Posted By John Sears on November 13, 2009

Ahh, another fairminded and enjoyable outing with Zombie Deadpool, arriving with the mail this week.

There’s not a lot to say about this series that I haven’t said before; it’s an open-minded buddy comedy featuring everyone’s chattiest disembodied Zombie head, Zombie Deadpool. In this week’s issue they have to contend with a Zombified T-Rex, Hydra soldiers in serious need of a vacation, and the noble human quest for flapjacks.

Pancakes. Doughy and delicious.

Plus the love triangle continues between Dr. Betty, Z-Pool and Deadpool. (Well, Dr. Betty doesn’t seem to realize she’s in one, but she’ll come around, guys).

Lots of action, lots of violence, lots of snarky schizophrenic commentary, and a remarkable amount of tolerance, nay affection, for the Differently Animated. Merc with a Mouth continues to receive a high recommendation from the ZRC. We just wish it came out more often!

No hard feelings on the Zombie of the Year thing I hope. I mean, yes, it’s a friendly portrayal of a Zombie, but he’s still Deadpool, after all. Sociopathic mercenary rampages aren’t in the cards for a ‘role model’.

Just a fantastically enlightened entertainer.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Comics

Posted By John Sears on November 13, 2009

The ZRC has continued to play Left 4 Dead 2 over the last week, in order to get a better appreciation of the next wave in anti-Zombie videogaming.

It has been pointed out that these ‘zombies’ are not technically undead, by an astute commenter here on the ZRC blog, and that is so; they fall more into the 28 Days Later category of post-modern zombie, where possessing ‘zombie-like’ traits is enough to get one categorized as a Zombie, whether or not one is Undead, and once so categorized, it is acceptable to run after such a person with a shotgun.

Yeesh.

In the online anti-zombie gaming world I have borne witness to many acts of savagery, including the human protagonists, the ‘good guys’ if you will, turning on one another out of spite or malice.

Even in this savage game, the ‘zombies’ never do that. It feels less like the end of the world and more like Humans once again invading a zombie city to spread persecution and use up ammunition.

The lack of cooperation amongst human player teams in the game, in fact, presents its chief difficulty. Without trust and coordination, the relatively simple, if barbaric, section of the game released as a demo proves an impossible obstacle course. Players must share healing items, move as a team and coordinate defenses, and yet, in an average four person squad, this is very difficult. Selfish grandstanding and copious friendly fire, even intentional friendly fire, often turn these run-throughs into a slaughter.

The ZRC thinks that the human gaming population could learn a few lessons from their virtual victims.

Category: Zombie Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: Videogames

Posted By John Sears on November 8, 2009

The ZRC downloaded the Left 4 Dead 2 demo a few days ago, knowing that it will be the big ‘zombie’ game of Fall 2009, to evaluate its content for anti-zombie prejudices.

Preliminary impressions are that this is perhaps the worst anti-Zombie game ever made. Not only does it indulge players in heinous, extreme amounts of anti-Zombie violence, gore and visceral combat, it also encourages them to co-operate with other online gamers in small squads, training them to work as a team with the single-minded goal of exterminating all the undead from New Orleans.

This is an outrage. Left 4 Dead 2 is nothing more than a slick, heavily polished Zombie Murder Simulator that seems geared to recruiting and training an entire generational army of Zombie-bashing zealots! Never once are players presented with an option to discuss their differences with the Differently Animated, or to settle things with a Camp David summit, or even to co-exist peacefully in integrated Living/Undead communities. I was hoping perhaps for a little nationbuilding mini-game, perhaps along the lines of Sim City, where you can sit down and plan a vibrant re-animated New Orleans with amenities for the Undead as well as the Living, but NO SIR.

Just piles of guns, grenades, drugs and murderously savage zombie stereotyping.

On a side note, there seems to be a new kind of Hollywood Zombie on display in Left 4 Dead 2, or perhaps the whole series, we missed the first game, regrettably: the climbing zombie. For some reason, ‘zombies’ in this game climb like Spiderman.

Or perhaps Zombie Spiderman.

Weird. I mean, sure, some Zombies might like to climb the sides of buildings, but it’s not a generally accepted trait.

We will continue this investigation, and perhaps seek interviews with other players via voice chat, to cover this story as it unfolds.

–John J Sears

Category: Zombie Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: Videogames

Posted By John Sears on November 3, 2009

The Zombie Rights Campaign made our annual appearance at Freakfest this last Saturday, and man it was quite the show. We had a very successful series of protests and many pro-Zombie individuals praised us and asked for pictures. So many, in fact, that we forgot to get any of ourselves at the event. (Sorry folks)

However, we did obtain a number of photographs of other interesting individuals from Freakfest, and thought that you might like to see the sort of fun event we were able to attend while doing our noble work. Public service doesn’t have to be a grind, and working for Zombie Rights is often very exciting. Especially when doing outreach like our street protests.

Enjoy the photos below the cut.
(more…)

Category: ZRC News | 1 Comment »
Tags: Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on October 31, 2009

Here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, where we announce the Zombie Rights Campaign’s 2009 Zombie of the Year. But first, we here at the ZRC would like to say a few words.

Zombies aren’t appreciated by our society. It’s pointless to pretend otherwise. We live in a world where the often arbitrary distinction between life and death, and especially undeath, is held in far greater importance than a person’s character. A world where a helping hand is often rejected, merely because that hand is a pale grey-green, or not currently attached to the rest of the arm by a network of ligaments and tendons. A world where two heads are only better than one if they happen to be attached, via the neck, to a working pulmonary and circulatory system, heated to approximately 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. A world that doesn’t acknowledge its hardworking Zombie heroes.

Until now.

