14.3.12

Zombie picture book tales and crazies getting a kick out of hitting things that refuse to die...

Ick yeah! It's the return of horror picture books, the return of goofy poetry and the return of geekish cult content! Today's picture book manuscript is titled "We'll Destroy All the Zombies" and unashamedly riffs on the things that are think are coming to be a bit typical of me.

Typically enough, I've had fun quickly cranking out rhymes from the perspective of zombie hunters whose main interest is the utter annihilation of the living dead. Looking over it I realise that the zombie hunters are well and truly merciless hateful psychopaths who get high on violence and who've dehumanised themselves through their mission to massacre the revenants. I'd say it's a sympathetic portrayal for zombies, this one. They don't get to do anything but get condemned and slaughtered by a range of killcrazies. Back-to-life is hard for the no-longer-dead, indeed...

Anyway, what's interesting about this manuscript is that I've really pulled back from incredibly detailed picture description and given the imaginary prospective artist almost total free rein to interpret that material as they will. As a control freak who really enjoys reeling out lengthy descriptions of the visuals I'm imagining, this is a little unusual. I attack illustrated story manuscripts and comic scripts in elaborate fashion and don't feel comfortable leaving them with scant detail of what's appearing. As an exercise in changing tack a little, "We'll Destroy All the Zombies" is an ideal piece considering it's a poem where the concept is more crucial than specific narrative points. Of course as I do these things I'm having a conversation with an artist who doesn't yet exist - partly guiding a hypothetical person through my ramble and trying to convince them that the thing in my head that I've splashed out onto a word processed document is something really cool that they should work on.

I'm spending a lot of time talking to imaginary people on this mission. If I dwelt on it it could become a bit distressing, so I just concentrate on cranking out the words and conjuring up corny rhymes like...


We hunt zombies, that’s what we do,
We charge ‘em down and run them through,
We leave behind a trail of grue,
We’ll destroy all the zombies.


Damn, I love the word "grue" and I love writing slightly macabre picture stories...

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