Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 18

   Aand any artistic credibility I may or may not have gained through earlier artwork is thrown out the window with the artwork of the arms of Shia LaBeouf's character here. No, I don't know. I don't know what's up with that. I tried disguising it with the borders, but that only served to draw attention to it.

   Also bleeding through besides the panels, the red marker used to ink out the red of the sign: COW GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. That's probably one of the cleverest gags in the comic, and Cailin agrees, but we had to cut off the top of that, make it less legible to make it more family-friendly. I guess. Either way, not showing the full thing was deliberate. I'm pretty sure to make it more family-friendly. That AD ON at the sign on the door being cut off at the edge of the panel there? ADULTS ONLY, of course.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 17

   We are continuing our introduction to Shia LaBeouf's character, stepping out on a cow brothel (it's not explicitly stated in the comic, but yeah, that's what that is), which is full of cows in various stages of anthropomorphization. (Rawhide himself is the offspring of onesuch cow hooker and a photorealistic drawing of Jeff Bridges.) I drew that drawing of all the cow whores as an exploration of what the Rawhide Vindaloo universe would entail (yes, it was purely for research purposes, I swear!) and I cut and pasted it in there.

   There's a stagecoach being pulled by humans in the background of the last panel here. This, just like the train in the background on page nine, represents a vehicle in the background that had to be added later. There, it was because westerns need trains, and here, it's because westerns need stage coaches. I had forgotten both of those very essential things in the first draft going through, so I had to add where I could. This panel was simply the only space I had to fit such an item, which was kind of necessary because a stagecoach being pulled by non-sentient (feral?) humans illustrates the idiosyncrasies of this universe.

   Fun fact, too. Not only was that panel the only place to put that, it was the only place to put that: page 17 and page 9 are the only pages in which color appears, in both brown (in the vehicle, on both pages) and red (here, in the sign above Shia LaBeouf's character's head; on page 9, in the headshot of course.)

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 16

   There's a lot to say about the panel layouts on this page, because it's by far the cleverest on this page. The crowd incorporated into the borders of the first row of panels, placing emphasis on the dance moves the crowd's doing. Then, the next row of panels, which are literally BANDIT. (!). The Texas Ranger is introduced at the edge of all this bustle, emphasized a solitary man. And then, from his angle, it's LeCastor who's at the edge of the panel, on the opposite side this time.

   Emphasized here, in an unusual and generally unique example of entirely within-the-border border, is LeCastor's tail, which you probably missed the first time like I said because this is the first time it's being emphasized. See how much emphasis there is? That's kind of the point of looking at the backs of these and the panel layouts, emphasizing the emphasis.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 15

   IT'S! THE! HALF! COW!

   BANDIT!

   That's, like, a trampoline or something that LeCastor's on. I really don't know. Yeah, probably bursting into song about how rad crime is, in public, right after committing a crime, is probably not the best idea. Should have stayed inside, buddy. I guess this is a sort of commentary on how public musical numbers in musicals often lead to situations that wouldn't happen in real life. (Well, yeah.)

   And we are introduced to a figure, standing on the outskirts of the musical number. It's Shia LaBeouf's character, TEXAS RANGER! That hero shot of him looks very like a Shia, so, I  figured, that's who got "cast." He is smoking a cigarette, and the smoke thereof becomes a though bubble (I guess? I'm not sure I planned that) and he recognizes LeCastor's tail. That's what that is. Hey, a beaver tail? Just like the beaver tail of that beaver-tailed guy who robbed that bank a few pages back! He totally had a beaver tail. (I am emphasizing this here because this is the first time LeCastor's... well, Castor(beaver)-ness is even brought up. His name isn't even mentioned till page 23, you know.)

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 14

   FANTASTIC! Through this page you can see the outline of LeCastor in the panel border, with the top highlighting his comb-over, the bottom border going across and the side border tracing out his fingers. That is one well drawn hand, there. I'm proud of that hand. That's a really nice hand, with some really nice foreshortening on that page, marred somewhat by how not-very-good LeCastor's face is drawn. Hopefully that distracts from how his right hand only has four fingers while his left has the normal five.

   Panel layout-wise, we've got two big panels on the bottom and a normal-sized row on the top. Which makes sense, as there needs to be a lot of space for all those lyrics, and there's a location change in the middle of the song when he bursts out onto the street to continue singing in public his song about how great it is to have been hand-(hoof? half-hand, then) selected to perform highly illegal activities with one of the most wanted criminals in 1776 Old West. Yep.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 13

   Let's face it: nobody was surprised by this. It's Bollywood, so of course you knew there'd be at least one musical number. Complete with everyone dancing in the street Oliver-like, and three-part suspender-snapping harmonies featuring a criminal who appears to be in clown makeup. Yeah, that guy on top. Just get a good drink of him.

   Cailin brainstormed some of the lyrics on this one (men curse his name and beasts do the same!) The other parts are just shamelessly jacked from T.S. Eliot, "Macavity the Mystery Cat," which is kind of embarrassing because that's just shoehorned in there without regard to rhythm. (Or rhyme. Answer me quick, or I'll save you time, and tell you-ou-ou...) One! Two! Three! Four!

   And we learn that he stole all the gold (all of it!) straight from Fort Knox somehow. This information comes up later, because I needed a significant MacGuffin and I realized I had already Checkov'd this. I just put it in the song, though, because it rhymed. Those actually now I can remember I looked up if Fort Knox was even built by this time, for that lyric (I think it existed, but wasn't used as a vault yet?)

   I don't know what the deal with that guy with the big head and the weird face is, just standing there in the middle of the street with his hands behind his back like that while everybody else is just dancing around him.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 12

   Here, you can see emphasized, the fat stack of bills behind Rawhide. Quite the haul. Though, wait, no, never mind, I think that's the boards in the wall. Why would I have done that? I don't know.

