Somewhere, Someone’s Already Playing X-Mas Music

by Christopher on November 1, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Posted In: Blog

November 1st – it’s official: Halloween’s over and Christmas is upon us. What’s that? Thanksgiving comes first you say? I guess you haven’t heard that Turkey Day is really just a warm up for Santa now. I don’t remember when it started exactly, but it’s obvious that we’ve gradually begun to get in the spirit of the holidays earlier and earlier. At least this year I’m no longer working a retail job where I’m forced to  listen to Christmas music for eight hours a day. Do you know how many God damn versions of Little Drummer Boy there are? I can think of five right off the top of my head. Jay-Z’s remix is off the hizzy, yo.

There’s still one holdover from Halloween to look forward to, though. As we spent last night drinking and watching the worst movies we could think of, I completely forgot about AMC’s premiere of The Walking Dead- their new series based on Robert Kirkman’s incredible comic of the same name. I’ve been looking forward to this for months and months and what do I do instead? Spend the night staring at Tommy Wiseau’s pale, veiny ass in The Room for the umpteenth time.

But I have a copy of TWD and I’m going to give it a look in just a minute here. If you’ve never taken a peek at a single issue of this series, you’re not really a zombie fan. It’s probably the most influential piece of undead fiction in the last decade. And yeah, I’m counting World War Z. It’s that good. Intimidatingly good. Like, so good you start wondering if there’s even a point in trying to tell your own zombie apocalypse story.

Oh, wait…

But no, seriously. It’s terrific and I recommend checking out the first collected volume. And then you can come back here and tell us how much better that comic is. But that’s why it pays for other artists and writers to be well-versed in this stuff. All of the stories start out covering pretty familiar ground (it’s sort of inevitable), but we’re determined to spin EMW off in some wildly different directions and give it its own tone and feel. I don’t really think of post-apocalyptic stories as a genre so much as a setting. Distinguishing this comic from the hordes of similarly-themed works out there is going to be a challenge, but one that we’re really looking forward to.

See you next week!