It can be hard to evaluate an ongoing work, which is why, for example, I tried to be very careful with our recent review of the first episode of ‘Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?’ not to imply an endorsement of the show as a whole simply because of one episode in a series. Likewise, a creative work could initially appear to be Anti-Zombie only to turn the tables on its audience and firmly establish itself as Zombie Friendly in the third act (like the second Atomic Age movie did).

However, sometimes it’s pretty obvious where something’s going, and at the point someone’s attacking Zombies indiscriminately with a broken bottle, you pretty much know the score. Thus, ‘Flight of the Living Dead’.

Have you seen ‘Snakes on a Plane’? How about ‘Night of the Living Dead’? If so… you pretty much know where this is going. It’s the Zombie Apocalypse and a number of passengers on a flight to London are about to be trapped on board with some very regressive Zombie stereotypes who naturally want to eat them alive.

(Romero-stereotypes, not Russos, f you’re interested. They don’t talk, but shamble, and they don’t go after brains, just everything.)

Protagonist Kat opens the comic late for a flight because she’s trying to take art knives of some sort, possibly x-actos, onto the plane in a carryon bag. Thus we know we’re not dealing with a genius. She ends up sitting next to the man who was in the next security line over, who has been attacked by a ‘homeless person’ outside the airport. We know this because he loudly shouts it over and over again, which is also behavior that might draw some well-warranted attention in an airport.

Somehow, the TSA gives these two a pass to board a commercial airliner. Shocking, I know, that anything could fall through the cracks of our stalwart security state apparatus, but in all fairness they were probably busy x-raying some nefarious looking breast milk.

Once on the plane Kat gets to know the man who was attacked, and displays, you guessed it, his highly suspicious and nasty looking bite wound on one of his arms. From there, he quickly becomes a ‘Zombie’, attacks a flight attendant, who goes largely untreated for an hour in the cockpit until she also becomes a ‘Zombie’, bing bang boom, Zombie Apocalypse on a Plane.

The plane crashes and that more or less brings you up to date with the current published portion.

Honestly, if you’ve seen one hateful Romero-esque Zombie Apocalypse stereotype, you’ve more or less seen them all, and the ‘Snakes on a Plane’ riff doesn’t make it novel enough to stand out for me. Call me jaded if you like.

The Zombies are of course treated very badly and portrayed in the harshest possible light, and so, our dim-witted knife-toting airhead protagonist, with her obvious propensity for violence, is the designated heroine.

I mean, seriously. After the plane crash, what is the first thing she does?

She takes a broken bottle and lashes it to a stick/broom handle to form a crude but gruesome melee weapon.

(This sort of behavior is not a healthy sign)

Yes, that’s a normal and understandable reaction to a plane making an emergency water landing. Time to make our own pole-arms, using whatever happens to be on hand!

*eye roll*

In conclusion, judging from what’s gone so far I think it’s safe to make a snap judgment and declare that Flight of the Living dead is firmly in the Living Supremacist camp. Zombies are an even bigger threat to air travel, it says, than borderline psychotic weapons fetishist nerds, poorly trained airline staff or the laughable state of airline security.

We heartily disagree. Zombies are people too, and that means they should have full, fair and equal access to air travel like anyone else. As unpleasant, grueling, expensive, tedious, time-wasting and borderline fascistic as it is to board a plane, it should still be the right of every Zombie to get a flight to their destination without prejudice, harassment, or, and this should go without saying, some dingbat attacking them with a broken bottle on a broomstick.

Tags: Comics, Social Justice, ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 4:56 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.