  You can't see through the page here on Rawhide's "hero shot," because I drew that separately as a character study and liked it so much I cut it out and pasted it into the page. That happened with a lot of hero shots, notably the Sheriff Roadrunner. This is what I think started out using marker around the edges and incorporating the border for emphasis, to disguise the edges. The border goes straight into the brim of his hat in spite of this-- instead of circumnavigating the outside of the hat, which would make more sense as it would actually disguise the border of the cut-out and pasted original drawing, I drew the border onto the page of the hero shot, which is why you can't see it here.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 11

   That's it, the name drop of Pony Bill like I promised, named after, of course, Bill the Pony from the Lord of the Rings. (This was before Friendship is Magic, so there was nothing significant or ironic seen in having ponies back then. Maybe his name would have been Pony Joe...?)

   LeCastor notes Rawhide's cow ears, and naturally thinks he might be "an elf or something." I'm not sure if elves exist in this universe. Rawhide turns around, and that's the hero shot right there. Note the resemblance to a half-cow Leo DiCaprio. Note the cross around his neck. I guess there weren't as many religious themes in the comic as I thought there would originally be.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 10

   I must have switched markers for doing the panels on this page halfway, and I don't mean the red marker for that headshot. The bottom half has a whole lot more bleedthrough than the top half, yeah? i don't know why.

   Some really solid dramatic panels on this page, the top and bottom ones kind of echoing each other shape-and-character-and-panel-size-wise, not really for any preplanned reason, but, eh, it looks good.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 9

   The train in the background was added in after I think all of this page was done. The last thing added. I added that train for two reasons (yay two-itemed lists!)

1. The western was entirely trainless up to this point, and westerns need trains,
2. showing it in the background here emphasized how fast these guys were going, and I guess there's actually three items on this list instead of the promised two, because oh yeah
3. the glue from pasting in the drawing I did of the governor's daughter tied up on horseback  kind of stained the page, so I had to color that in brown to disguise it.

   Didn't do a very good job. Stopping a horse like that would probably not be good for the governor's daughter on the back of it, as it would just drop and send her flying. Presumably our good Sheriff runs up ahead and catches her.

   And then molests her, as revealed on page 23. I asked Cailin if he should molest her here, as at first he thought I meant Rawhide, which led to an interesting conversation. I don't know, I guess it would have been one of those things that would have been drawn (but not too explicitly!) had I had the time.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 8

\

   LeCastor, we can see, is not clumped with the others and unhighlighted by the border frame, setting him apart in multiple ways (play he's the last to put on his hat.) Hat on, he also does not touch a border in the panel where they're all outside the bank sizing it up, further subconsciously specializing him in the minds of the audience (or at least I think that that's him not touching any of the borders in that panel there. I don't know- it's kind of hard to tell when they're all wearing hats like that.)

   Seeing the lines from this side emphasizes the guns coming out of nowhere in that last panel.Obviously the gun shooting the BLAT is important, because of the border there, but there's another gun just sort of... floating there. See it?Just right there in the corner.

    Speaking of guns floating there, you can see that you can't see the one coming off of frame above the ferret's head-- yep, that's because I had drawn the gun and was proud of it, so it's one of those literal cut-paste deals like with the hero shots.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 7

   The last thing said was "STOP," the first thing said here is "go." At least I can make the claim of that being deliberate. Find me clever?

   I took the time, with just minutes of the 24 hours left, to look up the word "bank" in... whatever that language is, I forget it now. Hindi, that was it. At least, I took that time and did that with the Rawhide Vindaloo logo. Maybe I had done this one sooner, as it was one of the first things I did on the map and realized I had already written "Canada" and "N.Y." in English.

   That... thing, there, looking surprised in the bottom right hand corner (FUN FACT: off of whom I modeled the surprised guy in Robert Ludlum's The Change Blindness)

Yup, there's a definite resemblance there.

is, not a weird-looking human or half-animal anything, but a ferret-sized ferret. Anthropomorphized into looking more like a human, but that's it, exactly it. He/she is the size of a ferret, and in the foreground here so it looks bigger.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 6

   Whoa, where's Sheriff Peckinwood's face here? You can see the bleedthrough of the other lines of ink, but where his face is it's a big blank. Why is that? It didn't bleed through, because, simply, I drew his hero shot on a different piece of paper so I wouldn't screw it up, (in fact, the paper of sketches and notes I showed you earlier,) and pasted it into the final frame later. Well, not the final frame, the third frame. The final version of that. See how I drew the extra panel bit in there, so it's like a fourth panel right there in the upper corner behind his head? I like that.

   That "STOP!" is a bit sloppy. At least, the S in it is.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 5

   Our introduction to SHERIFF PECKINWOOD, the roadrunner/woodpecker sheriff of Armadillotown. He's just chilling at the end of the room. He is, as we'll see later, not the best of dudes. I guess that's one of the things with this comic, you're not sure whom to root for, because the main characters are criminals. Huh.

   You've got the classic shot of the sheriff unfolding his arms and revealing that badge, the reveal to the audience who he is, which Cailin suggested. I just love those first couple of drawings of him. The hero shots, against which everything else is off-model. His legs and feet are just so awesome and well-drawn in that first panel, and then his entire face in the "keep the change" shot. Never could get his feather-finger wing-hands down, though.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 4

   This would have been a pretty symmetrical layout, with the bar panels in the middle and on the bottom and the two panels on the top, if not for that fact that the second panel unnecessarily long on the top. I guess it still is pretty symmetrical, but that's a disappointing missed opportunity.

   Note the light hanging down from the ceiling- the panel border used to represent the rope there. and how the light itself is part of the panel border. I still think that's pretty clever.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 3

   Rawhide turns, and we meet LeCASTOR, THE BALDING BOY BEAVER. Look, here, on that bottom panel, and you can see his beaver tail. I kind of reads like it's part of his long coat, but it's more clearly a tail later.

   He enters the बड़ा दालान. I also traced this one from a movie set, the big saloon establishing shot. It is an establishing shot of not just this bar but of the entire Rawhide universe. The scene here in the bar really does sum the entire thing up. How the genetics work, with that giant anthropomorphized Venus Flytrap there. It's drinking its mugs with its feet, cleverest thing ever.

