Zombie Mania!

Sometimes I think pop culture has popped its cork, and it turns out there was nothing of substance inside.

When you break down all of the cookie cutter plots that endlessly repeat themselves in books, plays, TV shows, movies and even pop music, there really is nothing new under the sun. (Kind of like my writing, which just completely stole from Shakespeare.)

Lack of originality is not necessarily a bad thing, though, because it doesn’t take much to jump start a tired old idea and make it feel fresh. All you have to do is add a new element to the mix and something you have seen a thousand times before will feel refreshing and even poignant.

Let me offer you a recent and obvious example of this phenomenon: Star Trek. The once-successful movie franchise had unceremoniously run its course after ten feature films and five different dramatic series that ran for more than 30 years on the air. Then, J.J. Abrams brilliantly opted to take the franchise where it had never gone before: back to before the beginning. To nobody's surprise, it’s wildly successful again.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer up a new theory of mine that any concept, no matter how overused and beaten to death, can be made utterly awesome simply by adding a zombie element to it. After all, who cannot completely relate to the plight of the zombie?

Now, let's apply my theory to the test.

I read comics as a kid and thought they were the greatest concept of all time. Why? Because humanity is overrated. Sure, it’s great having opposable thumbs. And, when you think about it, being able to transmit our thoughts and convey our emotions to each other through verbal and written communication is impressive. (There are literally thousands of human languages used on Earth and I am only wasting the potential of one of them at this moment.)

All that may seem yippy skippy, but we share the Earth with creatures that are stupider than petrified wood yet are still capable of some of the most amazing things imaginable.

Birds seem to serve little purpose on this planet other than to carry disease and swoop randomly in front of fast moving vehicles, but they can fly dammit! Even penguins boggle the mind. Sure, they were shafted in the flight department, but they can jump 6 feet high in the air without the use of $500 Air Jordans!

Even annoying little ants can do things humans cannot even dream of: lift 20 times their own body weight. That is the equivalent of me lifting two tons. Good God that would be cool.

And yet, Ant-Man is still the lamest superhero ever. Go figure.



My point is that even the smartest human being would give up billions of brain cells in order to be a comic book superhero capable of running at the speed of sound, crawling up walls, flying to the moon or lifting a mountain. When you think about it, there’s not much you can do to make the superhero concept any cooler (other than add skin-tight, revealing spandex costumes, of course).

However, the classic comic book characters have not aged gracefully. DC’s top two, Superman and Batman, can trace their beginnings back to the late 1930s. Marvel’s perennial favorite, Spider-Man, is closing in on his 50th birthday. Those three characters alone have saved the planet approximately 20,000 times, not to mention they have been repeatedly unmasked, crippled, beaten to a bloody pulp, killed, replaced, cloned and rebooted repeatedly throughout the last half century or so.

Let's face it. The concept of superheroes had grown quite stale... until something extraordinary happened.

A few years ago, some genius at Marvel Comics found a way to inject pure poetical splendor into those colorful pages of art buried beneath distracting dialog boxes. He decided to kill all of the superheroes and turn them into undead creatures of the night.

It’s a drastic solution, grant you, but damn effective and it managed to catch the interest of the little kid buried deep down inside my long-hardened outer shell of cynicism.

Zombie superheroes! What a good idea. No, not just good. It was one of the best ideas ever in the history of mankind, placing it in the Top Five of All-Time along with: Recreational Sex, Music, Peanut Butter and Painkillers.

It fills me with absolute certainty that any pop culture concept can be revived to new levels of ridiculous popularity simply by adding a zombie element to it. Perhaps some timeworn old TV shows should be revived in this fashion: All in the Cemetery, The A Positive-Team, Gilligan’s Island of the Dead and I Love Lucy’s... Brains.

Remember when The Brady Bunch introduced annoying little Cousin Oliver in a futile attempt to amp up the cute factor? Not only did the show jump the shark, it was shot with an uzi and served in a tequila and lime juice sauce.

Oliver completely ruined a show that was once renowned for its compelling drama and inspired intelligence. Don’t laugh. That show was ahead of its time. Do you recall when Bobby dreamed he was a partner of Jesse James and his whole family was subsequently murdered in cold blood? You don’t see that crazy $@*! happen on 7th Heaven or The O.C.

Anyway, Oliver ended up killing the show in his own cold-blooded fashion. But, imagine if you could go back in time and tell the writers to add Oliver to the mix, only this time, make him a relentless zombie whose only ungodly desire was to kill everybody on the show and eat their fleshy remains?

I have no doubt The Bloody Bunch would still be airing new episodes to this day if that had happened. Sam the Butcher would be a cult hero by now, and Jan would have exacted her revenge on Marsha by serving her to Ollie in a tequila and lime juice sauce.

I really do think I’m on to something. Just think of this: have you ever tried watching golf? Tiger Woods is great and blah, blah, blah, zzzzzzzz. Now, consider watching those sharply-dressed gentlemen chip in a birdie while zombies crawl out of the bunker.

I’m just saying consider it.