Page 54: Scarred for Life
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007I love this page. Another awesome job by artist Owen Gieni, whose work is getting better by the page.
Hey, cool news: Ain’t It Cool News has reviewed Last Blood! It’s pretty glowing actually, with quotes like this: “Zombie stories seem to be a dime a dozen these days. It takes either some kind of special twist or some pretty durn good writing to stand out from the rest of the herd. This web comic has both.” Post in the talkback and tell people your thoughts on Last Blood!
Also, CLICK HERE to see my mouse-drawn MS Paint sketch of this page!
June 1st, 2007 at 11:48 am
Bobby,
Just GREAT great stuff. I heard about your comic at AICN and after reading what you’ve done so far, I’m on board in full. I’ll be asking my comic shop to carry the book and I’m looking VERY forward to the future of LAST BLOOD.
I also self published a comic a few years back and I know how hard it is to do. My partner in crime on the project and I did a few Comic Cons as professionals, but in the end we never sold enough to keep the book going. I wish you the best of luck and it looks like you have already started moving totally in the right direction.
As for you worry that an animtaed zombie would be less scary than a real one for the opening of your independant film of LAST BLOOD… I have to disagree. A very dark and moody click of animation could be fantastic. Too bad you guys won’t be filming anywhere near New York or I’d would have killed to be a part of it.
So… great writing, great art and fantastic characters all make for a kick-ass comic. Keep up the good work.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Thank you very much, RocketeerZ. And yeah, an animated opening scene could work well if done right, and I think the music will be the key ingredient there to set the proper tone for what we’re seeing.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I’ve spent hours going back and rereading comments, but I can’t seem to find anything definate that says how long it takes for zombism to kick in. I know it was said (somewhere) that any bite would probably kill within 24 hours and once fully dead the person would become a zombie. If the person is killed instantly are they a zombie instantly? Does a bite to the jugular kill instantly? (Jimmy was missing a large part of his neck on that volume 2 cover a while back.)
I’m just trying to reconcile a timeline between Jimmy already eating his mom’s brains and Mustache Man going upstairs with the children. (Though isn’t his turning described as torture in previous comments?)
Sorry if this has been hashed and rehashed.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Ok, I need to read more carefully. Bobby said MM is in for 24 hours of torture above, so he’ll take 24 hours to turn.
Now I guess my question is “How did Jimmy turn into a zombie so quickly?”
June 1st, 2007 at 3:58 pm
I have said at least a dozen times that if you’re bitten by a zombie and you die from those bites, you become a zombie instantly after dying. If the zombie bites wouldn’t normally be fatal, though, it takes 24 hours.
June 1st, 2007 at 5:51 pm
How’s come the zombies look like the vampires in “Fright Night?” I didn’t think death would make your teeth go up past your ears.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:38 pm
So my question, which I’m frankly very surprised to not have seen asked yet, is this: What happens when a zombie bites one of the Vampires?
June 1st, 2007 at 6:42 pm
It’s actually been asked tons of times. The answer is that nothing happens — same answer for if a vampire bites a zombie.
Just one example.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Also, my incredible thanks to both the author and the artist responsible for this comic – I have never been so entertained while at work with any other webcomic. 🙂 It’ll make a great movie I’m sure. I just hope you don’t focus too much on the main leader zombie flying his plane around, dropshipping zombie paratroopers and firing bombs.. I mean, I don’t think it needs to be explained in such detail, and it would be a heck of a lot more dramatic to see tens of thousands of zombies rising up to the beaches from the murky waters of the coast, bloated with water, ready to feast. I’m just afraid that zombies using vehicles, planes, bombs, etc will appear “cheezy” to american audiences – Not that I particularly find it cheezy, because I understand the story elements you’re going for – But you have the ability to convey your ideas via this forum so we understand.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Ah, my bad – I thought I’d reviewed the forums better than that. =/
June 1st, 2007 at 6:58 pm
No problem, and thanks for the compliments.
“I just hope you don’t focus too much on the main leader zombie flying his plane around . . .”
In the first graphic novel (first four issues, first 110 pages or so), we’ll just see that briefly in flashback while he describes certain things, but if the comic book series is a success (no guarantee of that), there will be a prequel graphic novel that shows everything the First Zombie did to take over the world. He only needed to fly a plane in the final stages to find the last 10,000 survivors or so who managed to make it through the first 2-3 weeks.
