Mock Man Press

I’m amazed and thrilled to announce that The Map of Zombies made its funding goal in under 14 hours!! Thanks to everyone’s generosity and awesomeness, my Linnean chart of zombies will become a reality!

The Kickstarter is still going, so there’s still plenty of time to get a map for your zombie-walking friend! If we reach the stretch goal of $10,000, everyone who’s backed will get a second, new map that I haven’t drawn yet (subject TBA — see the Kickstarter) so, then things will get really crazy. As for the current map, I’m still fiddling with it adding more zombies and making changes here and there (the version shown at the beginning of the Kickstarter is not final, needing a lot of color tweaking and detailing). I hope everyone likes the final result!

As I’ve been working on the map, I’ve received some questions about what is and isn’t on it. I’ll be posting the image soon, but ’till then, here’s the general guidelines I was working with:

* as a historical note, originally the project covered only infectious zombies, but then I went insane and decided to include everything. Basically, my goal is to list every full-length work of fiction centered around an animated corporeal dead creature. Except vampires, because they’re their own thing, even though there’s no clear distinction between zombies and vampires when it comes down to it. I am however making footnotes for “zombires” (vampire-esque zombies).
* The work in question has to FOCUS ON zombies/undead. If a zombie just happens to incidentally show up, but isn’t the main element of the story, I can’t guarantee it’s on there. (Though the Illuminatus Trilogy is listed…)
* This doesn’t come up much, but undead *in Hell* aren’t listed on the map. If you’re in Hell, you’d expect to encounter the tormented, writhing dead. However, if they manage to escape from Hell and wander the Earth, even just like, f’rinstance, around the immediate vicinity of the Seven Doors of Death, then they’re fair game.
* To be included on the map, works must be a full-length movie, book, video game or manga/comic/graphic novel. (There’s also one podcast.) It’d be impossible to separately list every single short story that involves zombies, although I’ve listed a few shorts that I think are cool.
* I haven’t listed any tabletop RPGs so far because even the ones that are specifically zombie-oriented (like “All Flesh Must Be Eaten”) don’t really fit on the map due to their sheer variety of zombies… any decent RPG needs to include zillions of possibilities and variants for everything, so it’s generally impossible to pin them down to say “zombies in RPG X are like such-and-such.” Of course, video games are often like that too — the T-Virus can create tons and tons of different zombie monsters etc. — but they’re more limited in scope than TRPGs so I’ve been listing them.
* The map also includes ‘living zombies’ and things that are considered zombie-like, mostly in the separate ‘alive’ category.

These are just a few rough guidelines that I was working with. Of course, I’m eager to get everyone’s comments and feedback on what favorite zombies definitely have to be included! I think I’ve listed everything, but there’s always more zombies creeping out there…

NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!