Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2011

Sometimes we get a bit of gentle ribbing from the various ZRC Friends in the Horror news biz, since we have such a singular mission and focus, and so I had a bit of advance warning about this slightly… satirical take on a new Think Geek Anti-Zombie product coming out:

And now a tasty little treat for our readers who are undead (or those of you who have pet zombies) – brains on a stick! While some out there may try to talk you into believing that zombies don’t love eating brains there are centuries of recorded proof that state quite the opposite. if you want to treat the zombies right treat them with a brain lollipop!

Har-har, BuyZombie. First, you can’t keep a Zombie as a *pet*; the proper term is ‘kidnapping victim’ or perhaps ‘slave’. Word to the wise.

(Though you can of course have Zombie Pets, like Patches the Zom-dog; that’s another matter entirely)

Think Geek of course is behind this product, as one might expect:

Suck a B!
A lollipop for the zombie fighting to eat their way out of all of us.
Sour apple flavored.
Braaaains.

Let’s get this straight, one (hopefully, if there is a God) last time: not all Zombies eat brain, or prefer brain, and certainly not all Zombies are fixated on braaaaaains.

Where does this hateful meme come from? Not George Romero:

Vanity Fair: Zombies have a weird fixation with eating human flesh and brains. What is it about being undead that makes somebody so ravenous?

Romero: First of all, why does everybody say that zombies eat brains?

VF: Because… it’s true?

Romero: I’ve never had a zombie eat a brain! I don’t know where that comes from. Who says zombies eat brains?

VF: I remember brains being a big zombie menu item in Return of the Living Dead back in the mid-80s, but I’m not sure if that’s where it started.

Romero: Whenever I sign autographs, they always ask me, “Write ‘Eat Brains’!” I don’t understand what that means. I’ve never had a zombie eat a brain. But it’s become this landmark thing.

Indeed, the meme actually dates ALL THE WAY BACK TO… 1985, with the release of ‘Return of the Living Dead’, which was the work of Dan O’Bannon and, slightly, John Russo, co-creator of ‘Night of the Living Dead’.

That’s it. I’ve traveled far and wide, researched extensively, consulted the ZRC’s Cultural Historian and talked with numerous very knowledgeable horror fans and people in the indie horror industry, and *nobody* knows of an example of allegedly brain-fixated Zombies before 1985 and ‘Return of the Living Dead’.

So I feel safe making a bet and a challenge: the first person who can find a prominent example of brain-fixated Zombies in fiction (which is where you’d have to look) from before ‘Return of the Living Dead’, the ZRC will give to them a prize package consisting of one of everything we sell.

One Lurch for the Cure Shirt, any size, either color. A wristband. A ‘Zombies Forever’ print, signed. A copy of Zombie Cafe. A copy of ‘Helpless’. Retail that’s a prize package worth over 40 dollars; to you, free, with free shipping.

All you have to do is find a plausible alternative source for the stereotype that Zombies are driven to devour braaaaaains.

The rules: The first person (or persons) to present us with a major studio film, broadcast television show, published novel, novella, short story or serial from a major author that shows Zombies behaving in the stereotypical brain-obsessed way seen in ‘Return of the Living Dead’ and now in popular consciousness gets the prize package, free of charge, freely shipped to them.

In other words, show me another way that this story got started in America/The West and win yourself some swag. If the Evidence is out of print we will have to work out a method of verification, of course :D

Contest is open to anyone in the United States or Canada. (Actually, it’s open to anyone on Earth but we only want to ship to the U.S. or Canada. Not because of costs, but because, yikes it’s getting hard to do international shipping reliably. It took literally months to import ‘Zombie Hotel’ from the UK, and I’ve heard that shipping to Mexico is a real… adventure currently. Wouldn’t want to guess what it’d be like to send to Australia.)

Should be an easy win for our pals at BuyZombie, what with their ‘centuries of recorded proof’ and all.

Unless they were.. bluffing?

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Anti-Zombie Products, Romero, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2011

I was all prepared to be unhappy about this story but then got a pleasant surprise, or at least, a potentially pleasant one:

Focus Features and LAIKA, the companies that gave us the standout animated feature CORALINE, take another venture into genre territory with the 3D stop-motion movie PARANORMAN. The long-gestating zombie project now has a release date, and story/cast details have been released.

