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Page 6: Acclimation

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

I hope the zombies don’t acquire Francis’s sense of smell. I’m guessing they will, though.

CLICK HERE to see Bobby’s mouse drawn MS Paint sketch of this page!

145 Responses to “Page 6: Acclimation”

  1. Kirsty Says:

    So I was bored earlier and stumbled across a website for another comic I read (I voted for) and saw the banner for this comic and it sounded really good. Well I have just read it from start to this point and I have to say it far surpassed what I thought it would be look.
    Amazing stuff and I love the detailed work that goes into this. I’ll be checking back here regularly to read all the new pages ^^

  2. Krasno Says:

    Dozens of schaemiacs? Man, it hurts just to think about 65 x a lot of 12s’years of torture.

  3. Zaldaran Says:

    In my mind the image is about one million zombies suddenly smelling the humans, and in the first 5 seconds about 200,000 of them breaking their brittle legs as they run and trip towards the smell.

  4. Any Technology which is distingahhi'mtiredoftypingallthat Says:

    @Jhon:
    you’re right in that it WAS a lot of words, but I wouldn’t call that “big science.” It’s all gettable from 5 minutes on Wikipedia (which is the extent of my neuroscience experience, incidentally). Basically the sense of smell thing was bugging me and getting in the way of me appreciating the story, so I wanted a way for it to make sense so I could go back to enjoying the zombie madness. I’m really enjoying this comic on a “Pro Wrestling” level. NWO, baby.

    @jon: “Like putting too much AIR in a BALLOON!”

    @engineer:
    what happens when the supertanker runs out of fuel? Reminds me of The Raft from Snow Crash! Dirty religious fanatics are a little LIKE zombies, at least that holds true in my hometown.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Condensed_narrative
    http://igargoyle.com/archives/2006/02/the_raft_snow_crash.html

  5. Brandon Says:

    Wow all these questions facing mechanics of things, and realism are too much. This is a work of fiction, so get over it. Somethings in “Last Blood” can be explained, some can’t. Vampires can smell blood from crazy far distances, how? Can’t really be explained unless Bobby has something to say about most the time. It’s not like Bobby’s posing random crap like “And the humans bake cookies for the zombies and the zombies all die! THE END!” Just wanted to put my word in edgewise.

  6. Destok Says:

    So is AFP’s super intelligence another bite-inherited trait like flight or blood smelling? Or is it just a side effect of being really old?

  7. Bobby Crosby Says:

    Neither. He just happens to be super smart — same answer for practically all super smart people.

  8. Krasno Says:

    Too bad that AFP can’t pass is super brains, because then Sully would be a hell lot more useful.

    For the people bitching about the sense of smell, try to notice that many animals including dogs can smell blood inside a body, for example, adrenaline, thus knowing when someone is scared.
    And vampires can only smell blood (that’s why they can’t smell Schaemiacs), so if they had a “real” super smell they should smell anything. Ergo, it is magic. Issue solved, next please…

  9. Zaldaran Says:

    I never really saw the problem with the vamps being able to smell the blood. even if a group of people were to get into some underground sealed bunker, the trail of them heading down there would be around for days. bloodhounds can pick up a trail days old, and sharks can detect blood in one part per million of seawater. so I’m going to guess super smelling vamps will have no problem following them anywhere.

  10. Micah Says:

    @ Any Technology which is distingahhi’mtiredoftypingallthat:

    “Basically the sense of smell thing was bugging me and getting in the way of me appreciating the story”

    Then why don’t you use google and look at where this was discussed for like 2 pages in the last GN rather than bug us with it here? Besides, wanting a scientific explanation for the super sense of smell is almost dumber than wanting a scientific explanation for vampirism in general.

  11. Jerem Says:

    If anyone has read I Am Legend, you know that a large portion of the book is specifically dedicated to Neville FINDING the scientific explanation for Vampires, and he seemed to have come pretty close by the end of the story.

