, Review

Posted By John Sears on May 17, 2010

Another Zombie comic that the ZRC can approve? Could it be true?

It is indeed! For once we have sequential art about Zombies without a shambling horde of brain-munching illiterates tearing down civilization, and the ZRC could not be happier.

‘I, Zombie’ is a new ongoing title being published by Vertigo, and concerns the daily undeath of Gwen, a quiet, friendly and conscientious young Zombie. Gwen has a steady job, respected work colleagues who treat her like ‘one of the guys’, and an active social life with both humans and supernatural entities. Gwen and her friends live in Eugene, Oregon, a grey and oddball sort of town (both in the comics and from what I’m told, real life), but this Eugene has ghosts, Zombies, vampires and other sentients, all living more or less peacefully alongside regular humans. How refreshing!

Gwen works at a local hippie/greenie cemetary (no embalming fluids or other toxins, no sir), putting her Zombie work ethic to good use digging graves that the living unfortunately often have to use when they stop, err, being the living. Gwen uses this new job to deal with certain unfortunate dietary needs of her particular case of Zombie-ism; namely, she has to eat a brain on a monthly basis for good Undead health (Unhealth?). Being a level-headed and pragmatic sort, Gwen finds brains that are not currently in use to fill this purpose.

Sensible enough; they’d just to waste otherwise.

In return for these donated, nay, recycled brains, Gwen performs helpful services for the recently departed. This will apparently often involve gumshoe work or errand-running from beyond the grave, settling your unfinished businesses and what not. (Hey, it’s a first issue, cut me some slack for relying on outside research).

In between cases and helping out she lives her low-key, non-violent Zombie life. A regular Zombie role model! Outstanding.

We here at the ZRC have already subscribed to I, Zombie and are eagerly awaiting future issues. Instead of dull apprenhension regarding our Heavy Ink deliveries, we can now look forward to at least one positive, perhaps even uplifting comic about the travails of the Differently Animated. (One of them anyway).

Hooray.

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Tags: Comics, Review

Posted By John Sears on May 17, 2010

The ZRC was contacted recently by a Philadelphia based musical duo who apparently appreciate our work on behalf of the Differently Animated… because they’re a Zombie-Pop band.

Say what?

From the email:

Rainbow Destroyer is a zombie-pop duo based in Philly. Brian Reignbow and Rainbeaux Bite are two undead divas brought to life by a magic unicorn named Deth. They enjoy brains, blood, glitter, and having fun (while singing about it!).

While the ZRC expresses some skepticism about the effects a musical lifestyle might have for Zombies (and would offer a polite warning against overindulgence in brains), the existence of a pro-Zombie band with catchy music gives us hope for greater Living-Undead outreach. Music is a game-and-mind changer; it can open minds and bring former enemies together in a new spirit of understanding. First it might just be a song on the radio, or these days, Facebook; then there’s commerce, merchandise changing hands, and before you know it, full economic and civic interaction with people (Undead or otherwise) with whom you might never have previously associated.

We have to change the culture from within, use its own tools. The ZRC works through civil rights and community organizing, Rainbow Destroyer through toe-tapping music. Who knows how far we can go with a bit of luck, some picket signs AND some catchy hooks?

For more information on the band, go see their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rainbowdestroyer or read their blog at http://www.joinusanddie.blogspot.com.

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Tags: Music

Posted By John Sears on May 16, 2010

Just a short post here to say ‘Hi’ to all our visitors who will hopefully be arriving from ads on Dr. McNinja, Skin-Horse, The Zombie Hunters and so forth. Welcome all.

Though we might not always agree on everything Zombie-related (especially with, say, Zombie Hunters fans) we here at the Zombie Rights Campaign hope that everyone can come together in a show of larger solidarity for the Lurch for the Cure.

Our Lurch page explains in more detail, but the short version is: we have nifty t-shirts, and all the proceeds from said Lurch shirts go to the Lynn Sage Cancer Research Foundation. Zombies may not get cancer, but they don’t like it either, and as a form of goodwill ambassadorial work, we here at the ZRC are helping them help the living, through garment retail.

Yes, it really does sound ridiculously complicated when I spell it all out like that. Nevertheless! Good cause, good clothes (American Apparel, Brunetto printing, original art, very comfortable), and maybe it’ll change a few minds about the Differently Animated.

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Tags: Comics, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on May 15, 2010

Aha, Fred Van Lente, we meet again. Have at you, sir!

So, Marvel Zombies 5 has kicked off in a much more low-key fashion than the big Marvel Zombies alternate-universe-extravanganza ‘Marvel Zombies Return’. So low-key I entirely missed the first issue coming out. Oopsie! Bad activist, bad!

Ahem. Ok. MZ-5 picks up as a sequel of sorts to MZ 3, rather than MZ 4; it concerns Machine Man and a universe-hopping quest to find and isolate all the varieties of the ‘plague’ that causes Zombies to rise from the grave which, Marvel seems certain, is dramatically worse than rotting in the ground quietly.

Typical. The dead should be quiet and accept their tiny allocation of space. Instead of forty acres and a mule, dead people get what, 20 square feet and a pine box? Outrageous!

Anyway, Machine Man’s girlfriend Jocasta left him for her first husband, and MM has taken to drinking himself silly on stolen beer as a response. Unfortunately for Zombies (but fortunately for Marvel’s sales department), the alternate-universe monitoring secret agency A.R.M.O.R. has this new mission for him, and sends Howard the Duck, of all people/things, to supervise the alcoholic android.

Yeah. Ok.

In the first issue the two Zombie hunters travel to a ‘Frontier’ dimension, in other words, a Western Comic. A green-glowing meteor from space has fallen to Earth, and the radiation it emits will cause anyone who has died and not completely decomposed to rise as a ‘Romero’ type Zombie (Marvel’s terminology).

Far be it from me to quibble, but in Romero movies, so far as I can tell, only the *recently* dead rise, whereas people very long dead indeed, in an era before modern embalming or preservatives in your food, crawl out of the grave looking remarkably spry in this comic.

At any rate, this town was unfortunately a bit of a tourist trap whose main attraction was dead gunslingers, so this means: Gunslinger Zombies. The only person who can stop these pistol-packing flesh-munchers is a gunslinger with mystic speed powers and a sassy daughter. Can they save Wild West Earth?

In Issue #2, said sassy girl, now with her own speedy superpowers, has joined the team and they travel to a post-apocalyptic world conquered by the Martians from HG Wells. Zombies barely make an appearance in this comic, as it mostly concerns a world operating in your high-fantasy/quasi-sci-fi far-future-alien-struggle mode. Think, obviously, War of the Worlds, crossed with a bit of The Book of the New Sun. Primitive tribes of humanity fighting against strange outsiders who use technology so advanced it might as well be magic. (for those of you into grim children’s literature, it also resembles the Tripods series of books for kids, only with a fair amount of gooey gore)

Overall, MZ 5 seems to be striving for a laid-back, low-drama form of Zombie Bashing. Lots of light-hearted humor, a talking duck with a penchant for huge guns and a severely inebriated, borderline suicidal robot leaven the gore, which has also been toned down from earlier MZ series. MZ 5 is the slow pleasure cruise of alternate universe Zombie Hatred, in no particular hurry to get where it’s going, just enjoying the trip and its smug Lifeist superiorities.

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Tags: Comics, Romero