Sam Fell, director of FLUSHED AWAY and THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX, and Chris Butler, who did storyboard work on CORALINE and CORPSE BRIDE, are helming PARANORMAN from Butler’s original screenplay. The synopsis is as follows: “In this comedy/thriller, a small town comes under siege by zombies. Who can it call? Only misunderstood local boy Norman, who is able to speak with the dead. In addition to the zombies, he’ll have to take on ghosts, witches and, worst of all, moronic grown-ups, to save his town from a centuries-old curse. But this young ghoul whisperer may find his paranormal activities pushed to their otherworldly limits.”

LET ME IN’s Kodi Smit-McPhee (pictured above) speaks for Norman, and the voice cast also includes Casey Affleck, Tempestt Bledsoe, Jeff Garlin, John Goodman, Bernard Hill, Anna Kendrick , Leslie Mann, FRIGHT NIGHT’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Elaine Stritch. Others on the behind-the-scenes team are producers Arianne Sutner and LAIKA president/CEO Travis Knight, visual FX supervisor Brian Van’t Hul (an Oscar-winner for KING KONG and another CORALINE vet), production designer Nelson Lowry and director of photography Tristan Oliver. PARANORMAN has been penciled in for release August 17, 2012.

The press releasey article is light on details, but we like the idea of solving a conflict between the Living and the Differently Animated with DIALOGUE.

After all, that’s what we do.

ParaNorman* might be just up our alley, and hopefully, yours too.

*I have no idea what the proper capitalization yet. Just a guess.

Category: Zombie Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: Movies, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2011

Wow. It’s not going to be hard to find a copy of ‘Dead Island’ on the shelves in America now, folks; finding a Japanese game company that isn’t in bed with Anti-Zombie bigots is another matter:

Dead Island publisher Deep Silver has joined with industry giant Square Enix to distribute Techland’s upcoming zombie action title — in North America, anyway. As such, expect to see the Square Enix logo slapped onto your copy of the game, be it for Xbox 360, PS3, or PC.

…

Update: It occurs to us that some folks might not be fully aware of the difference between a publisher and a distributor. See, as the distributor for Dead Island, Square Enix is not only in charge of actual distribution, but also selling the game in North America. According to Deep Silver’s head of PR Aubrey Norris, the company needs a big name like SqEnix mainly because despite having a decent track record, they’re too small to be distributing directly to retailers. As such, smaller publishers look for bigger distributors who have existing relationships with retail.

Oh, Japan. Is there an Anti-Zombie bandwagon you won’t jump onboard?

For the record, this game was developed in Poland and will be distributed in North America by a Japanese firm. We may not be anywhere near a Zombie Apocalypse but we’re getting closer to a corporate Borg collective.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Videogames, What's Up with Japan?

Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2011

Uggh.

Just… ugh:

There is a plague sweeping the land, and you must prepare yourself. Are you ready for the creeping dread of unpaid bills? The sheer, unrelenting horror of bankruptcy? The non-stop terror that are creditors? Will you live to survive another day, or will you succumb to the apocalypse of Zombie Economics?

…

Zombie Economics is a personal finance guide written specifically with idiots like me in mind. Simple, straightforward, and without a trace of pretentious BS anywhere. The authors compare the idea of a zombie apocalypse to financial Armageddon, with each chapter dealing with a particular subject, like the best and easiest way to save money, dealing with creditors and even making the best when you’re unemployed, and framing it in the apocalypse context. Chapter five, for example, is titled “They’ll eat the fat ones first”, and the section deals with the idea of fitness and exercise being a key to reducing expenses. Every chapter begins with a short prologue, which reads like excerpts from any number of zombie novels on the market, with the financial stuff coming at the end.

Is this like how a spoonful of sugar supposedly helps the medicine go down? A dash of hate makes learning fun?

I really, really need to drink more heavily.

Fortunately in a clever bit of serendipity, you don’t have to buy this awful book, you can win a copy instead and save the money!

As for me, I’m going to rework the finances for the ZRC so I can crowbar in another bottle of tequila. Something tells me I’m going to need it this month.

I wonder if that qualifies as a business expense…

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Books, Don't Use the Zed Word, Mainstream Media, Zombie Flavored Creativity Substitute

Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2011

There’s a nifty contest going to provide a caption to some art of Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer as Zombies:

Attention—Zombie lovers–
come up with a caption for this clever little portrait of the undead husband & wife!

…

If your caption is chosen, you will win a signed-by-Neil 100 WORDS print from Neverwear.

way to enter?

send it to me @Neverwearon www.twitter.com

CONTEST ENDS ON MAY 11th! IN ONE WEEK!
**(a very brief aside from judge batgirl: *please think twice and be very very clever, if you feel need to include any variation of pencils and/or necks in your caption-)

Here’s the art you need to complement with your superlative wit, Zombie Allies:

We fully support and encourage the submission of Zombie Friendly caption ideas to the contest. I’ll try to come up with at least one myself :D

Good luck!