  12. Bobby Crosby Says:

    That must be why that book was so damn boring. I mention it a few times in an interview I did today —

    http://www.brokenfrontier.com/lowdown/details.php?id=1176

  13. Jessica Says:

    Just read your interview, Bobby.

    I too find it interesting that so few people have connected zombies and vampires. The creatures of the vampire crazes of the 1720’s in England were a great deal more similar to our modern conception of zombies than to the sleek, powerful, alluring vampires usually portrayed today.

    Strange that the interviewer thought the whole vampire thing might be passe. Vampires have been in style since before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, and they’re not about to go out any time soon, though their portrayal is certainly shifting over time. I think it’s really neat that you’re bringing them back to their zombie-like roots in the English tradition, however unplanned that may have been. (Sorry, took a course on the history of vampires in film and literature last semester, and now find it difficult not to ramble…)

    I’d also just like to say that I admire your confidence in the face of criticisms and warnings. I think this is a great story you have here, and can’t wait to see it on screen despite my general dislike for the horror genre in film. Love your artwork too, Owen. I think you guys are a good fit.

    Anyway, that’s my two cents… Love the comic, definitely love the colour in the sequel, and can’t wait to see how the story develops!

  14. Lance Says:

    Jeezus, I just read a bunch of comments to get here and I can say some people here really talk a load of it. At any rate, I have a question or two to ask.

    1: Francis was better at controling the undead than Sullivan, yeah? I assume because Francis could have millions heading for one spot, a bunch chaining up vamps and be a whiny little bitch all at once, while Sullivan had to have them stop shooting just to give orders. So am I right to assume?

    2: The vampires with the best smell passed it on to Francis and thus to his Zombie army. The Vampire ‘family’ passed on the ability to fly to Devian. So will we be seeing any other abilities aside from the super sight one? Also, is there any ability that is passed on genetically, but not through bite?

    3: Last one. this is a statement, not a question. Everyone who reads the damn story, stop suggesting your infeasable rubbish when you and probably Bobby have already covered that it doesn’t matter! Ship convoy?forget it. Bitching about smells? Shut up and enjoy the story. Also, brainless doesn’t necessarily matter, anyone who knows jack shit about zombies know that they have at least the needed motor function to hunt and eat, so giving them super smell just adds to the ‘Unstoppable Murder Engine’ problem that all zombie stories have. Tireless, merciless and as fr as I know dont feel pain. Let’s see some WLB argue with that logic in this story?!

  15. Lance Says:

    Forgot to say. Anyone who even tries to hit me with the logic Zombies eat therefore they need energy to function, or that they must feel pain cause their brains function to keep moving. Zombies are impossible by any and all standards to begin with. Shambling undead people, their faces are rotting off and they dont feel it. Without someone controling them they work off the basic principle one needs to survive (obviously not clever enough to know they’re dead) EAT!

  16. Lance Says:

    Sorry for the tirade Bobby, I just want to get on with the story. Nice work once again.

  17. Bobby Crosby Says:

    “Francis was better at controling the undead than Sullivan, yeah?”

    Maybe a little. He had a few weeks more with them than Sullivan.

    “Also, is there any ability that is passed on genetically, but not through bite?”

    All of them are passed genetically, even stronger than through bites.

    “So will we be seeing any other abilities aside from the super sight one?”

    Yes.

  18. Cody Says:

    pardon me,
    this may have been asked already, and if so i have for sure missed it.
    but anyways, if WLB started making the zombies and they went out and made more zombies would the ability to smell humans from a very long distance not get nulified a little bit.
    or am I jsut on drugs and have no idea what i am talking abot?

  19. Kamatu Says:

    Let’s see, we have the mass gathering of zombies from one direction by Francis, butchered down to a certain extent by the vamps and Sullivan’s zombies. This would give a potential temporary clear zone in some area (depending on how Francis gathered them, from one side or concentrated them on one side from all around) that could be reached. Vamps do the scouting and move the humans around with Sullivan’s zombies able to screen off any milling groups that come close. It could work that way, would be a nice epic bit of the story too.

