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Handy Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland Survival Guide

August 15, 2009 at 7:15 pm · Filed under comicbooks, cool, driving, explosion, games, guns, internet, movies, odd, religion, scary

We all know that some horrible, flame-engulfing, blood-spewing, civilization-ending event is just around the corner. Some of us believe it will be nuclear holocaust due to our cavalier (read: dickish) attitude with other countries, while other believe it will come when Jesus returns and while the Christians rise to heaven the dead will walk the earth and eat all the Jews, Atheists and Muslims. And other religions as well I’m sure, but I figure those Rapture people mostly care about making that trifecta suffer the most.

Whatever the case may be, whether were fighting off radioactive mutants or  zombies returned from the grave by the loving peaceful Jesus, we can all agree that within a decade, were going to have to be fighting hordes of SOMETHING, probably in a barren, desert hellscape. And for that, you need to be prepared.

FIRST THINGS FIRST:

Waking up in a burned out husk of a building, sleeping on some moth-eaten blankets layed out over a wood palette, if you want to keep your head on your shoulders and your blood in your body, your going to need to figure out what the situation is, and what your biggest problems are. These are going to break down into one of three categories.

Roving Hordes: Whether it’s cannibalistic mutant rapists, wasteland thieves, or mindless zombies, they are going to be traveling in deadly, deadly groups that you should avoid at all costs. Most of your time will be spent hiding from these groups.

Shortages: In the desert wasteland, water will be a precious as gold. People will hunt and kill for some H2O. Also, they might want to hunt and kill for gasoline because the survival of nomadic groups will rely on their transportation. Also, you can forget about internet access and television, but don’t let this make you suicidal.

Fascist Dystopia: If you’re lucky, and I mean really lucky, there will still be enough people to rebuild small enclaves of society. However, with that old reset button firmly and irreversibly pressed, people will naturally become power-hungry and use fear and military power to enslave those who live within their borders. This would be a best-case post-apocalypse scenario.

CLOTHES:

There are two kinds of people in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and two kinds only. You will have to choose which suits you best before you change choice which suit fits you best.

Nomadic Warrior Hero: Are you a lone fighter, traveling from place to place just looking to eek out a survival by collecting water and stealing food? Do people often come to you looking for help fighting off bands of monsters but you just want to keep your head down and mind your own business to stay alive? And then you ultimately suppress your selfishness and risk your life saving the helpless fools? Well then, you’re going to want a lot of leather. And I don’t just mean boots or a jacket. Your going to want leather pants, boots, shirt, jacket, gloves, headbands, and underwear if you can find em. Nothing feels better in the hot, unrelenting sun like the feel of soft, cool, jet-black leather covering every inch of your body. Also, to keep things lightweight, wear lots of chains and metal spikes.

The perfect outfit. It looks so comfy.

Wasteland Psycho: If your going around raping and murdering innocent people, fashion dictates that you do it while wearing lots of BDSM straps and a hockey mask. Your going to need a strap for your rusty, blood-soaked machete, and you should just wear that across your back or your bare chest. You should also be literally covered in spikes, anywhere you can bolt them.

WEAPONS:

Your going to have to choose between projectile weapons which can be used at long range, or if you want to get up close and personal and get blood all over your sun-baked clothing.

Projectile Weapons: Projectile weapons will both be rare and readily available depending on where you are. If your in the South, it should be no problem as a 2000 census says each citizen in Florida owns at least 12 guns. However, you have to assume that most ammunition has been used in whatever conflict happened to create this situation, and in the ensuring riot/rapefest/bloodbath. But your going to want to have a sawed off shot-gun, if at all possible. Sure, it only carries two rounds at a time and have a decently long reload time, but it looks really cool! Also, if you run out of bullets you can club people to death with it. Also, maybe some sort of wrist-mounted cross bow thing. Because it just makes sense.

It makes so much sense.

Melee Weapons: Humans have always been at war with each other. From the first time a man picked up a rock or a stick, they have used it to bash in the skull of their neighbor. Well, sometimes your ancestors got things right. Pick up and stick, tie a rock to it, and bash in people’s skulls.

SHELTER:

More likely than not, the world will be made up of three kinds of places. Barren wastelands, ruins, and cobbled-together cities. Each will provide different places that would be good to live in. But remember, you don’t want to stay in any one place too long. Here are a number of places that work as a hide-out and why.