“and it would be a heck of a lot more dramatic to see tens of thousands of zombies rising up to the beaches from the murky waters of the coast, bloated with water, ready to feast.”
Tens of thousands rising up from the water? Only the First Zombie came from the ocean. If you’re thinking about zombie armies walking ocean floors to get to other continents, that would take far too long and it’s not necessary, as I’ve explained many times (due to the international flights the zombies took on the first day). Also, in this story dead people don’t come back to life as zombies, like in lots of other zombie stories, in case you thought tons of people buried at sea would become zombies and storm the beaches.
“I’m just afraid that zombies using vehicles, planes, bombs, etc will appear “cheezy” to american audiences”
It won’t be cheesy when it’s just the First Zombie, who used to be a vampire and has special abilities and full mental capacity.
June 1st, 2007 at 8:07 pm
awesome update. also, the way owen went from the ms paint page to THIS is some kind of crazy awesome.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:02 pm
No don’t kill Mustache guy! We like him…. well… not at all actually… but we can’t just kill him?
Why not? We have to dangerousley waste time arguing the ethics first!
Heh. Torture fun. Best they try to cut of the bitten.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:11 pm
yeo scarred for life seeing a decapitation in front of em wow just wow,anyway i think this could be made into a movie ,i truly do
June 1st, 2007 at 9:24 pm
“Best they try to cut of the bitten.”
Definitely.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:30 am
How good is this webcomic?
I hope you’re sitting down, because I’m going to tell you…
It’s good enough to inspire me to drop all the other projects that I’ve been diligently working on and throw together a schedule on my own webcomic that I’ve been planning for two years. Basically, I’ve never seen a webcomic done this well, and now that I know that they can be this good (which is the only one I’d consider “good enough” for me to put my name on it), sorry Bobby and Owen, +ev and Sorethumbs don’t make the cut for me… but they’re still good.
Back to the point, I’m not trying to steal readers away or anything. Is there a possibility that I could get some opinions/suggestions/hints/verbal floggings from Bobby and Owen? Will you guys lend some of your wisdom?
Basically, what I’m saying is that you guys couldn’t possibly produce enough Last Blood to keep me happy, it’d have to be infinite. I’ll have to keep myself busy doing the next-best thing to reading your comic.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:43 am
“+ev and Sorethumbs don’t make the cut for me”
Have you tried “Marry Me”?
“Basically, what I’m saying is that you guys couldn’t possibly produce enough Last Blood to keep me happy, it’d have to be infinite.”
Call every comic book shop in whatever country you’re in and get them to order as many copies of “Last Blood” as possible. Failure to do so could result in only 110 pages of “Last Blood” instead of quite possibly 10,000 (over the next few decades).
“Is there a possibility that I could get some opinions/suggestions/hints/verbal floggings from Bobby and Owen?”
It depends on exactly what you’re doing. My theory on life in general is that everything is extremely complicated. E-mail me if you want.
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:34 am
awesome
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
“Minor spoiler: Mustache Man was bitten seconds before the start of this page” I could tell. Or, I suspected. After I saw your paint sketch and you described him as looking kinda sick, I knew it – Mustache Man would soon succumb to zombiehood! I think it’s very suspenseful that Math takes the time to tell him to go with the people. Of course that’ll cause issues later when Mustache Man becomes a zombie. Kinda Trojan Horse-ish. And the audience might not catch on until MM flips. They’ll probably just assume Math was being a good guy or just protecting his ‘blood supply’, depending on how they think of him at this point, when in reality it’s very ironic that he does so.
PS, the third panel, where Math has a gun AND a sword is sotally awsome.
PPS, everyone on this page is very happy and loves the comic very very much. This makes me happy. 🙂 I look forward to seeing EXACTLY how TFZ took over, that’ll be so cool.
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Heh. Really, just like most of the people commenting..love the last panel. Especially Murdo. He’s just full of badassness there. He finishes having sex with a super hot vampire woman(Possibly multiple times due to her ‘Let me know when you’re ready to go again’ comment in one of the last comics.)only to then start kicking zombie ass in the coolest looking way possible. He’s turning into my favorite character. Keep up the great work.
