Holiday Gifting Zombies

There have been many recent articles posted about holiday gifting for zombies. Zombies are the ultimate consumers.

One recent article from Alabama: “9 holiday gift ideas for zombie apocalypse fanatics” by Cassie Fambro includes blades, shovels, seeds, first aid, water filtration and other survival gear.

Other articles focus on zombie-themed items (particularly “Walking Dead” merch), see for example MTV: “‘The Walking Dead’ Gift Guide: For The Undead Lover In Your Life” by Alex Zalben includes the Monopoly game (see zombie real estate) and also a t-shirt that says “kill them all”.

However, Zalben will presumably not be buying that t-shirt for children. Zalben, a dad, has recently been writing about the movie “Man of Steel” and about heroes killing villains. His piece “Why ‘Man of Steel’ Could Learn A Lesson From ‘Day of the Doctor’“:

when I think of kids, particularly my kid growing up in a world with superheroes who see no other option but to murder, I start to think that maybe I’m missing something. Maybe society has moved on from superheroes saving people, and I haven’t. The old chestnut is, “Why doesn’t Batman kill The Joker?” But if Batman was invented today, would he have murdered The Joker after his first appearance? Almost assuredly.

Recall other ZombieLaw references to Batman and Superman and clowns (like the Joker). These characters serve spiritual functions and like zombies, they tend to defy normative categories. Batman defies the law to preserve it, the Joker is insane because he can’t accept that Batman isn’t. But somehow Superman is a different story…

Is there no choice but to kill the evil zombies of the world? Can’t we instead find some way to give them a new life? Isn’t there something we could give them that would make them want to be good?

The real Superman wouldn’t kill Zod, he would transport him back to some inter cosmic prison void, “The Phantom Zone“. That might only delay the problem for another day and create all sort of factual inconsistencies. But the killing joke is a dangerous slippery slope … when is it ok to kill zombies? This is a question upon which Superman and Batman (and Green Lantern and Arrow) might disagree. These characters, though fictional, all have their own perspective and personal limits…

And speaking of different characters, here are a few books (straight outta the phantom zone) that you might want to stuff in some lawyers’ stockings:

“Dachshund” is coming very soon! And many more in the works…

But wait, what happened to “zombie”?? And “ninja”?

Well, ok, “ninja” is still mostly available free at ninjalaw.wordpress.com – a publication of that is forthcoming but the ninja has disappeared for a while. That’s what ninja do, surely to return.

And “zombie”? Well, zombies zombie. There is no shortage of other zombie books published this year already – See SlashDot: “Self-Published Zombie Titles Have Doubled Since 2012” reporting on data about twice-doubling of zombie book titles in “Zombies on your Kindle!“:

On Halloween night in 2011, there were 2,269 different Kindle ebooks with their word “zombie” in their title. But by 2012, that number had more than doubled, with 4,874 zombie ebooks there were now available on the Kindle. And this year? OMG! Amazon’s Kindle store now has 8,052 zombie ebooks!

Many of those are personal finance books; Bloomberg: “Zombie Personal Finance Books of 2014” by Suzanne Woolley.

Kickstarter was definitely not a good personal finance strategy. I did not properly budget a lot of the costs and severely underestimated the time it would take to complete this project. But the book is coming. I am in contact with the printer and binder and the hardcover version will probably not be ready for this year but very soon thereafter. December 21st (a year after the Mayan long calendar 2012 phenomenon), and that’s still a real possibility. If anyone who contributed to the Kickstarter wants a soft-cover copy instead, that can be arranged but I’m sure the hardcover will be worth the slightly longer wait.

All these books are part of a series of collections that use real case law to demonstrate the perspective of objects as characters. This is sort of similar to how Batman and Superman and Green Lantern and Arrow each have their own character traits, these character-creature-words in the real case law also develop a sort of character-perspective. The Justice League is a sort of monster mash.

Eventually, I hope to continue to make more of these books, maybe edit them shorter and add some illustrations? But I am over-ambitious and already woefully behind schedule on the book people actually wanted. It was never supposed to be about the zombies, but the zombies took off and the ideas expanded around it. Zalben was much more successful in delivering on his Kickstarter. His comic book about a teddy bear detective is such fun (and I love the T-shirt).

Speaking of T-shirts, the original ZombieLaw logo available on Cafepress merchandise – This is no longer the current logo but some people still like it. The new book title is just “Zombie in the Federal Courts” because I decided the first word should not be plural in this series – but these products are still available:

And don’t miss your chance, there are still some limited edition (only 250 were made) Zombie USB available -Buy a Zombie Brain USB on Amazon

Coming soon, the book… thanks for your patience, nom nom…

While you await my zombie book, may I suggest also “Thor and the Warriors Four (Power Pack) Paperback” by Alex Zalben or more of his Detective Honeybear. Zalben’s work is quality. I would love to have his work ethic, but my work is different. What is similar is that both his Thor comic and his Honeybear character are ways of taking very old character tropes (greek mythology and noir detective cliches) and making them feel fresh with childish ploys (the four young characters in the Thor book and Honeybear is literal a teddy bear).

Law is of the oldest of tropes, who reads case opinions? Maybe with a character theme…? Childish, but at least it’s a good gift…