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Zombie Art

Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2011

Crank your outrage up to 11, people, it’s another Anti-Zombie book marketed at children:

Pat the Zombie is an adult themed spoof of the children’s classic Pat the Zombie. By adult I do mean violence and not sex for those wondering. Sex with zombie bunnies? That just doesn’t sound good on any level! No this is a book for zombie and horror fans who love having thier childhood infected with the virus that will one day claim the lives of the entire living population of the planet.

FYI, the ZRC doesn’t think you should consider it ‘claiming’ the lives of the Living population so much as it is GIVING them Unlife. It’s a lateral move — at worst. Many would consider it an upgrade.

Instead of highlighting the obvious potential upside yet another book seeks to mislead kids that Zombies are all about violence and mayhem. Sigh. As if our culture’s children needed any more inducement to be afraid of their Zombie peers.

This book is in very poor taste indeed. A ‘cruel’ spoof of a beloved children’s classic? Oh sure, they claim it’s for adults, but I think it’s obvious what the real game is here, and we find it appalling.

If you need a book to heap scorn upon though, Amazon can hook you up with a copy.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Books

Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2011

There was a fascinating column up the other day on The Zombie Feed from their resident Zombie Advice columnist, Putrescence. The advice-seeker wanted some counsel on what to do about a friend that seems to be a closeted Zombie:

How do you ask someone something like that? Hey, man, are you dead? Maggots got you down? If he is undead, then he’s clearly trying really hard to hide it. Is it my place to “out” him, even just to me? We’ve been pals for a long time, so I feel kind of bad that he won’t open up about it. He has to know I suspect something, but he won’t talk about it, acts like nothing’s changed.

What should I do?

–Best Formaldehyde Friends

This is one of the trickiest subjects about Living-Zombie relations because of the way in which the tragic and unfortunate persecution of the Differently Animated forces many Zombies to unlive a lie, posing as a fully conventional Living human being, denying their current identity. There’s nothing *wrong* with being alive, of course, just as there’s nothing wrong with being a Zombie, but our society places enormous pressure on Zombies; not so much to conform as to cease existing.

It’s therefore natural that a Zombie might wish to ‘pass’ for a Living person.

Thankfully the Dear Putrescence column handles the question most adroitly, bringing up these concerns in a compassionate manner and advising the friend to be supportive first and foremost, as a friend should be:

My advice is this: don’t rush him. Don’t push him. Let him come to this realization on his own, and be open with him when he does confess his status. At that point, you can tell him what you suspected, but not until then. This is something he will have to come to terms with himself, and it will be important for you to be supportive of him whatever his status, whether he chooses to be open or to hide. Silent support is all you can offer.

The ZRC doesn’t always agree with the various opinion pieces on The Zombie Feed but I think we can all get behind this column and its message of Living-Undead solidarity and friendship, even in difficult and uncertain times. Good show.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on May 3, 2011

Remember when we auctioned off a copy of the movie companion book for ‘By Her Hand, She Draws You Down’ for the Horde for Humanitarian Aid?

Yeah, I thought you did.

Well, now you can get the E-book version, which is *almost* as cool.

We think you’ll like it.

(A reminder: the ZRC Review of the film version from Anthony Sumner et al can be found here. Synopsis: it got a Zombie Tolerant rating)

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Books, Zombie Products

Posted By John Sears on May 3, 2011

*snicker*

Yes, I’m feeling a bit childish today, why do you ask?

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Madison Protests, Youtube Mischief

Posted By John Sears on May 3, 2011

I actually have an adorable Zombie hat of my own which I need to photograph someday; the art director made it for me. I was thus very happy to see that we’re not the only ones who like friendly looking Zombie hats:

One of our readers, John Fertig, was kind enough to send in a link to these absolutely amazingly cute zombie hats. Add in that they are only $15-$20 a pop and they a perfect gift for one of your zombie loving friends. Entertainingly enough the creator of these hats apparently lives about 10-15 minutes from me. Small world! At any rate, for your enjoyment.

There are a bunch of pictures of various hats at the BuyZombie page but I think this guy is my favorite of the set:

Notice that there’s not a blood splatter or gruesome detail to be seen; just friendly looking Undead headgear.

The ZRC is happy to give these fine items a Zombie Friendly rating.

We encourage you to go buy one if you’re in need of a hat from the artist’s Etsy store, located here.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Zombie Products, ZRC Reviews