   We debated a lot over the name of the horse gang. It was going to Wyld Sttallyns at first, in homage to both Bill and Ted and biker gangs, but then I realized that the head pony's name should be "Tony Pony" instead of Pony Bill as reported on page 11.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 2

   In order for this comic to be 24 pages long, we have to use the backs of the pages. It's alright, though. The marker bleeds through, which I guess is almost perfect for analyzing the page layouts, which are important especially in this comic where I experimented with them quite a bit. It's especially convenient because the marker is used not only for the panel borders but also with this unique technique where the marker is used for some outlines, making the edges bleed into the drawing. It gives this sort of exotic '70s feel and helping draw attention to what needs to be emphasized. I guess that only having 12 pages is a sort of blessing in disguise.

   See, look, here, the outlining helps give a sense of depth to the streets of Armadillotown and to the बड़ा दालान, where it looks like it's going deeper beyond the swinging doors. The map of the Old West, and on the bottom row of panels where the guy walking there transverses the panels.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Page 1

   1776. THE OLD WEST. Bollywood gets so many of its facts wrong, so Cailin and I figured this would be hilarious. It just comes off as being trippy, though. The map here, though, is actually accurate to the 1830s. I copied it off of Conservapedia, the whole time wondering, why would an encyclopedia about conservation have a map of Manifest Destiny-era United States? It turned out that that wasn't was Conservapedia was, at all, but...

   Armadillotown, Texas. Just an Old West movie lot set I copied or maybe even traced from Cailin's laptop. I just called it "Armadillotown" because... Well, I don't know. This comic came out like a year before the video game Dillon's Rolling Western was even announced, I think, so any armadillo-y similarities are entire coincidental, including that guy just rolling that barrel in the middle of the street for no reason. Also, see there's a little guy being ejected violently from the बड़ा दालान. He huffs off (I guess apparently that's him walking there,) and across the street we see, bathed in shadow, RAWHIDE VINDALOO, THE HALF-COW BANDIT. Originally his quasi-bovinity was going to be called Leatherneck, but that apparently means Marine and is unrelated to cowboys.

Rawhide Vindaloo w/ Commentary, Cover Page

   Crime! Passion! Toe-tapping musical numbers! Leonardo DiCaprio as Rawhide, Shia LaBeouf as LeCastor, and featuring photo-referenced Jeff Bridges as Rawhide's father.

   This, the cover page, is the last page I completed, and in fact I didn't get to "finish" all of it as, first of all, the swirls in the sky are only two colors, and second of all I couldn't find a translation of the word "vindaloo" into Hindi lettering. You can see I made a Hindi overlay of the translation of "Rawhide" (चमरा से बना हुआ) but I couldn't find the Hindi lettering for the word "Vindaloo." Isn't that word itself Hindi? What's going on there? Don't tell me it's Urdu.

   That's the same background there traced as the one on page 1. I'm not sure if it opens directly onto itself, like the street is on the cover and you flip to the next page but the image doesn't change.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 24

   I actually wrote this page fairly early on, when I had figured out exactly what the plot was. I wrote this here as a twist ending, then from the information revealed here worked out what other information needed to be told elsewhere. You can see why this would necessitate an out-of-order creation of the comic.

   I left the little page number "24" off on the bottom of the page accidentally. Oh well. Too late to change it now.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 23

   Not much to say here, except, the infamous BZORT reappears one last time as the D'varri ship makes its way to the safe house. Right there in the lower right corner of the third panel there. The main character fellow, now in D'varri form, hears this BZORT in the corner and gets up just in time to see Ash's DNA dissolve, with her requisite little "!" They all do that. It's what you say hen your DNA gets dissolved. She blows away, Ash now Ash.

   See, I guess that makes all of their names puns. Ash, because of her inevitable fate, Dustin because he was a Roomba, Karen because, even though we did not see her outside of the main character's imagination, deep down she truly cared. I guess that makes the main guy's name, I don't know, Hiro Protagonist? Naw, already been done (hey, there, Stephenson fans!) Or, maybe, then, Hey, I'm Gonna Turn Into an Alien in the End? Oh, well. He does have a name... maybe.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 22

   This is one of the pages I drew earlier on. Well, maybe not entirely earlier on. I'll have to think about it. But this transformation sequence is where the D'Varri design comes from. In much the same way I got more audacious with the explosion on page 2, only more extreme, I was literally making up the design on the fly and pulling back and back and back from what a human looks like as the guy transforms. His nostrils become his mouths! Eventually I was as far back as I could get while still having it make sense with the path I started off on in the transformation, so you can see it slowing down there at the end once I was out of ideas.

   From this design I went back and added the shadow being cast across the veggie seller's cart all the way back on page one, forshadowing (so to speak) what was to come, and what the threat exactly was. You can also see it in the reveal shot of the Moldovian soldier's hologram. I think some of the more vague silhouettes in that before that were done before the alien design was finalized, because it didn't need to be at that point.

   During one of Joe's sarcastic readings of the page, he read the guy's hair falling out on into his hand as being his hand being on fire. Can you kind of see that? So I went in and made that more clear, by adding hair... sockets, I guess? and motion lines indicating where the hair was falling from. So, thanks, Stumps. If you look, you can also see the hair falling out of his hands there, which I also did not have originally and added, which effect I'm less pleased with but at least it's subtle.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 21

   The infamous nudie scene. His pertinent bits are covered by panel borders. It took me a lot of redrawing to get the proportions to fit so that that was possible, so yeah, I was very careful. The proportions of the panels work out, then.

   The proportions of the anatomy, not so much. He's from a slightly different angle in each panel! Which, hmm, maybe was deliberate. Never mind. The navel had to be redrawn and re-positioned quite a bit to make it clear that it was a navel and not, erm, something else.

   On the other side, though, the alien spaceship cuts a swathe of destruction through Reykjavik. It's kind of disappointing that there's an ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS naked man on the other side distracting from the really really good D'varri spaceship art on the other side. You can actually feel the camera pulling out. Just go back and pay attention to only the right hand side.

   Yeah.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 20

   Yep, he's human under all that half-of-his-face-is-a-beret-and-the-rest-is-a-robot. And yep, turns out he's a natural blond. And yep, he's taking off his clothes. I think the inherent nudity-ity of the situation is defused somewhat by his adorable tube arms, the way I drew him, when he's dropping his trou. Look at those arms!

