Did you know that, in addi­tion to threes, good things also come in unstop­pable sham­bling hordes? For some reason people always leave out that part of the saying. But it’s true! It’s wholly and unremit­tingly true.

I’m pretty sure every­one thinks they would be a com­plete badass in the case of a zombie upris­ing. I know I would be. I’d see the early warn­ing signs; I’d pre­pare my safe house and stock­pile appro­pri­ately; I’d exter­mi­nate that zombie scum ruth­lessly and effi­ciently. Unlike Shaun in Shaun of the Dead, I’d have no com­punc­tions over shoot­ing my zomb­i­fied mom if it meant saving my own life.¹ (Come on, man—she’s been taken! She’s not your mother any­more! Just do it!)

That said, it’s always impor­tant to take a step back and remem­ber that per­haps a zombie upris­ing would not be the great­est thing in real life. Which is to say, there is a very strong argu­ment to be made that zom­bies are a fan­tasy best left to the realm of fic­tion. With this in mind, I would like to present you with three zombie-​related items that have come to my atten­tion over the past sev­eral weeks.

1. Last March, I dis­cov­ered (via Kris Straub) an enjoy­able web series called I Am Not Infected. It fol­lows the tra­vails of three dudes who are trapped in a zombie-​infested Los Ange­les. Scary, huh? I mean, being stuck in L.A. is bad enough, but having to deal with zom­bies must make it, like, at least 1.5 times worse.

   The series is a com­bi­na­tion of humor and horror, although it tends to lean more heav­ily towards the former. The comedy is often goofy and absur­dist, and a lot of it stems from the idiocy and ego­tism of the main char­ac­ters. There are occa­sion­ally very intense moments, how­ever; for exam­ple, Episode 1.5 (NSFW) is a sur­pris­ingly well-​done homage to the zombie horror genre.

2. I recently got Left 4 Dead, and I’m enjoy­ing it a lot! For those of you unfa­mil­iar with the game, it’s a first-​person shooter based on the fol­low­ing premise: you’re on a team of four Sur­vivors who are trying to fend off an encroach­ing hoard of Infected humans. In single-​player mode the other Sur­vivors are com­put­ers, but you can also play mul­ti­player cam­paigns. In gen­eral, I’m a big fan of coop­er­a­tive cam­paigns (in first-​person shoot­ers I greatly prefer them to death-​matches), so the game is per­fect for me. There’s also a versus mode in which teams alter­nate between play­ing Sur­vivors and Infected—if you’re Infected, you’re much easier to kill, but you respawn auto­mat­i­cally and get to con­trol spe­cial zom­bies with unique powers.

   Anyway, if you’re inter­ested in play­ing, I’m on XBox live—my GamerTag is “Mister Skeleton”. (Kind of appro­pri­ate, really. Are skele­tons a kind of zombie?) I haven’t been on a whole lot recently, but hope­fully I’ll be able to play more as the school year winds down.

3. Five words: Pride and Prej­u­dice and Zom­bies. Won­der­fully, this is exactly what it sounds like. (And while we’re on the topic of zombie-​themed lit­er­a­ture, I should men­tion that one of these days I really need to read World War Z. Just another thing to put on the ol’ read­ing list.)

All this talk about zom­bies has got me won­der­ing if there are any good zombie-​themed web­comics out there. It seems like a no-​brainer (pun INTENDED) that there should be one, but I can’t think of any­thing off the top of my head (pun INTENDED—see, because zom­bies tear off the top of your head). Am I for­get­ting some­thing, or is it the case that there’s a zombie-​shaped void in the world of web­comics? And if so, why isn’t some­one get­ting on top of that? Or at least lurch­ing slowly towards it?

¹ And I love my mother dearly! I can only hope she’d do the same for me.

Greg had been bug­ging me to read up on Tom Siddell’s Gun­nerkrigg Court for some time before I finally decided to sit down and dip into a chap­ter or two. Fel­lows, I am decid­edly better for having dipped and sub­se­quently immersed, though to what degree I am better for having done so I’m not going to tell you. A decided degree, at any rate.

A hand­ful of adjec­tives come to mind when trying to describe the series, and they are all prob­a­bly inac­cu­rate.² I do remem­ber at one point think­ing, “I bet Neil Gaiman would get a kick out of this.” Soon after, I found out that such is indeed the case! So if you like the things that Neil Gaiman likes, all the better, but I still encour­age you read Siddell’s work³ regard­less of your feel­ings for Mr. Sand­man.⁴ Come on, mon­sters and robots—what’s not to like?

There is a Ver­i­ta­ble Cast of Char­ac­ters⁵, but I decided to draw only one of them. I am a fan of Kat the Buildy-​Scientist.

Get read­ing! And come back tomor­row, also. There will be a comic to read.

—
¹ There are other web­comics I have been mean­ing to write about as well, but there are so many of them! You prob­a­bly already know this.

² Having writ­ten down and sum­mar­ily deleted this hand­ful, I will say simply that it is “charming”^2.5—pretty much every­thing about it—and that you are seri­ously better off choos­ing a chap­ter that looks appeal­ing if you’re not ready to con­quer an Archive. I am per­son­ally a fan of this chap­ter because it fea­tures a ridicu­lous person.

^2.5 Some people say say “charming” with a bit of con­de­s­cen­tion, but I am not doing that! Please do not read it that way.

³ Online or in print. Dude’s sell­ing books!

⁴ I rec­og­nize that “Mr. Sandman” is a cutesy nick­name (face­tiously cutesy?), but I think I will keep it where it is.

⁵ Cutesy cap­i­tal­iza­tion, now! I might write more like a normal person next time.