  20. cardavet Says:

    Math is a genius, instead of letting rage out, math is gonna let him sit there chained up getting more pissed by the second. When the acclimated zombie horde shows up, Then you set him free…….

    okay so maybe they just forgot about him, but thats what i would do heh

  21. Kopla Says:

    Heh, he said “living vampires”. What a hoot! (Not questioning it, just find it funny)

  22. FFXI Puppetmaster Says:

    My guess is they have about 10 days to find a solution before the enhanced zombies will start to pose a problem. Many of the early ones would have been send across the world, and few will be within range. But as the days pass, more and more e-zombies will emerge, and they will all migrate towards the humans.

    I doubt they will be running though… they have all the time in the world, and the only schaemiac that could make them run is dead. Probably…

    Unless ofcourse, not all e-zombies are created equal… new vampire powers emerge from time to time (super smell, flight, etc), so some zombies will likely exhibit strange new powers as well. Seeing as all but a small group of humans is turned into zombies, I’m expecting some serious nasty shit to emerge 😉 Flying zombies, ‘smart’ zombies (regaining some sense of awareness), hivemind-zombies that can control the zombies they created themselves, etc… (Worse case scenario: 6 billion Francis zombie-clones, 30 days from now 😉

    It’s going to be fun watching the story unfold 🙂

  23. Krasno Says:

    ““Also, is there any ability that is passed on genetically, but not through bite?”

    All of them are passed genetically, even stronger than through bites.”

    That means that should Murdo have a vampire kid, the kid would inherit the full power of Val’s nose probably. Neat.

  24. Tegu Says:

    Not full power, because Val bite Murdo, though the kid would have all of Murdo’s nose, which is likely to be comparable to Math in strength, eventually. If, and I stress the if, zombies begin to manifest other vampiric powers through mutation, has anyone considered how dangerous a super-strength zombie could be? I remember Bobby had said that we weren’t going to have multiple vampires turn a human, thus they would only get one power each, but the same is not true for zombies. They bite en mass. We could get a “super-zombie” form this. That is, IF random powers manifest.

  25. Anko Says:

    “My guess is they have about 10 days to find a solution before the enhanced zombies will start to pose a problem. Many of the early ones would have been send across the world, and few will be within range”

    You grossly underestimate the situation. After two weeks, the number of survivors worldwide was in the hundreds of thousands TOPS. Over 90% of the world population was probably zombified within the first week.

    “I doubt they will be running though… they have all the time in the world, and the only schaemiac that could make them run is dead. Probably…”

    Listen to Math, he knows what he’s talking about. Zombies don’t need a schaemiac controlling them for simple things like running after food. If they smell it, they’ll run for it.

  26. KennyC Says:

    I know this has been said 1000 times so far by everyone, but DAMN do I like the coloration. Very evocative of the mood of the comic.

  27. Jesse Says:

    Lance: What’s wrong with analyzing things? I never got the impression that the guy whose name I don’t feel like looking up was actually nitpicking about sense of smell, but rather offering some insight as to why the smell thing didn’t bother him. This comment section is for general discussion about the comic. If someone has a problem, they can just skip over any comment they like or not read the comments at all. The wonderful thing about the printed word is that it doesn’t waste anyone’s time who isn’t willing to let it do so.

  28. Bobby Crosby Says:

    I agree with Jesse.

  29. nathan Says:

    So “inheriting” powers through genetics yields stronger powers than bites…
    so I agree with the “family” idea. It’s kind of like breeding horses, but you know crazy vamp powers. Seems odd that these powers would not exist anymore.

    I mean, if the average (or whatever) smell sense is 30 miles and Val’s was 1000, that means that there was a whole bunch of selective breeding going on. So quick question: How old is Val?

    Then there is Devian, while she stated she wasn’t as strong, she can still fly. A valuable ability, or so Nathan Petrelli would say, but she’s the only one. So what, was there a violent battle between “common” vamps and “uber” vamps in the past?