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Are you going to do something like have the TFZ enhanced zombies have glowing eyes in the movie? As opposed to the ones chasing our favorite psycho with an axe over in the nearest town that is.
O wait, maybe TFZ is playing with his food over there too?
Arrrgh! I want to see this movie!!
Bad visual image of the day – Jimmy’s mom’s body twitching and then suddenly re-animating in the midst of being eaten by her own child. Talk about a visual *ewwwwww* factor for the movie.
And watch Math coldy whack them both. I doubt Murdo could bring himself to do it…
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I hadn’t thought much about the glowing eyes aspect, but that might be a good idea.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:49 am
Yeah the glowing eyes would be a good idea, just some way of telling which zombies are normal zombies and which are being directed by tfz. and brellchild as for that mental image, i think that would be awesome…seeing jimmy pounce on his mother chomping down on her brains only to have her then reanimate and the two of them turn on the others.
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:06 am
“seeing jimmy pounce on his mother chomping down on her brains only to have her then reanimate and the two of them turn on the others.”
If you guys are actually talking about the brain itself, once the brain is damaged too much (and one bite would probably do this, I think), that zombie is dead, as in dead dead, like getting a bullet to the brain. Anyway, minor spoiler: We won’t see too much of the Jimmy/Jimmy’s mom zombie stuff, like practically none of it.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:12 pm
omg, Murdo looks fiiine.
June 4th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Just my two cents here – feel free to ignore them if you like. You mentioned earlier about the Zombies, “(due to the international flights the zombies took on the first day).” Were these zombies already ‘Zombified’ when on these flights, or were they unfortunate souls who had been bitten, and had just not turned yet (a far more plausible explanation for being on an international flight).
I think, (and again forgive me for being presumptuous) that Zombies flying planes is pretty hokey), but infected passengers who happen to disembark from said planes to infect others a continent away to be a far more realistic and more plausible explanation for how this disease could spread so quickly. TFZ could still control them a continent away (or could he??) and thus a coordinated effort on behalf of the zombies could be carried out to infect all of mankind.
Interesting website for you all to check out regarding Zombie Infection (though I don’t know if it’s applicable here or not) – neat anyways.
http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/
June 4th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
“Were these zombies already ‘Zombified’ when on these flights, or were they unfortunate souls who had been bitten, and had just not turned yet.”
Ken: I’ve explained all of this in detail many times before. Please search for those comments. Just bitten, not turned, for the most part, but it’s a very involved process, lots of things going on. Don’t want to spoil too much for the prequel graphic novel that shows every major detail of the operation.
“I think, (and again forgive me for being presumptuous) that Zombies flying planes is pretty hokey), but infected passengers who happen to disembark from said planes to infect others a continent away to be a far more realistic and more plausible explanation for how this disease could spread so quickly.”
Again, read all the comments if you want spoilers like this, but a couple points (repeating from earlier comments of mine): #1 — It’s not in any way hokey for the First Zombie to fly a plane when he used to be a vampire and has full mental capacity and retains all of his vampire powers and memories from when he was a pilot as well. #2 — There was never even a hint of a suggestion that the way the outbreak spread was from zombies flying planes. Never. The need for flight is only for the very end of the operation when the First Zombie had to fly around the world to smell out (literally) the last survivors (last 10,000 or so) and direct his troops on the ground to where they are to go kill them. His blood smelling powers are even better than Math’s.
June 28th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Wow, in the first panel where Math is flying down the staircase chopping a zombie head off, it looks like he’s going to kick the other two zombies in the head as he flies down the staircase, if you imagine it like that it’s just so incredibly cool! I hope that that ends up being a move he uses in the movie!
Awesome page!
November 20th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I have a shirt that says ‘I love Math’. Obviously referring to mathematics (which I loathe), but I’m going to think of it as “I love Matheson’.
God, I love this comic.
So much badassness, so little time, Oui?
I can’t wait for a new installment- but that would mean it’s getting closer to teh end of the story, and that will make me very sad. *sniffles*
You people are awesome.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:36 am
THIS IS THE BEST PAGE SO FAR!
February 8th, 2016 at 5:40 am
kinda cool that i am cousins with the person who illustrated this Owen gieni