   Ash is loving it more than she should, but it's okay, because in this morality play, the sin of Lust is quickly punished by throwing up a little into your mouth when you see exposed brain tissue. That's actually pretty gross. It's not really explained ever, why the guy is a cyborg, but I think it's pretty obvious: something happened to half of his head.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 19

   After using his cyber-vision to somehow see that BZORKing works on the molecular level, specifically by dissolving DNA, and having made it to the safe house where DNA modification technology exists that conveniently was in their path, this is the part where the relationship between Ash and the cyborg dude comes into play, and all that stuff before turns out to be important. DNA modification requires "starbolic" nudity (quasi-future slang! "Starbolic," as in "stark bollock(s)," meaning "naked," I just got from a slang encyclopedia. Useful those things.)

   So, the beret-wearing cyborg dude, Cystex-head, (I mean head of Cystex, but he does have a very distinctive head,) decides that in order to respect Ash, he should be the one to undress before she does so that he shouldn't have to look at a naked woman while he's still in human form, and, you know, into that kind of stuff. Now Ash can look at him naked instead of him looking at her naked. Respect! Except that Ash is known to have an interest in the cyborg man, while the cyborg man is stated to have no interest in her. Such a setup would only reward Ash's illicit lusts. Respect? R-respect, I guess. Remember, I'm allowed to nitpick at my own thing.

   Just this becomes very important. It is very important. The order in which this occurs.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 18

   The layout of this page is pretty sloppy. You see him dodging the D'varri motherships or whatever, but you probably couldn't tell until I drew your attention to it- now- that he's actually between two of them. That was initially clearer, but you can see I then kind of awkwardly overlaid a speech bubble that he was saying, to justify some parts of his relationship with Ash from here on (namely, why he doesn't want to look at her naked while he himself is perfectly alright with getting naked in front of her.) I guess that's a pretty significant thing, then. Drives on the sidewalk, bursts up a fire hydrant. It's one of those crappy Icelandic ones, eh.

   This guy's hardcore. He can tell if someone's DNA is dissolving just by looking at them. It's probably somehow related to his cyborg eye. His cyborg eye could see it, but his human eye- well, obviously his human eye was behind that beret, but, yeah. His human eye couldn't. That actually explains how he could tell that there were differential fractions encoded into the leaves on the trees of a painting just by looking at it. His eye's Superman.

   Also, aside from that and the Icelanding manor house this dude's apparently got, he's also got an Icelandic safe house with technology that allows you to replace your DNA. How, uh, fancy.

   That's it! This guy doesn't just work for Cystex. This guy is Cystex. He's their CEO or something. That explains why they didn't tell anyone about their discoveries. They didn't need to. He was the only person who needed to know. Adds an interesting layer to the Ash/main character dynamic, that's for sure.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 17

   In Michelangelo's mural on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, the pod of God when he creates Adam has the exact profile of a brain. Dan Browning it, we're saying that there's just no way that one of the greatest geniuses of the Renaissance could have known what a brain looked like, but he was influenced to paint it like that through subliminal processes telling him how anatomy works. Since that's basically the entire D'varri shtick, accidentally psychically implanting ideas of their own DNA into people, that fits. I think that was Joe's idea, using the Sistine chapel ceiling as the perfect analogy for how that works. Or Cailin's. Definitely not mine, as I didn't even know that, but, sure enough.

And then ASH SMOOCHING OUT OF NOWHERE. I'm not sure how clear it is that that's what's going on. So our hero boy delivers his spiel about how he can't return her love, because

1. He's technophilic, and
2. Even if he weren't, he's still married.

   The power of fidelity (except with robots) triumphs all!

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 16

   It's the green remote control thing from the cover. II think that's the last piece assembled of all the cover items. Or at least, now with a D'varri mothership in the final panel, it is. Contained on the green thing? Ostensibly, code.

   But go on, assign those numbers somehow to differential fractals and to ACGT. I guarantee you that it won't work. 5s, 7s, and 9s don't even belong in quadnary code (it's like binary code, but with four I guess?) What you really need to derive from page is this: TECHNOBABBLE. I didn't know what I was saying, just as you don't know what I was saying. At least I know the difference between DNA and RNA?

The return of the infamous BZORT. It's been a while, old buddy.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 15

   I really like how the coloring came out in these scans. The alien psychic ability, seen here as a weird green aura. Which can apparently be transmitted via radio. That's actually very important, and it explains a lot. Yes, it makes sense.

   A few really great panel setups here. Take a moment to appreciate those. The top half, with its interlocking ones that can really be read in any order you choose, and then the more conservative bottom half, with that painting in both panels there between Ash and hero guy. I'm not sure if there's a word for what that is there.

   Aand then we're in Iceland, at the Fjunderson ancestral home. Or, uh, Fjunderson Manor, as Icelandic names don't really work like that. (Ancestral home?) So, maybe this guy's name s Fjunderson. Or maybe not. I really just transitioned the entire thing to Iceland for no reason, other than because Iceland. Because Iceland.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 14

   "Final item destroyed!?" Well, that certainly was a close call, getting to the last painting on earth with the D'varri DNA encoded into it right before it was destroyed. How convenient. Or maybe that refers to the last item that that particular soldier was assigned to destroy. Makes sense. That was the same soldier from before. Introduced blowing up paintings in the Met. This guy was just the East Coast Moldovian painting destroyer.

   But without a doubt the two best sound effects on this page. SMASHATTER and KA-BROOM HANDLE. I don't even know which once I like better. They're both so great, and equally awesome and hilarious and brilliant. They both make the entire thing worth it.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 13

   Oh, man, that Moldovian guy just blew up the painting with a freaking rocket launcher! Thank goodness you snapped a photograph of it before it was destroyed. But, no, it's not about getting a look at the painting to see the secret information encoded into it. It's about getting to the painting and protecting it. That failed, unfortunately, but at least they've still got something to go off of when looking for that particular painting's secret. "We've got a picture" could refer to having gotten a picture of the Moldovian soldier to run it through a database or something. Not of the painting. It could have been any photograph of that painting, really.

   (Which opens up another plot hole- why they bother destroying the originals if depictions of them already exist. Well, maybe. Just thank goodness this one wasn't one of those paintings whose secrets were encoded using under-layers of paint or invisible ink.)

