Wednesday, February 03, 2016

"The traditional methods"...?

It was my understanding from every zombie movie I've ever seen and every zombie comic I've ever read that the way to kill a zombie was to destroy or severely damage its brain, usually by shooting or somehow smashing its head. Not so, according to The Shade in this week's Swamp Thing #2 by Len Wein and Kelley Jones. Filling a zombie's mouth with salt and then sewing it tightly shut sounds infinitely harder, even if we're talking about the slow, shambling zombies of Romero's movies or The Walking Dead, rather than the "fast" zombies of more modern movies.

I mean, I've never held a firearm, nor am I an expert in hand-to-hand combat or anything, but I'm pretty confident I could pull a trigger or swing a baseball bat or shovel in the general direction of a walking corpse's head. But sewing...? I mean, I can barely thread a needle, and I always forget how to tie off the other end once you're done stitching. Think how hard surviving the zombie apocalypse would be if The Shade is right!

Also, think how boring all those movies, TV shows and videogames premised on the killing of zombies would be...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't know about the sewing part, but the salt probably comes from actual Haitian legends about zombies. However, in Haitian legends the salt didn't kill zombies, it freed them from the control of the sorcerer who had raised them.

Arion said...

I've been meaning to check out this new Swampy miniseries, plus I really like Kelley Jones art. By the way, I just read your post about Puma Blues so I thought it'd be good to share this with you:

http://artbyarion.blogspot.pe/2015/12/puma-blues-murphy-zulli.html

I hope you enjoy my review, and please feel free to leave me a comment over there or add yourself as a follower (or both), and I promise I'll reciprocate.

Cheers,

Arion.

SallyP said...

Well, if you can't trust the Shade, then who CAN you trust?