Smurfs and the Zombie Apocalypse

[Black smurf] I stumbled upon an interesting little factoid from [a webcomic](http://www.menagea3.net/d/20081213.html) today.

It’s generally assumed that the modern Zombie apocalypse trope (disease/radiation/whatever turns people into brain-munching monsters, spreading the infection with each brain that gets munched) was started by George A. Romero’s [Night of the Living Dead](http://www.archive.org/details/night_of_the_living_dead). Not so!

> Yeah, les Schtroumpfs! The Smurfs! In the first book, [Les Schtroumpfs Noir](http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Schtroumpfs_noirs), a Smurf is infected by a disease that turns him black, non-verbal and agressive. He’s then compelled to spread it through biting.
>
>The story ends with a small band of survivors forced to do battle with a wave of infected descending upon them.
>
> AKA: the modern zombie apocalypse scenario, and one that predates Romero’s by a good nine years!

(from [Ménage à 3, December 13, 2008](http://www.menagea3.net/d/20081213.html)).

Gnap!

4 thoughts on “Smurfs and the Zombie Apocalypse”

  1. Further, the whole “brains!” part of the modern zombie oeuvre is actually from a single zombie film from the 80s unrelated to Romero.

    Romero’s zombies sort of munch on all body parts indiscriminately, thereby passing on the affect. This setting was used to highlight his themes on civil rights, consumer society and so on in each of his seminal movies.

    It was the “Return of the Living Dead” that brought us the “military bio-weapon goes astray, causing dead things to reanimate and desire your brains” thing.

  2. Thanks. Horror isn’t exactly my genre. I watched the first ten minutes of Night of the Living Dead when I was posting this, but that’s about it.

    Oh, and Shawn of the Dead, of course.

  3. That story was made into an episode of the classic cartoon series (a clip used to be available on youtube but got yanked), and I’m convinced that watching it back in the day laid the groundwork for my obsession with all things zombie. Gnap, indeed.

  4. Yay! I saw that on menage a 3 also and decided to find it, but then I remembered i don’t speak French…

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