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 12

   Some of the boldest panel design in the entire book here, with the "we're here" and then the establishing shot of the Chicago Art Institute. I've got no idea what the Chicago Art Institute looks like, so I just went as far away from what it possibly looks like as I could to signify, yes, this is the future, and we're taking artistic liberties with this. They've, just, gotten new architecture by then. totally awesome architecture.

   "For what are we looking?" Yeah, Ash just talks like that. You can kind of see beret cyborg guy sort of raising his eyebrow at that on (that is actually why I drew him raising his eyebrow like that, at Ash's clunky attempt at not dropping her participle, so yeah, take that as canon.)

   Nicolas Poussin's Saint John on Patmos is indeed part of the A.A. Munger collection, and it is indeed currently located at the Chicago Art Institute (last time I checked, when I wrote this comic,) but I'm not sure that it's ever been at the Louvre, and in fact I just Dan Brown'd the heck out of the painting's history. All other information given here about the painting is accurate. Except for maybe its depicted size. But Dan Brown did the same thing with a lot of paintings in the Da Vinci Code as well, so I'm following a rich tradition here and it might be deliberate.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 11

   And we learn that maroon-beret cyborg man's wife's name is Karen. I guess that makes him Mr. Karen, or something. No, never mind. But, no, this commentary is to provide you with insight, so here we go, my thought processes behind this page. This page itself isn't a very big scene; it's more of the transition between bigger set pieces, so you can see what I'm setting up here: the fact that all the hidden messages in art are pointing toward something; the Chicago Art Institute, where Saint John on Patmos is located; a race against time.

   And the fan favorite, the resident cool car of the comic, the Dodge Futuro. Out of a poll of all who did the 24 hour comic challenge that day, three of three people said they'd drive one. Notice its sleek design and ability to hover. I don't know how to draw cars, but that doesn't keep me from trying.

   And that strange object that the Futuro is passing, the one that seems to have headlights of its own? it does. That's a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 10

   I'd rather say as little on this page as possible, as this page sounded by far the stupidest when Stumps did his little sarcastic reading of my comic. Even more stupid than other Ash stuff. Man, Ash talks stupid. But hero guy on this page, a close second.

   I guess this stuff they're talking about, with the out of my league, is why they didn't bother to tell anyone? It's a flimsy excuse, but it works. A temp at a data management company, indeed. (We had brainstormed a lot for what exactly it took for Cystex's role in the story to make sense, and that fit the bill the best. Still, nothing to see here, people. Moving on.)

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 9

   Ah, good ol' Cystex, Incorporated. Not the over-the-counter urinary pain relief Cystex, the entire unrelated, fictional data-management company, for which Ash and... hot stuff... work. Yeah.

   And you don't suppose that someone would have triangulated the center of the Scouring of France before, if it's so easy and so significant? But I do love to nitpick. You're allowed to do that to your own work, you know. Learn from your mistakes and plot holes; it makes you stronger. But I suppose there's no patch to this plot hole without derailing the entire thing. It has to be some Da Vinci Code-esque secret that only they would know, or else it would fall apart. Though I guess it doesn't have to be, and even then it's just stupidity on their part that they don't tell anyone else bout their findings. Maybe it would have even saved the entire world, who knows. Ah, well, Time nor place. Or, not on this page, at least. We've got plot to advance!

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 8

   I guess the papers here are holographic future papers. Would make sense. No, Peter Paul Rubens didn't use invisible ink in his paintings. John Paul Rubens, on the other hand, did. Completely different guy. Not even vaguely close to being related. It's not like I just pulled stuff out of my... um, hat. It's all, like, totally real. Yeah.

   And we get to the (montage?) of all the news anchors discussing the Scouring of France, in which Paris was wiped off the map and the "entire eastern hemisphere" lit up and sent out some weird alien beacon thingy, signaling the invasion. Of course, Geraldo's going to be all over that, alongside some other talking heads (including one literal talking head and a woman who may or may not be Tina Weymouth, bassist for the band Talking Heads.)

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 7

   Yeah, that's Ash for you I guess. I mean, I guess, I guess. This is just a wild-- I mean, I've got no idea.

   Makes even less sense when she's on topic, though. "Strange jank. Moldovian soldiers bursting into art museums, destroy random paintings. Or at least seemingly random. We've sent you a list of 'em. Get to work." Who talks like that? Strange jank, okay. Jank is strange (the meaning of the word "jank" depends entirely entirely entirely upon context. Meaningless on its own. Utterly meaningless. But a word is never on its own. It's always used in a context. For example if there was just the word, "jank!" that'd probably be an interjection. Et cetera.) Future slang, I guess? But the next sentence isn't even a sentence, and Moldovia isn't even a place, and... (Maybe Moldova has remerged with the land of the medieval Moldavian province, and this amalgam has been called Moldovia? THE FUTURE.) "Or at least seemingly random" has got to be one of the most wretched sentences in the English language. And so on.

   Okay, maybe Ash just talks like that. Yeah, that's it. No wonder our hero is rejecting her advances.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 6

   We meet the protagonist dude's wife, looking utterly unpregnant maybe, so that "Baby" magazine on the floor remains unexplained. Let's just say they already had their kid, as something has to come from the implication. Turns out that this is just a fantasy that the guy's having, so maybe not either way?

   "Stumpy" Joe (so called because I couldn't remember his name so I just called him "Stumpy" as a placeholder) did a quasi-sarcastic read through of Scourge while I was working on it, reading the completed (but I don't think fully colored) pages I had done while I was working on new ones. He read the grawlixes out loud, which was kind of humorous. You get a few good non-onomatopoeic sound effects on this page, classics like "detatch!" and "burst!" And, yes, you're allowed to spell the word "detach" with a "t" if it's being used as a sound effect.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 5

   And here we are, in... Long Island!? I guess. i can't seem to remember putting that, but that's apparently what I put. Enter out from under the shadow of the bed Dustin, a punnily named Roomba (it took Joe a while to realize that it was a pun, but when he got it, he got it.) We see a "Baby" magazine there under the bed (not girly, though I think originally the magazine's name would have been "Babe," which I think definitely would be (or, barring that, about pigs.)) This magazine changes his character from a bachelor who lives with a robot to a man with a wife and possibly a bun in the oven. Sure, a bun in the oven, why not; it's not like we see her ever except in the fantasy sequence on the following page.

