The Long Dark Night of the Living Dead
04-02-04
D: This is the first of a week-long storyline set inside Shakra’s mind. The storyline occurs during Shakra’s coma after he ploughed into a booze shop on a stolen motorcycle, which I guess you’ll know if you’re reading through the archives instead of on the day this first goes up. The writing and art duties this week were taken on by my girlfriend Mary, who also joins me on commentary duties for this week.

M: Wow I hate doing commentary. Okay, think of something witty and interesting to say to the readers. Um. That's the worst monkey I've ever seen, and why does Shakra look like an extra from Lord of the Flies?

D: The only thing this has in common with the original script I wrote for this way back when (that Mary hasn’t seen, since she wrote her own scripts for this) is the opening shot of a ravaged and devastated post-apocalyptic City. Mine was to be a much more serious take on it, which is probably why it never got done, because it was full of crap melodrama like the later ‘Milton Hoight’ arc.

M: This poor little story arc went through two artist/writers before it came to me, little unwanted bastard script.

D: That’s true, yes. I pencilled the first half of a strip and roughed out a couple more, while Appleby drew the first one as scripted by me but never finished colouring it, and also pencilled and inked a second one that was basically a single action scene with no script, dialogue, or jokes.

M: I found most of those discarded strips at David's place when I was visiting and felt so sorry for these neglected little storylines, so I decided I should take it over...only with bad art, bad pop culture references, and oh yeh, one completely hysterical in-joke at the end that no one besides David and I will get, which means bad writing.

D: There’s no such thing as a bad pop culture reference. And Mary only likes to say her art is bad because she’s never read ‘Flem’ or anything by Rob Liefeld.

M: Oh, trust me. It's bad. And after this, it only gets worse! Though, at least, neither the writing nor the art are as bad as S*P's infamous "Ho ho ho naughty Davan" strip.

D: I love the visual gag in this of the zombies arriving on the bus. It’s so weird, but at the same time probably to be expected after the trips Mary and myself had on public transport while she was visiting.

M: And I'd always thought the zombies on the NYC subways were scary...but then I went to Manchester...

D: There’s possibly some ‘Shaun of the Dead’ in there, and almost certainly the bus sequence in the ‘Walk of Doom’ episode of ‘Invader Zim’. In fact, as a rough guide I should probably say now that 90% of the references in Mary’s storyline, if you don’t get them immediately, will come from Invader Zim or the Simpsons.

M: I didn't reference Zim at all in this arc, except for The Doom Song.

D: Not consciously, anyway. I’ve just noticed Mary very cunningly avoided drawing much in the way of crowd scenes in her arc, which was the whole reason I kept putting off drawing it myself, since large gatherings of bodies are usually a prerequisite for zombies. Or orgies.
Save explaining away every in-joke, I don’t think I have much more to say about this strip. Mary, anything else?

M: Nope.