The Stiff: Chapter 6, Page 230
I’m on vacation right now, so I probably won’t see this page go online ’till I get back. I took a break between Chapters 5 and 6 of The Stiff (not as big a break as I took from 2007 to 2015, of course -_-;;) so the art and some other aspects of the story changed a bit. I think it holds together, though.
Spoiler if you read this: I’m currently working on my two followups to The Map of Zombies, The Map of Robotic Threats and The Map of Alien Invasions! I went into these topics ambitiously, and now I’m sorting through more than 100 years of robot & alien stories and movies with all the decisions this involves (i.e. what REALLY constitutes an alien ‘invasion’, anyway…? And what REALLY makes a robot ‘threatening’…?) Compared to zombies where I tried to list literally everything (except for those which I obviously couldn’t bear seeing every time I looked at the map, like “Nudist Colony of the Dead”), the vast amount of stories in these genres makes it much more necessary to make editorial decisions about what to include and what not to include. Thankfully, at least, in the past 10 years zombie movies have outnumbered movies about aliens and robots, because it’s much cheaper to film some actors in pasty white makeup than to design decent-looking aliens and robots… whew!
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
I wonder if it is zombie. Can’t wait for next post.
I’m interested in the parameters you’re using for these two maps. Conceivably, “The Screwfly Solution” could appear on both the Map of Zombies and the Map of Alien Invasions.
Nice to see “The Stiff” up and running again!
It’s amazing how much a simple screentone adds to the first panel. Nothing at all is happening, but it is disquietingly ominous all the same.
Do you remember a horror manga called “Horobi’? I can’t recall the artist’s name, but I do remember his monsters were never really frightening. This didn’t really matter to me, however, because he could draw panels with seemingly innocuous subjects–the level gaze of a housecat, the pool of light shining in an aquarium–which had an unnerving effect all out of proportion to their mundanity.
I remember “Horobi”! It was a pretty cool series with a lot going on… cults, giant monsters, psychic powers if I remember correctly. And yeah, his art was very moody & creepy, despite the somewhat weird character designs. Definitely inspiring to me! :)
Now imagine an invasion of invisible aliens that took over human corpses! Been done back in 1957 or so and it had some nice scares in it. Prefigured in some ways “Night of the Living Dead” called “The Invisible Invaders.”
So invader zombies from space? “Night of the Creeps” are alien bio-warfare organisms that are designed to turn other life forms into ambulatory egg factories and infect more. That alien ship is still looking for them to eradicate them from our world.
@Ken and NightGaunt49 — Alien invaders is a really broad category compared to zombies. I think for space reasons I may have to discreetly leave most of the ‘alien zombies’ on the zombie map and have the aliens map focus on other things…. ;)
@Jason Thompson: SPACE reasons?
Jason, I forgot to mention the cool “daydream” half-tone in the penultimate panel. It’s very Manga-esque and I can’t recall seeing you use this particular effect before. Along with the shading on the cheeks it renders the “blush” sound-effect superfluous. Although I suppose you can’t really call that a sound-effect, can you? Is there a specialized Manga term for it? (“emo-effect”?) Is there a term for all the various screen tone atmospheric effects you find in Romance Manga?