   So, Dustin comes out from under the bed and bumps into... huh, I guess I never thought to name my main character. Oh well. Him and his awesomely colored shoes. A nice POV of what a Roomba apparently sees there, with a HUD identifying the man. What's it say? It's hard to make out, but, Hall, or something? No, I remember, that's supposed to represent "hello," so, no, I don't think he's ever named.  I don't think the main character, whoever he is, was supposed to be all that cyborgy- but I guess the Roomba POV makes everyone's arms look super skinny but they're like wearing gloves? The only electronic part of him is half of his head. Maybe this skinny arm might reflect early character design or something. I don't think I would have made that big of a mistake if it were a mistake, so must be? Though notice how the bookshelf behind him there is exactly lined up with where the "glove" thing starts, so I might have been trying to disguise it. But I wasn't without White-Out. So, I don't know, one way or the other. It's been lost to time.

   The main character protagonist puts the hot cup of whatever down on a bookshelf after apparently switching it to his left hand, and starts... well, you see what he does. I don't have to narrate everything. But, man, does that Roomba have some powerful suction, to be able to crawl around a guy's face with it.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 4

   There's really not much to say on this page. I don't know how to draw helmets, is one thing. He shoots the painting so hard, it explodes. How sickgnarly is that? The style in which I draw explosions hasn't changed since maybe second grade or earlier. Note the thick chunky tendrils of explosion. Also, the D'varri are apparently able to narrow their eyes and speak English. Because the Moldovian guy is speaking English. Who knew?

   I guess I should also say this about Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me the painting itself. Besides the fact that apparently it classifies as fine art, enough to have been inspired by D'varri psychic waves. Somehow, in some form, it had alien DNA subconsciously secretly painted into it. The weird teeth... ear... things coming out of the top of the woman's head (you can see the painting more clearly when it's not on fire, on the previous page) were supposed to be cat ears, I guess slipping my requisite Cats reference into the comic.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 3

   My grandmother freaked when she read the title of the artwork on this page. Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me?! it's named after a U2 song (the one that plays during the end credits of Batman Forever, right before Kiss from a Rose.) That is itself named after the Mel Carter song Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me, and in fact one of the reasons I called Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me what I did is because I figured she'd be okay with that. Well, if she freaked out so much about the painting named after the pop rock song named after the R&B song, then thank goodness she didn't see the page with the naked cyborg... or the part with the secretary with the hots for the married guy... or that same guy having the hots for robots... in fact, the whole thing is just messed up.

   The final sound effect the machine gun makes is "sickgnarly," if you look at that teeny tiny lettering there. Cailin, Stumps and I had a thing going on, where each of us had to somehow incorporate the word "sickgnarly" as a sound effect into our comic. It fit well into Joe's fair Dadaist comic, and for me, it began the long tradition of odd sound effects in Scourge. (Cailin forgot to do it  in hers, which is just as well, as it would have been really distracting from her more somber serious comic, "Aurora.")

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 2

   What is there to say about this page? Besides using so much black crayon is harder than it looks. Also keeping the black out of the white of the alien... signal... beacon... thing (ASBT for short.) That stuff had to be pure white. This huge explosion and release of ASBT energy from said explosion is the titular Scourge, the Scouring of France. France is just one big radioactive crater now. That's not passive aggression against France or anything; remember, the entire point is because the Louvre, the finest art museum in the world, is there. If it weren't France being destroyed here, there would be no story. I love France and its people. They've got good... stuff. Late night talk shows, that's it. They've got good late night talk shows.

   But this entire page is kind of an exercise in ridiculousness. How fantastically over-the-top can we get? This veggie vendor, this purveyor of produce getting exploded? Yes. This explosion being so large that you can see it from space? Alright. This explosion turning the entire northern hemisphere into a giant alien flashlight? Awesome!

   Note the continuity, also: the previous page took place during sunset, and here you can see half the world bathed in shadow and bifurcating France in half. Sunset. There's something kind of vaguely iconic about that, as best illustrated in the final panel. Half the world in night, half the world in day, half the world being lit up and sending a beacon out into the screaming black void of space.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Page 1

   Setting out into this, the first thing I opened up on, was important, so I tried very hard to get it right. I just decided this, and went from there. Paris, 2073. That's a definitive time and place, which also sets a mood. It is sunset, and there is a vegetable vendor hocking his wares in the last light of the setting sun. A shadow falls across his booth. Et cetera. Getting into a rhythm. It can go a lot of places from here. I'm not sure why he's wearing an eye patch, no. But, on the very first page we get our sound effect: BZORT, which signifies the aliens... dissolving DNA, I guess. That's the sound it makes.

   The first page presents a good opportunity to talk about the color of this comic, seeing as how it's the first page, as well as containing a sunset, which means pretty colors. This comic is the only full color 24 hour comic I've done so far. The ease of how this comic at least seemed allowed me to get a tad more ambitious with my next comics, though actually this one is the most epic in scope. Ambitious in terms of artwork quality and storytelling and artistic direction, I mean. Stylistically, in terms of layout and everything, this comic is fairly vanilla.

Scourge w/ Commentary, Cover Page

   SCOURGE. A 24-Hour comic by Eric Perazzo. Rated TEEN 13+. -Suggestive Themes -Disturbing Content -Brief Mild Nudity. (Bar code here.)

   Awesome logo design. SCOURGE. And a good shot of how D'varri warships work. (Pouring DNA-dissolving lava stuff out of the top.) Yes, The Last Supper is not a painting on canvas. It is a fresco. And if it were even on canvas it would still be much bigger, like still fresco-sized. I am aware. I was just conveying the Da Vinci Code spirit of the work by using an actual Da Vinci in the background. Note the level of detail with the fingernail coloration on the hand. I just renoticed that.

24 Hour Comics, w/ Commentary

   Since the 24 hour comics went over so well the first time (a joke, of course,) I've decided to show each of my 24 hour comics again, with the addition of a sort of running commentary to each one. Think of it as not unlike the audio commentary tracks on DVDs. Insight is always good, so you'll see that for the pages of each of the three 24 hour comics, back-to-back-to-back.