    Or is alot of it just random?

  30. Schick Says:

    i just have to say this gets better by the day.

  31. jon Says:

    since WLB didn’t personally bite and create all the zombies himself, will the effect (super smell) get weaker as the zombies pass it along? does this mean that there are different classes of zombies then?

  32. ChaosAptom Says:

    something completely different:
    creepy thought: couldn’t the children donate blood(3 children 1/2l each) and then every adult is turned
    they drink the blood to sustain themselves-fight against the zombies
    then drink the cure

    and in the given situation ZombieSurvivalGuide recommends a Blip ; )

  33. Anko Says:

    “couldn’t the children donate blood(3 children 1/2l each) and then every adult is turned
    they drink the blood to sustain themselves-fight against the zombies
    then drink the cure”

    No.

  34. Lance Says:

    Sorry Jesse, I guess you’re right. I just hate the way people claim to be fans yet insist on poking holes in the story that Bobby as worked on to bring us every few days.

    Sorry again Jesse and Bobby.

  35. Swag Says:

    I said:
    “You’d think that the vampires would know whether or not zombies get their powers, since they already knew a blood-starved vampire would become a schemiac (or however its spelled) and make zombies that they can control instead of vampires.”

    Anko replied:

    “Actually, it would be smart not to think that – if you recall, Devian was explaining about how this was a children’s story that she listened to as she grew up. I think it’s safe to assume the majority of vampires doubted the very existence of schaemiacs. The ones that were born vampires heard this as a bedtime story, the ones who were turned probably never even heard about schaemiacs, and even if they did they probably wouldn’t have believed it.”

    Bobby later said:

    “It’s been discussed many times recently in the comments that Addison knew of the cure because of a previous super smart vampire who made it 2,000 years ago, and I’m pretty sure I said that a schaemiac was involved at the time. There’s probably been dozens of schaemiacs throughout history.”

    So this is directed at Anko:
    If theres been dozens of shaemiacs throughout history, why would it be a children’s story to vampires? Also, judging from the reactions of AFP, it should safely be assumable that he already knew schaemiacs existed. Isn’t it then safe to take it one stretch further and assume all vampires knew they existed? Some of these vampires are really really old, over time I’m sure at least one or 2 of the old ones (not including AFP who knew they existed based on the flashback with Sofia) have met and possibly even fought against some of the past schaemiacs.

  36. eyelid Says:

    disclaimer: everything is neat, I like this comic

    small suggestion: having the acclimation phase ALWAYS be EXACTLY 32 days seems kinda fake, like saying pregnancy is ALWAYS EXACTLY 40 weeks… nothing physical is ever quite that precise, AFAIK. I’d say “approximately 32 days to acclimatize.” you know. in future movie(s).

    no big thing though. Just something that struck me as “too rule to be real.”

  37. Krasno Says:

    “since WLB didn’t personally bite and create all the zombies himself, will the effect (super smell) get weaker as the zombies pass it along? does this mean that there are different classes of zombies then?”

    No, that would mean that the zombie bit by a zombie bit (25 times) bit by TFZ would be less of a zombie and that TFZ’s control over it would be weak.

    “If theres been dozens of shaemiacs throughout history, why would it be a children’s story to vampires?”

    Anko, I want to answer this. Think Swag. Dozens throughout history. Do you know how many years that things has? Ancient Egypt was 5500 years BC, and now we are in the year 2008. That is almost 8000 years.
    If there were 50 schaemiacs (wild guess), that would mean that there was one every 160 years. In the ancient world, were travel was difficult, it would mean that probably most of them appeared in those ancient times since they couldn’t travel fast enough to get blood when they didn’t have some near (and think that they couldn’t preserve it like today, it needed to be fresh blood!). Hey, maybe some mummies were actually schaemiacs (wow, this gets better and better) that were mummified during hunger pains (for those who claim that they would rip their hearts during the process, remember that they only did that to VIP’s) then some guy finds it and gets zombified (the curse of Tutankamon?XD).
    And travel being that difficult, stories often get changed and transformed into legends (the manticore was based on tigers, the chimera on lions, etc) and then into bedtime stories. And remember, AFP wasn’t around in ancient egypt (unless Bobby says so).
    I got carried away, please ignore all the shit I said.