The Zombie Rights Campaign would like to acknowledge all our nominees this year, with the notable exception of Baron Mardi, who knows perfectly well what he did (and feels no shame). All four remaining candidates exemplify what it means to be a positive Zombie role model, to stand out against the ugly stereotype of the mindless revenant, mind set only on devouring the brains of others. We applaud you all, but decisions had to be made.

First, the Runner-Up for Zombie of the Year 2009 is:

Joanna the Zombie Cat!

Joanna is perhaps the least traditional candidate for the award this year. She’s not human, which is very rare, and may be the only Zombie Cat working in webcomics today. Unlike the stereotype of the implacable flesh-devouring fiend, Joanna is a meticulous thinker, who spends her days in quiet, Zen-like contemplation of the nothingness behind all things. (Or she’s just staring into space. It’s a cat thing.)

Her stoic defiance of Undead stereotypes has truly earned Joanna the Runner-Up, or Silver if you like, Award for 2009. Congratulations Joanna (and Jeffrey Rowland, of Overcompensating, Topatoco and many other fine endeavours)

Now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Our Zombie of the Year for 2009 is:
(more…)

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | 2 Comments »
Tags: Zombie of the Year 2009

Posted By John Sears on October 30, 2009

What would an award ceremony be without prizes, right?

The Zombie Rights Campaign established the Zombie of the Year Award to encourage and reward positive Zombie role models in our society, and in that spirit, we got to thinking. Instead of just naming a winner and presenting with with a certificate of appreciation, how about some fun prizes too?

With that in mind, the ZRC has cobbled together a couple of prize packages for our Zombie of the Year and Runner-Up Zombie of the Year.

Prizes:

Zombie of the Year 2009
-Letter of Appreciation from The Zombie Rights Campaign
-A ‘Ban Head-Shots’ T-shirt for each creator/nominee in any available size
-A sticker pack for each creator/nominee

Runner Up Zombie of the Year 2009
-Letter of Appreciation from The Zombie Rights Campaign
-A sticker pack for each creator/nominee

The award will be announced at noon tomorrow, Saturday, October 31st, so come back here to find out the identity of The Zombie Rights Campaign’s 2009 Zombie of the Year!

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Zombie of the Year 2009

Posted By John Sears on October 29, 2009

It’s with a heavy heart that the ZRC must announce that we are officially retracting Baron Mardi’s nomination for 2009 Zombie of the Year, due to grave ethnical misconduct following last week’s Atomic Age Cinema performance.

On the basis of trusted eyewitness accounts from this event, we must conclude that Baron Mardi is no longer an acceptable candidate for 2009 Zombie of the Year. The ZRC has received more than two dozen reports of individual acts of perversion SO profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here.

We apologize again to our membership and online audience for this unfortunate situation.

Category: ZRC News | 2 Comments »
Tags: Zombie of the Year 2009

Posted By John Sears on October 27, 2009

Last Saturday the Technical Director and I took a much-needed break from the internet activism arm of the ZRC and went out to Schuster’s Playtime Farm for an evening of Zombie-friendly fun. Specifically, we were there to experience the wondrous mysteries of their giant corn maze. Spoooooooky.

All right, so it really isn’t all *that* spooky. It is a family friendly, as well as Zombie-friendly, affair. Still, for a corn maze it is quite impressive, being both very large and quite complex. One can easily get lost in the corn for some time; it took us about an hour to complete the ‘Phase 2′ of the Large corn maze, as we got quite turned around in the dark after the sun went down at the end of the last section.

In addition to corn mazes, the farm also has a hay ride, assorted food and snack concessions and a wide variety of pumpkins for sale, including some varieties I’ve never seen before. I bought a few of the nicer specimens and should put up pictures sometime soon on Flickr. They’re not precisely ZRC material, being ordinary living pumpkins and not particularly Zombile, but I may put up a link here on the blog just in case, as they are nifty.

Below the cut you can see a few more pictures of our trip through the corn maze.

(more…)

Category: ZRC News | 1 Comment »
Tags: Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on October 26, 2009

While the Zombie Rights Campaign is a non-partisan pro-Zombie Outreach organization, I feel it is important to note the contributions of the Differently Animated Community to the political debates now going on in this country.

Zombie groups are showing up across the nation to demand health care reform from various angles, some arguing that Zombies are often denied insurance due to ‘pre-existing conditions’, while others argue that Zombiism presents a unique national health care crisis, for both Zombies and humans alike, and in order to prevent the stereotypical ‘Zombie Apocalypse’, we must have an organized national health care scheme.

The ZRC makes no policy statements at this time regarding national health care, beyond noting that Zombies face unjust discrimination in the world of medicine just as they do in the arena of civil rights. If any health care proposal was to guarantee a ban on anti-Zombie discrimination in health insurance, the ZRC would be fully in support of such a bill.

However, the ZRC is sad to see that Zombies are still used, even by so-called ‘Progressive’ voices on the left, as cardboard cutouts for their actual adversaries in, say, the Health Care Industry.

We hereby call on Jane Hamsher/Fire Dog Lake to apologize for this slur. Zombies represent many facets of society and hail from all walks of life and politics, and are not a faceless, monolithic mob that you can project your biases onto.

For shame, Ms. Hamsher, for shame.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By John Sears on October 24, 2009

So we apparently got a link from a rabidly Anti-Zombie website, the National Center for Reanimation Prevention and Control.

They feel that the concept of Zombie Rights is somehow absurd, and suggest that the rights in question should be the right to a messy death at the hands of a gun-toting vigilante.

I hate to link to such a clear example of lifeist aggression but it’s useful to show our readers just how far we have yet to go as a society, when such obvious bigotry against the Differently Animated is an acceptable position to hold in public, if not, in fact, a mainstream idea.

Category: Uncategorized, ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: