Zombies and Monster Island

Look anywhere in today’s contemporary culture and you’ll find at least one reference to the zombie mythos. Seriously. So, excuse the pun, but what I’m trying to point out here is that zombies never seem to “die” and rot away out of our imaginations. From comics to movies, toys and even sports, zombies are everywhere (and we should be grateful that it’s not in the apocalyptic-zombie-end of days type of way). For whatever reason the idea of the dead coming back and attacking and eating the living seems to be an age-old idea that has survived over god knows how many centuries. Back then zombies were something that caused paranoia and fear into anyone who may have been superstitious or paranoid of the possibility of such a macabre being coming into existence. Now it’s a fully adored creative aspect used in media all over the world!

The whole idea of zombies has been rehashed and reused over and over again. This is especially apparent in the entertainment industry. There has to be at least a half dozen movies, shows, or cartoons that are popped out each year that have something to do with zombies. The whole zombie thing really took root in popular culture less than a half century ago but they’ve been a constant in horror films and other forms of media ever since. The Walking Dead, House of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, every darn George Romero film, Dead Snow, Evil Dead, High School of the Dead, etc. There’s been way too many zombie flicks, shows, comics and books to keep count of and they keep on coming. It’s amazing really. The only major changing factor in any zombie media that I’ve come to observe seems to be the origin of the cause of the zombie and how it/they turns into an undead. From toxic waste, alien spores, mad cow, and bioengineered viruses, there seem to be so many fun ways to come up with a zombie infection that it’s easy to see why they’re so terrifying but incredibly fun and inventive to use.

When it comes to the portrayal of zombies 95% of the time it seems to be the same no matter what media they’re seen in. They’re usually rotting and undead or recently turned humans who lack any real conscious and are incredibly violent and attack anyone who happens to be unaffected by whatever turned them. The culprit cause of what has turned the human into a zombie is usually some fast spreading disease or virus that requires physical contact or needs to be ingested or contacted with blood (like being bitten). They have a taste for human flesh and seem to love brains. Why they eat brains I have no idea. Maybe they need to ingest a certain part of the brain to continue functioning or something. I’m still thinking of theories for this, but back to the topic. This is the typical, and I dare say stereotypical, zombie you see almost everywhere. Fortunately there seems to be a creative spur in coming up with new and interesting ways of portraying zombies. Some media portray zombies as people who literally lack a will or soul instead of being a rotten, animated corpse. Others portray zombies as mutants who have lost their humanity and have become blood-thirsty savages who feast on human flesh. I also once had the pleasure of reading a supernatural themed web-comic called Hannah Is Not A Boy’s Name where one of the title characters is a zombie who manages to retain his humanity. Not too many stories show zombies in such a humane manner so I highly recommend reading it.

Another interesting aspect of the zombie is the rate and spread of the infection, virus, or whatever else that had caused it to come into existence. In a lot of media it appears that the typical zombie siege spreads fairly quickly in less than a month and spreads to just about everywhere there’s a human population. Sometimes this can be portrayed ridiculously or it can be done in a disturbingly accurate way. A great example of the “fast spreading” zombie virus can be seen in a lot of George Romero’s undead flicks, especially in Night of the Living Dead. Hordes of the undead seem to come out of nowhere and it’s a wonder that anyone can actually make it out alive. Then there’s David Wellington’s Monster Island. Just recently I had read his undead tale and I found is quite realistic in it’s vision of how the zombie apocalypse would spread. Instead of being a quick process of spreading, the zombie plague actually takes a while to reach out across the human population.

Continuing though with Wellington’s Monster Island, I found that his tale of the undead was a breath of fresh air in the zombie genre. Not only is his portrayal of the undead and his human characters realistic, but he also manages to show the zombie’s side of the story with the introduction of the newly undead Gary and how he copes with his new Homo mortis lifestyle. Giving a zombie a “human” approach instead of making them out as a thoughtless killing machine is rare and it makes the story that much more interesting and endearing by showing how someone would deal with being a zombie. The plot of the story really grabbed me, and my love for all things horror and zombie, so I was able to read through his story with glee. A detail in the story I particularly thought was pretty cool was Wellington’s realistic interpretation of the spread of the zombie virus and how it affected the human population. He explains how most of the well developed nations were ravaged by the zombie plague, but the lower and less developed nations had faired much better. I found this explanation a pretty probable scenario if ever a zombie-like scenario were to occur and it’s just one of those real life scenarios that not too many people talk about in vivid and intelligent detail when it comes to dealing with zombies.