Ant’s Rant: My Take On: Zombies

Zombies, for those of you that somehow don’t know, are the dead that have come back to life with a constant hunger for living flesh (usually cannibalistic). There are numerous ways that zombies are made. Some zombies are just puppet bodies used by necromancers (magical beings that raise the dead for use as drones or soldiers) using magic, most commonly voodoo. Most zombies are born from virii, which have numerous different origins. The zombie “virus” spreads in numerous ways. Either by airborne virus, or by fluid transmission with the infected (saliva into open bite wounds, dead flesh into lacerations, etc etc). Once something or someone is infected, they have to die before they come back as a zombie.

Zombies have been in literature, movies, all kinds of medium for ages. H.P. Lovecraft started the world on the Zombie craze in literature, but it didn’t really become popular until George A. Romero started the “…of the Dead” movie series which is ongoing to this day. His film “Night of the Living Dead” started the outbreak of crazed Zombie fandom and it spread much like a virus as time went on, exploding with the film “Dawn of the Dead” (which was recently remade and even had a video game homage in “Dead Rising”).

Lately, zombies have been springing up all over the place. We’ve seen them in the “Resident Evil” games, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video from and even in some comic books. They were a small, contained plague. Now we’re seeing them everywhere, even where they don’t belong! Now we have horrible zombie movies coming out left and right, Indie game developers are using zombies as Generic Default Enemy Type #1, and even the great Zombie storytellers of our time are churning out nothing but Boomer Bile (case in point: Any of the “of the Dead” movies of this decade)!

We have zombies in our comic books (The Walking Dead, Zombies!, Black Gas), in our movies (Of the Dead series, Resident Evil series, 28 Days Later series), in our books (Plague of the Dead, World War Z, The Rising, Zombie Survival Guide), all over the place! But they’re not just sticking to their appropriate designated Zombie stories… Oh no, now they’ve infected stuff that shouldn’t even be able to be infected! We have a new strain here folks.

Sure, video games have had zombies in them since pretty much the beginning, but those games were always about the zombies as enemies. Now we have them going where they don’t belong, messing up our safe havens in gaming! Mortal Kombat killed off one of the main characters (Liu Kang) and brought him back as a zombie (WTF!) in Deception. Saints Row 2 had a zombie minigame you could play (how gangsta are the undead? I still don’t know!). The main selling point of Call of Duty: World at War was the Nazi Zombies unlockable game mode and now they’re doing it again in Call of Duty: Black Ops. Borderlands had a whole island of zombies in a DLC expansion pack. The same is happening to the Wild West in Red Dead Redemption in the upcoming Undead Nightmare DLC. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World has a zombie survival endurance mode unlockable. Even Yakuza is getting it’s own zombie game coming called Yakuza: Of The End.

Hell, even Star Wars is getting zombified in the Expanded Universe! There was a novel written called Death Troopers that had zombie stormtroopers in it. Now there’s going to be zombie Jedi in the upcoming Red Harvest novel. Even Star Wars: Clone Wars has a zombie-like plotline with the Legacy of Terror episode. Zombies don’t belong in my Star Wars! Even Marvel Comics isn’t safe from this menace! The Marvel superheroes have all been infected as well in the Marvel Zombies story arc! We need to do something about this!

As you can see, they’re going where they don’t belong, and we need to put a stop to this. I say we create a newer, more original, more powerful type of monster, one that can appeal to everyone. We need to set this type of beast loose and destroy the zombie menace! How about people… That suck blood (oo scary)… And glitter in the sunlight (for the girlies!)… And they play baseball (for the guys)… And have there be a love element (girly girly!)… And make them fight werewolves. PERFECT! Someone start writing this stuff down and send it out to every form of media! We need to stop the zombies!