Ruined Buildings: Your going to want to find a building, preferably one with a number of floors. The higher-up you are, the harder it will be for killers, mutants and zombies to find you and eat you. Burned out Casinos (especially those in Vegas) are a plus, mostly because of how fucking awesome that sounds.

Tents: Easy to put up, easy to take with you, and small. Cover it with leaves and you have a camouflaged hut. Of course plastic and cloth aren’t exactly the most protective of all building materials. In fact, there are no building materials less protective.

Gasoline Refineries: In the future, gasoline will be very important to nomads and dangerous psychotics. So make sure to put your life in needless jeopardy by blindly defending a gas refinery. Also, because of how precious gasoline is, defend it by building an unnecessarily large and dangerous flame-thrower tower that wastes hundreds of gallons of the stuff. And, if at all possible, hang out in the open a lot, just walking around the fortified refinery, in very noticeable all-white outfits while in range of the deadly, homemade projectiles the psychos outside have crafted specifically to kill you and take over your refinery.

With these tips, anyone can survive the end of the world as we know it. Well, not everyone. After all, even if you’re the hero of the wasteland your going to have to kill a hell of a lot of people. 

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15 Greatest Lesser-Known Comic Book Heroes

July 21, 2008 at 6:45 pm · Filed under comicbooks, list

Everyone knows the time-tested adventures of Superman and the gritty crime fighter/super detective Batman, and who doesn’t know about Professor X’s “secret” mutant school, but just because those are pop-culture icons doesn’t mean they are the best, most powerful, or even close to the most interesting characters in the universe of comic books. Here are a few smaller heroes, who may not be power players (except for #3: Hellboy) but they are some of the most creative heroes ever written.

#15. MIRANDA ZERO

She is the shadowy leader of the Global Frequency, and she is the most powerful woman in the world due to the sheer power of her international web of agents. From Warren Ellis’s series Global Frequency, Miranda Zero is the leader of an agency with 1001 agents across the world who are dedicated to keeping the public both safe and unaware of the darkness and evil caused by nations across the globe. She has the entirety Global Frequency at her fingertips, making her more powerful then almost anyone.

#14. YORICK BROWN

He is the last man on Earth, which, due to what is presumed to be a plague, is now populated entirely by women. In the comic Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughn, a spontaneous disease killed every mammal or animal with a Y chromosome, except for Yorick and his helper monkey. His story is of his travels across the planet being guarded by a special government agent woman and in the company of a genetic biologist who hopes she can find out why Yorick survived and possibly save “mankind.”

#13. WALLACE

A quiet, sensitive, caring artist and the only decent man in Sin City. He, however, is also a Navy Seal. After getting drugged, beaten, shot and kidnapped, he turns to that training to bring down all unholy hell on the scum of the town. With his long, hippy-artist hair, he is unlike most other Frank Miller characters in the Sin City series. Easily one of the only truly honest people in the damn town.

#12. INVINCIBLE ED

Due to a mix-up with alien technology, a dorky high school kid and a tough bully football jock both gain powers from a magic alien orb only intended to affect one person with super-human powers. Ed gets invincibility, and the Jock gets strength, laser vision and an array of other powers that drive him mad. Invincible Ed, by Ryan Woodward, is unique in the way it portrays its hero as a less-than-popular kid instead of the stereotypical, muscle-bound hero that you see in most other superhero comics.

#11. RICK GRIMES

The undeclared leader of some of the last remaining humans on Earth in Robert Kirkman’s terrifying and entertaining series The Walking Dead. He was a cop, and now he leads a group, including his wife and son, from one place to another looking for somewhere that they can call home, and possibly start life over again. He is pessimistic, violent and yet severely moral and dedicated to survival and his family. His is the uber-hero in the vein of the stoic defender.

#10. ALAN QUARTERMAIN

Once a hero of British legend, he is now a decrepit, starved opium addict living in Arabia when Wilhelmina Parker finds him and brings him into the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. What makes him so unique is his persistence on getting better and over his addiction, and his undying dedication to chivalry and protection of Wilhelmina. Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman sees some of the greatest literary characters come together to battle the forces of evil that threaten England, and Quartermain is by far the most sympathetic of the collection.

#9. DREAM


From The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman, Dream is the god of dreams and can appear as the personification of story telling, dreams and nightmares. More commonly known as Morpheus, Dream is one of seven brothers and sisters who make up the pantheon of gods. Dream was summoned to this realm by occultists, but he freed himself and the series are different tales of his adventures.

