With The Walking Dead breaking ratings records and topping direct market sales charts, what better time to discuss the undead phenomenon on Hard N.O.C. Life? So we wrap up Walker Week with an in-depth look at both The Walking Dead comic and television series and the genre of zombie fiction writ large.
Continue reading “Zombies! NOC ‘Em Dead with Angry Asian Man”
Have we reached peak zombie saturation yet? I know it’s Walker Week here at The Nerds of Color, and if the ratings for the season premiere of The Walking Dead are any indication, the zombie craze is just as viral as ever — and it’s spreading. The image you see above is a zombified Jughead from Archie. And no, that’s not a fan rendering either. It’s an actual panel from one of the hottest single issues in comics today, the sold out — and on its second printing — Afterlife with Archie #1. That’s right, the zombie apocalypse has come to Riverdale.
Seeing zombies overrun Archie Comics got me thinking about the zombie crossovers that infected the Big Two comic companies: DC Comics and Marvel.
Continue reading “Marvel vs. DC vs. Archie: Whose Zombies are Better?”
This is the story of a man that wears a steel pot for a hat, mumbles gibberish, and has zombies invading his garden. Your Job is to use plants to prevent the zombies from… ummm… eating your brains!
If this just seems too extreme for a movie plot, well it probably is. But it’s better suited to one of the best Tower Defense titles that has hit the mobile phone market. We are referring to the game Plants vs Zombies.
Its original release was a PC version by PopCap in 2005, but it made a splash on to the iPhone in 2010, and damn it, it is one of the most addicting things in my life at the moment — next to avocado sandwiches.
I originally wrote this as a guest post for Angry Asian Man back in 2010. I rewrote it recently for Nerds of Color with some updates. I still have chosen to write more about The Walking Dead comic than the television series, primarily to avoid confusion.
Continue reading “The Yellow Plague: Asian Americans in Zombie and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction”
This month marks the 10th anniversary of Robert Kirkman’s ongoing epic The Walking Dead. Image Comics is marking the special occasion by releasing an anniversary edition of issue #1, colored by Dave Stewart. If you haven’t been reading this book — particularly if you are a fan of the AMC TV adaptation — then you should be. The Walking Dead isn’t just a great comic book, it’s a revolutionary comic book; one that fundamentally altered the zombie landscape and helped usher in the zombie Golden Age of today.
In fact, I’d even venture so far as to say that Robert Kirkman is the zombie Frank Miller.
Wait, wait, wait: before your brain explodes from the nerd-rage, hear me out on this one.
This post contains a few spoilers of The Walking Dead comic. Please read on with care.
Continue reading “Robert Kirkman is the Frank Miller of Zombies”
I don’t mean the zombie survivors. I mean the zombies.
Ironically, The Walking Dead is pretty racially diverse compared to other zombie movies in the genre. Remember Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake? There are, in that case, two sole surviving Black men, although one (Mekhi Phifer’s Andre) is singularly stupid. Meanwhile, there are no other notable characters of any other race or ethnicity among the survivors. And how about 28 Days Later? Sure, the main female protagonist is a Black woman (Selena, played by Naomie Harris), but why is she the main cast’s only character of colour despite the fact that London boasts a 20% Black and 20% Asian population. In fact, most zombie movies are typically populated by an almost all-White (with a token or two) surviving cast; against this backdrop, I’m relatively pleased by the racial diversity of The Walking Dead, One-Black-Man-At-a-Time rule notwithstanding (more on this later in the Walker Week).
But, here’s my gripe: where the heck are all the zombies of colour?
Miss Saigon is a blockbuster musical in which a virginal underage prostitute falls in love with a white G.I., then shoots herself in the stomach so she can sing one last song with him with the hope that the white man will take their biracial child away from all the evil Vietnamese people to a better life in America. Jeff Yang challenged me to write a Zombie imagining of the characters 20 years after the end of the musical, wherein the Vietnamese woman, Kim, comes back as a zombie — and this short story is what I came up with.
The thing about beggars eating a bug to get a rash, I got that from something I read online by Linh Dinh.
Welcome to our recap of Season 4, Episode 1 of The Walking Dead, “30 Days Without an Accident,” which first aired on October 13, 2013! Also check out the Storify of our Sunday night live-tweeting!
Don’t click on if you don’t want spoilers. Then again, what are you doing reading a recap if you don’t want spoilers?
Continue reading “NOC Recaps The Walking Dead: Accidents Happen”
Last night, millions of viewers tuned in to AMC’s The Walking Dead for its fourth season premiere. And the Nerds were no exception. Throughout the broadcast, our very own Jenn Fang took to twitter to live-tweet the whole thing. Some choice tweets are below, but you can view the whole stream on Storify or follow @TheNerdsofColor on twitter. Use the hashtag #NOCemDead to join in on the fun as we attempt to live-tweet the whole season!
Continue reading “#NOCemDead: We Live-Tweeted the Walking Dead Premiere”
In honour of The Walking Dead‘s upcoming season 4 premiere this Sunday on AMC, I am re-posting this post, which originally appeared on Reappropriate in February 2013.
Spoiler alert: I’m going to be talking about the events of Walking Dead up until Season 3, Episode 10. If you haven’t watched yet and don’t want the plot spoiled, don’t read on.
Hours after his reunion with long-lost brother Merle, Daryl has chosen his brother over his new family of survivors. After escaping from Woodbury with a banished Merle, Rick and Glenn are unwilling to bring him back to the prison; Daryl decides to strike out into the woods with his brother rather than abandon him to the wilderness. Blood, after all, is thicker than water, right?
But, it turns out, that after a year on the road with Rick and the gang, Daryl now shares less in common with his brother Merle than he thought.
Continue reading “Glenn of The Walking Dead is the Best Response to Anti-Asian Stereotyping”
The chill in the air — and those moans in the distance — can only mean one thing: The Walking Dead is back! We at The Nerds of Color are very excited for the return of everyone’s favorite zombie drama, especially now that Lawrence Gillard Jr. has joined the cast — Wire fans, rejoice! D’Angelo and Cutty fighting zombies! So in honor of the show’s return, we are christening this week “Walker Week.” And in Nerdland, the Walker Week begins on a Friday (so what if Solomon Grundy was born on a Monday?).
Continue reading “Don’t Click — Dead Inside”