Comic Spotlight - Awkward Zombie
Switching gears today to dedicate a little blog post to something that I remember I started following all the way back since my teenaged years, a time in our lives when our sincerity can somehow feel simultaneously at its highest and lowest. A lot of the things we loved in our youth really do stick with us for the rest of our lives, so it's always pretty nice when those things turn out to still be pretty cool!
Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich is a long-running webcomic that parodies video games across a wide spectrum with great hilarity and charming cartoony visuals. Usually updating weekly, the comic is known for its parodies of many popular games like The Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, Ace Attorney, Metal Gear Solid, Super Smash Bros., and more. Hopping freely between game series and mostly without adhering to any particularly sequential order or overarching narrative, the comic is easy to jump into at any time. It would easily fit in among the best kind of short-form comic strips that you might find published in the newspaper funnies section back in the heyday of print newspapers, something guaranteed to be entertaining no matter how or when you decide to pick it up.
My first memories of it are probably the comics focused on The Legend of Zelda and especially the Super Smash Bros. series, including initially finding them in places like the artist's DeviantArt page (back when we had more fun, highly functional, and artist-dedicated sites for browsing cool fanart and such). I remember being so excited upon seeing the first release in a mini-series of comics focused on the newly-released-at-the-time Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Both the writing and drawings in Tiedrich's comics are so effortlessly funny, and their popularity often results in many comics being fan dubbed as others add their own interpretations to them. One video compilation of these fan dubs has over a million views, chronicling a very specific and extended joke focused on the Awkward Zombie comic-specific interpretation of the character Roy, originally from Fire Emblem, and his appearances in the Super Smash Bros. games across the years. The Awkward Zombie version of this character is a bit of a chaos goblin, to great comedic effect, and this exemplifies one of the greatest strengths of the comic. In a lighthearted way, it consistently injects so much fun interaction and added personality into the characters, story, and universes of the games it parodies. Oftentimes, that personality is a humorous reflection of the game as it is likely experienced by the player, simply pointing out ridiculous lore or absurd game logic.
Something else I've always appreciated about Awkward Zombie is seeing Tiedrich's participation in Hourly Comic Day, wherein cartoonists and comic artists try to document their entire day with comic panels depicting every hour. Here's Tiedrich's most recent one. The resulting comics are breezily casual, and great reminders that one doesn't need to put too much pressure on putting out absolutely perfect or polished things all the time. It inspires me to practice being creative with that mindset more often (much like Blaugust does, too)! So, thanks for all the laughs alongside the creative sincerity, Awkward Zombie!