#8. DWIGHT MCCARTHY

A rough and tumble photographer from Sin City, Dwight spends a lot of time snapping shots of cheating husbands and knocking back shots at Kadie’s Club Pecos. He is drawn back into a love affair with his ex who accuses her rich husband of abuse and kidnapping. When Dwight goes to investigate, it turns out that his ex was, in fact, a femme fatale and plugs him full of rounds. After serious facial surgery, he becomes a new man, with a new deadly vision: Taking revenge on the dame who messed up his life. Dwight is similar to a Philip Marlow or possibly Walter Neff (played by Fred MacMurray) from Double Indemnity.

#7. GOON

In a world of mobs, The Goon is a mobster hit man on the human side who works tirelessly to rid the city of the annoying yet powerful zombie mafia with the help of his massive muscles and helpful sidekick Frankie. The Goon, by Eric Powell, is set in a noir crime age, and although that genre was limited to drama in the films, the comic incorporates dark and outlandish humor in a way unseen in any other comic series.

#6. V

While some call him an anarchist, and others call him a terrorist, the smooth, educated, knife-wielding, bomb-planting violent activist of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta is unlike any other hero in comics. You agree with him, but just barely because of the severity of his actions, but his rationalizations, his flair, is genius and his background inexplicably command you to root for him, even during his most violent acts.

#5. THE GREAT MACHINE

The man who can talk to machines, Mitchell Hundred, is known as The Great Machine. Elected Mayor of New York after preventing the second plane from hitting the WTC by talking to the plane itself, Mitchell gives up the mantle of “superhero” to focus on task of Mayor and out of shame that he was unable to save both towers (instead of just the one). His weakness turns out to be a simple device, a bow and arrow, which is too basic to be controlled by him. The Great Machine appears in the comic Ex Machina, written by Brian K. Vaughn and Tony Harris. Mitchell’s ability to control things with his words and thoughts are noticeably similar to Jesse Custer’s “voice of God” power (see: #1). The series, as a whole, is very enjoyable.

#4. MARV

A resident of Sin City making a third appearance on this list is Marv. He is a tough-as-nails street thug, built like a the bastard love-child between a Linebacker and a mountain. With startling strength, impressive athleticism, and ability to get hit with boxes of bullets without dying, Marv is easily the deadliest person in the town, and is even used by Dwight McCarthy (see: #8) to storm the mansion of Dwight’s murderous ex-lover. He has a penchant for old cars, saying that most modern cars look like electric shavers, and a love of old country rock. He is the quintessential anti-hero who makes you feel kind of guilty for your whole-hearted support of his violent, bloody tactics.

#3. HELLBOY

With skin as red as embers, filed horns that make him look like he’s sporting aviator goggles on his head, and a giant, indestructible stone hand that was intended to bring about the end of the world, Hellboy is one of the most creative and enjoyable comic books characters to have ever been invented. Hellboy, created my Mike Mignola for Dark Horse comics, incorporates Lovecraftian lore and authentic cultural myths to create a believable, enjoyable series that has everything from bashing monsters to killing Nazis. Hellboy is a brooding yet affable hero wresting with his inner turmoil over his supposed apocalyptic destiny and this subtle inner-conflict, mixed with his fast-paced, immersive adventures, makes him easily the most readable character in comic books.

#2. DOCTOR MANHATTAN

Another character with unusual skin, Doctor Manhattan is one of the most powerful characters in comics, and certainly the most in the comic Watchmen, by Allan Moore. Created by a horrible accident involving the process of pulling apart atoms, Dr. Manhattan has control over everything as a subatomic level. He is basically apathetic towards most of human affairs and is incredibly distant from human involvement, but somehow he is a likeable, incredibly readable character. From creating people to braking things down to their atomic level with him mind, he is capable of anything, and for that alone he is worthy of being known as one of the greatest superheroes ever.

# 1. JESSE CUSTER


The character with the most horrifying background, the strangest friends and the most original power of any character in comics. He has “The Word.” He can command people to do anything he wants them to do. He is the host for the disembodied offspring known as Genesis, the result of the coupling of a Demon and an Angel. Genesis is more powerful than God himself, and he is now in the body of Reverend Jesse Custer. This puts him in the cross hairs of The Grail, a secret organization dedicated to the protection of the bloodline of Jesus, an invincible old west gunslinger known as The Saint of Killers, with perfect aim and endless bullets and even God, who is evil, scared and pathetic in comparison to how awesome Jesse is. Preacher, by Garth Ennis, is one of the most original and disturbing comics ever written and is a must-read for any graphic novel fans with a strong stomach and thick skin.

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