  38. Bobby Crosby Says:

    “No, that would mean that the zombie bit by a zombie bit (25 times) bit by TFZ would be less of a zombie and that TFZ’s control over it would be weak.”

    Uh, no, that’s wrong. I’ve never said anything like that whatsoever, so it’s strange that you’d state that as a fact. Anyway, he controls all the zombies equally that were involved in the chain reaction he started (as opposed to Sullivan or Sofia or any other schaemiacs’ zombies). Also, my position is that there was no further deterioration of the sense of smell among the generations of zombies. The reason for that is something to do with the difference between zombies and vampires. The zombies have the advantage of not losing any of the power of the biter’s senses.

  39. Carpe Cerevisi Says:

    Loving this comic still guys. Keep it up.

    And to all those comments “poking holes in Bobby’s story”, “nit picking” and over analyzing:

    STOP! Its a FICTIONAL STORY – enjoy it as such. The beauty of fiction is that it does not require 100% realism. Who cares how it works in story versus how things work in reality.

  40. Krasno Says:

    Sorry Bobby, I was trying to say that implying that the abilities passed on the zombies weaken as they are passed, that would mean that the link to TFZ should be equally weakened, which is impossible. I didn’t explain myself correctly, my bad.

  41. Engineer Says:

    @Lance,
    Oh, I wasn’t nitpicking. I was merely stating some facts and a different scenario, possibilities only. Nothing at all wrong with Bobby’s story. I love it to death (get it?) I just love the way the story gets my survivor mind racing, what would I do? what thoughts and plans would pop into my head if I was there with them? I know most would be impossible or improbable, but I still enjoy the ideas and hashing them out. I also enjoy sharing my ideas with others.

    @Any Technology which is distingahhi’mtiredoftypingallthat:
    That’s why it isn’t such a good idea. But it would be decades before your burned up all that fuel, even if you sped around all the time. (if you could ‘speed around’ in a ship) I was the oil king on my ship when I was in the Navy, so all I did was calculate usage and requirements. If you were already sitting in a port with all the components, ships, and the personnel in place, and it was a ‘normal’ zombie infestation, then you could maybe make my plan work. But not in this story. and that’s just fine with me, because I LOVE this story.

  42. eyelid Says:

    Cerevisi: Making the story more realistic (i.e. not-real bits fitting well with/complementing actual real-world bits) helps a reader/viewer suspend disbelief. That’s always a benefit. You can get more into the story if it all seems logical/makes sense.

  43. Gillsing Says:

    “Uh, he (Sullivan) can smell blood too, of course. He’s been going after the human blood scent at full speed for a while now.”

    I read the above after reading this page, and it seems kind of difficult to use a 10 miles range to find humans when they are so scattered. Unless it only covers the run towards the school, but that’s when I begin to wonder why he didn’t seem to have established a modern communication link with AFP, given that they seem to be such good pals and everything. Seems more likely that AFP, who certainly seemed to know where to land his plane, would’ve been able to simply tell Sullivan to head for the school. Which would make the ability to smell the humans unnecessary.

    If they were concerned with signals from Sullivan being tracked/noticed by Francis, perhaps a beacon could’ve been used to at least let Sullivan keep track of AFP whenever AFP so choose? Though, then again, perhaps AFP didn’t want to risk Francis noticing the beacon’s signal and getting the idea that there might be someone out there who’s meant to receive that signal? Someone he should prepare for.

  44. Trilbydude Says:

    Hah. I thought it was sullivan who came out of the ocean…

    and is that a cagey ragey I see..?

  45. Amanda Says:

    I’d still rather have Math be a vampire

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