   Along the way, you'll get glimpses into the process behind the creation of each one,  self-praise or critique on the artwork, annotation on things that were either unclear or cut out entirely from the comics, and miscellaneous additional notes that will pop up from time to time. I sincerely hope you enjoy.

Gift Card

   I found this card, among all my other birthday, get well soon, and other gift cards, while I was cleaning up my things. It's... worth sharing, I felt. In the same way the day after graduation became sombre two years ago, there's this where the same thing happens. This gift card. It's from Adam, sent to me while he was still on his mission. In the suits I'm wearing.

   Thanks, man. You too. Don't trip either...

Four Years Ago Today

   Class of 2010. It's been four years today since high school graduation. Four years. I'd be through four years of college, now, too, if I weren't on my mission right now. I'm not sure if that feels like a long time now. As I write this in 2012, it feels like even longer.

   My hair's so great in that.

Cider, Super-Speedy Style

   More anti-brony arguing. Wow. Not in response to anything in particular, just I thought I needed a good springboard for this, so I'm making one up. There's probably going to be that, so my excuse isn't all that far-fetched. But, it's not anti-brony so much as anti-... Well, no, it is anti-brony. Who says you have to be for children to be clean? Or even vice versa? For example, the episode The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000. Yeah, you know this crap is going to be awesome from that title alone. These guys are hard core.

   The cider in that episode is implied to be alcoholic. No foals are seen to be drinking it. Plus, it foams when you pour it, which is far more damning. Still, they don't state this explicitly, because this is still a kid's show and they don't have the guts in their blood like with the cider in Fantastic Mr. Fox. But it's there. Does this make Rainbow Dash, the one most excited for cider season, a functional alcoholic?

   We get to see the entire process of cider-making, though, and there's no time for fermentation. So, I guess it's not. Well, actually, there wouldn't even need to be: the only reason horses are able to digest raw grains is because of the fermentation that naturally occurs in the horse's cecum. This only raises more questions, though, like, why would they even need to ferment the cider in the first place? Okay, it further aids digestion. I guess that makes all the ponies functional alcoholics. Beer for my horses, indeed.

Correspondence 10/26/10 10:23 - 10:29

   Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own was written by Bono as a tribute to his father, and sung at his funeral. We here discuss what will happen when Bono will die and the Edge will have to sing a song at Bono's funeral, too. The final song Joey Ramone listened to on his deathbed was In a Little While. There is an incurable distance between the living and the dead. So it goes, I suppose.

Re: Theoretical Sequel Trilogy
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Oct 26, 2010 10:23 am
Oh man, I dreamt that Bono was dead, and the song "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own" was sung by the Edge. It was horrible. (Not Edge's singing; the fact that Bono was dead.)

Re: Theoretical Sequel Trilogy
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Oct 26, 2010 10:25 am
Would be a sad day indeed.

Re: Theoretical Sequel Trilogy
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Oct 26, 2010 10:28 am
Only, it was like, two years ago that he died, and he had been dead for two years. Also, some guy named Peter Peterson was dead, and I went around to people saying, "Bono's dead, man. Peter Peterson is dead, too." And I was listing all the dead people.
There's an uncurable distance between the living and the dead.

Re: Theoretical Sequel Trilogy
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Oct 26, 2010 10:29 am
So it goes, I suppose.

This Random Bit of Nonsense (Brave Rabbit: Long Ears, Slanting Eyes, Short Tail)

   Yup, that's what I'm doing these days.

http://old.soyuzmultfilm.ru/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=114

On Snipers and Rabbit-Holes

   This is going to be one of those boring personal emotional angsty posts. Woo. My apologies preemptively. If you want to get out, well, now would be a good time to do so...

   I've been going through something of a paradigm shift. With how I view myself, with how I view my friends, and with how I think my friends view me. There's a lot more... angst, than I remember there being, here than at any other time. Which fits, I suppose. Angst is fun.

   We're all people, I guess is my realization. We can view ourselves holistically if we want (for example, we're totally comfortable with the idea that we ourselves, like, poop and stuff, but we're rendered uncomfortable at the thought of celebrities or anyone doing that.) We can look at others, and look at ourselves, and realize others are themselves, but if they have an idea of "I" as much as anyone else does, it would be impossible to know it for sure. I've always thought that my "I" is strong- so then why am I so weak willed? Always thought it was a, virtue, how I leave my identity so undefined and open, how freedom to choose got placed above all else.

   But the question comes down to if I'm able to, how to put this, lead myself, as a sniper would lead his target. Get ahead of myself, predict what I'm going to do. I'm myself, though, so of course I'd know what I would do. There's still a certain pattern, a certain style, a certain flair there that is so inevitable. "Yeah. That's something I would say." I catch myself at activities that are so stereotypically me-- eating a bowl of cereal at the computer, listening to U2 and watching Friendship is Magic at the same time. I wouldn't have been able to predict that I'd do that, but it fits into what I would "do," and say, huh, that fits the pattern. I look at my friends, and I see the pattern there too, but I'm unable to predict what will happen next with any of them.

   Or with myself. I can't lead myself, I really can't. Comfort equaling restriction, both literally and metaphorically, it's got to be comfortable to have such a strict limiting identity. The more I go through the, the more it attaches to me, though- identity. I start liking things, and getting into them, and then viewing myself as a fan, and then I start to align myself to fit with that idea at the expense of others-- the opposite of the ostensible real purpose behind my wide-open identity. I stop caring about other identities, going down this rabbit-hole...

   This post is such a mess; I'm sorry... but it's an important mess.

   And I'll keep telling myself that.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, May 30, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Collin: So, I was expirimenting [sic], messing around with my newly-found [sic] smarts, and decide that, you know what? It's time to test other people's smarts, too.
So, here's what I did to do that...
I set out to write the WORST POEM EVER!
You know, what with the over-sentimentality, the mixed metaphors, the hackneyed clichés...
All of that Fidencia Solomon crap...
Marvin: ...
Collin: And then I took it down to Bambi's beatnik club, and read it.
You know, to test if they knew crap when they heard it.
Marvin: And?
Collin: Those guys know what's up!
They snapped me right offa that stage! Right offa that stage!
Marvin, thinking: Oh, Collin...

Experiment, by Fredric Brown

   "THE FIRST time machine, gentlemen," Professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. "True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds, five ounces and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works."

   The small-scale model looked like a small scale—a postage scale—except for two dials in the part under the platform.

   Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. "Our experimental object," he said, "is a brass cube weighing one pound, two point three ounces. First, I shall send it five minutes into the future."

   He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. "Look at your watches," he said.

   They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine's platform. It vanished.

   Five minutes later, to the second, it reappeared.

   Professor Johnson picked it up. "Now five minutes into the past." He set the other dial. Holding the cube in his hand he looked at his watch. "It is six minutes before three o'clock. I shall now activate the mechanism—by placing the cube on the platform—at exactly three o'clock. Therefore, the cube should, at five minutes before three, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform, five minutes before I place it there."

   "How can you place it there, then?" asked one of his colleagues.

   "It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there. Three o'clock. Notice, please."

   The cube vanished from his hand.

   It appeared on the platform of the time machine.

   "See? Five minutes before I shall place it there, it is there!"

   His other colleague frowned at the cube. "But," he said, "what if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at three o'clock? Wouldn't there be a paradox of some sort involved?"

   "An interesting idea," Professor Johnson said. "I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not ..."

   There was no paradox at all. The cube remained.

   But the entire rest of the Universe, professors and all, vanished.

Small Yellow Flower-Pocalypse Part III: Survival

   This is the zombie threat list, which I hope I'm the first one to come up with. I probably am, because it lists zombies at the bottom of the threat list.

1. If the zombie apocalypse came upon us, remember that the greatest threat to your survival is not the undead, but your fellow survivors. 
2. The next greatest threat is the environment.
3. Then yourself.
4. Then zombies.

   Most people only think of combat, but survival is a lot more than that. This lack of planning is exactly why, as far-fetched as it may seem, mindless slow-moving creatures will be able to take over most of the planet. It is thus always a good idea to be prepared: stock up on the essentials before the apocalypse. Don't just start when the warning signs become apparent, as the price to everything will have risen dramatically by then, and you don't know when the riots and looting will start (the riots and looting will be the second reason that decomposing ramblers will be able to take over the planet (see point 1.)) Start stocking up now. Like, right now. Or the past, although I suppose if you do that you don't need to survive the apocalypse. Increase the size of your food pantry. I mean it; this is not hypothetical.

   Aside from these essentials of food and water and toilet paper, you're going to need nonessential, comfort items. Not for yourself, you understand. After the apocalypse, these will be in such high demand it won't be funny. We're talking cigarettes, candy, coffee, drugs, pornography. Anything addictive or routine, that people can't live without. And weapons. These things generally come in very high demand in prison, they'll come in high demand here. Such a flow of goods will make you non-disposable to your team, increasing your likelihood of survival considerably. Meanwhile, though, I suggest cutting your own dependence on these things. Except weapons. And maybe toilet paper. Having nothing you need could only make you a shrewder bargainer.

   But, yeah, this is supposed to be fun, not an economics lesson. It's about how you'd fight the zombies. My own strategy? It's like yours, but also I'd totally wire a grenade to my heart so that I blow up as many of them as I can when my heart stops beating.

Small Yellow Flower-Pocalypse Part II: Backstory

   My scenario on the existence of zombies, my scientific hypothesis on how they could be possible (don't worry, I won't test it,) begins with a blood infection. This blood infection is caused by some virus or defect in the white bone marrow, which is in charge of making red blood cells. See how that works? Alright. This infection causes a sickle-cell-like condition, in which blood is formed irregularly. The condition makes vitamin C almost impossible to be absorbed by the body, which causes scurvy. Scurvy is not only a disease of the bones, but it also causes the skin to become flaky. Basically, leprosy, which meanwhile is also going on I guess. It causes both scurvy and leprosy.

   In real life, real science, not zombie science but we're switching to real science mode, leprosy does not cause your skin and limbs to fall off; it merely creates an ideal environment for gangrene to set in, which does cause all of those things. So it's like that.

   Okay, zombie mode again. The bones, meanwhile, are of course getting brittle, combined with the gangrene to bring on full-on rotting mode. Meanwhile, the virus is shutting down higher brain function, turning you all shambly. It causes an addiction to blood, because that's how the virus spreads, so the virus wants you to want blood. It also enhances scents sense somehow, neurological sensory stuff I learned once, because zombies need to smell the blood. I guess all of this is biologically possible.

   Which is scary.

Small Yellow Flower-Pocalypse Part I: Theories

   Okay, it's long been promised, but here it actually is.

   As everyone's entitled to their own fantasy zombie Apocalypse survival plan, everyone's entitled to a theory on why zombie Apocalypse fantasies are so popular, as well as scenarios as to how zombies exist in the first place. We'll deal with the psycho stuff first here.

1. Fear of conformity. Zombies=ultimate conformity.
2. Fear of outsiders. Zombies=ultimate outsiders.
3. Fear of ourselves. There's a zombie in every one of us. Uncanny valley stuff, just enough like us be maddeningly terrifyingly wrong.
4. Psychopathy. Relentlessly slaughtering everyone else is cathartic for us. We all want to kill, just, everyone. It's no fun to kill just one dude. You have to kill everyone else. Everyone who is not you. Sheep. That's why zombies make baaa noises. 
5. Distopianism as a genre- a world where the social contract is negated and it would actually be your obligation to break all the rules. Wish fulfillment on a grand scale.
6. Fascination with the cult of death. I guess.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, May 23, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT: 
Marvin: Wes Anderson's 2009 film Fantastic Mr. Fox... a veritable masterpiece!
Collin: Shameless plug shameless plug!
Marvin: It's got action, romance, George Clooney, comedy, sports, irony, heisting, music, bipedal anthropomorphic quadrupeds, whimsy, angst, self-reference, stop-motion animation... something for everyone!
Collin: Well, not everyone...
There's nothing in the for the stamp collectors!
Marvin: Well-
wait... what?
Collin: I mean it! I watched and rewatched that movie over and over again...
...(a compulsively easy thing to do)...
...and could not find one shred of stamp collecting in that film!
Marvin: uh...
Collin: PHILATELY IS A REAL THING, PEOPLE!!!
Marvin: oh, Collin...