Monster mash-up

They're problems we all have to deal with at some point.

As I slowly mutate into a man-eating zombie, where can I go for a good discount on tasty brains? How do I effectively communicate my feelings using a vocabulary limited to “(groan)” and “(louder groan)”?

And what do I do when my body's decay leaves me feeling, well, less than fresh?

OK, maybe those aren't questions we all have to deal with.

That didn't stop Omahan David P. Murphy from writing a book about them.

Murphy, a 54-year-old Omaha North High School grad, is one of two authors with Nebraska ties whose new releases deal with two recently popular things: the undead and the absurd. His book “Zombies for Zombies: Advice and Etiquette for the Living Dead,” published by Sourcebooks Inc. and released this month, is a step-by-step guide to thriving as a new zombie in an unforgiving world.

Part “Zombies for Dummies,” part corporate handbook and part “Chicken Soup for the Zombie Soul,” the book casually relates the horrifying, gory, somewhat depressing (but always hilarious) details of post-life.

“All is not lost,” reads the introduction welcoming newcomers to zombiehood. “However, make no mistake, something is.”

Murphy is joined in his Nebraska-born horror/humor pursuits by Van Jensen, whose new graphic novel (novel-length comic book) “Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer,” published by Slave Labor Graphics, tells the epic tale of a wooden boy with a conveniently long and sharp nose, a sardonic sense of humor and a score to settle.

Jensen, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln grad born and raised near Lewellen in western Nebraska, came to the project after his artist friend, Dustin Higgins, had an epiphany of sorts.

The two had worked together at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper, Jensen as a crime reporter and Higgins as an artist.

“I had just moved to Atlanta and he kind of just called me,” said Jensen, 27. “He told me about this sketch he'd done of Pinocchio, where he was breaking off his nose and stabbing things.”

Higgins decided the idea had story potential and asked Jen- sen to come on board as writer. “Things” evolved into vampires, and they took it from there.

“It's not something I would've come up with,” Jensen said. “It's almost that I'm not sure I'm clever enough to think that up, but once I started writing, it just worked.”

Jensen came to comic writing as a longtime fan and authority on the medium — besides writing his own material, he once covered comic culture for the Democrat-Gazette and he works part-time for independent comics publisher Top Shelf (he describes his work there as “whatever they end up needing me to do.”)

In short, he understands what works and what doesn't.

The idea of Pinocchio, a moral, fairy-tale hero to millions of children, hunting down and shanking hordes of demon-spawn seemed just ludicrous enough to work — a genre mash of '80s action-comedy movies (complete with midkill one-liners), old-time folk horror and revenge drama.

In Jensen's story, Pinocchio (closer to Carlo Collodi's original character than the cute Disney version) takes up the mantle of vampire slayer after the monsters murder Geppetto. With assistance from Geppetto's carpenter friend Cherry and an older, matronly Blue Fairy, Pinocchio goes about unraveling the nature of the beasts as they continue to attack his town.

“What we were going for was something that was totally ridiculous and silly on its surface. Our hero was kind of this jerk of a kid that ended up turning into this action hero-type, but there's kind of an unexpected drama and darkness to it too,” Jensen said.

So, yes, it's very funny, but surprisingly, it's not all laughs.

Comic vets — including Mark Waid, an acclaimed comic writer turned editor-in-chief of Boom! Studios comics — are already praising the book.

“It's funny. It's scary. It's suspenseful. It's romantic. It's the greatest thing I've read all year. And you'll notice my nose didn't grow one bit when I said that,” Waid wrote in an advance review.

The book also is the object of heavy anticipation among the indy-comic set, though it won't be officially released until Sept. 30.

“It's just amazing to see the attention it's getting,” Jensen said. “We never expected it to get this big.”

Murphy knows the feeling.

“It's sort of surreal to me. Everything I've ever done, for the most part, I've produced with my own hands,” he said. “This was kind of this collaborative thing that I wrote and then the publisher and my literary agent kind of just made it take off.”

He also credited illustrator Daniel Heard for bringing the book to life with his drawings.

Murphy said the idea for “Zombies for Zombies” came from years of working in the corporate world as an IT guy — “That concept of them telling you what not to wear, how not to act, what not to write, what not to watch” — and as a reaction to the world around him.

A big fan of satire and fake news outlets like “The Daily Show,” “The Onion” and “The Colbert Report,” Murphy decided to play on the missteps of government during recent disasters by writing his own version: a zombie apocalypse handbook, as it were.

“It's just that things are, you know, kind of stupid around the world right now. To me it kind of makes sense — you know, during Katrina and 9/11 the reaction was kind of like, ‘Move along; there's nothing to see here; keep spending.' It's like, even if you're dead, you can still be a good consumer. What if you take that idea another step?”

Though inspiration may have come from real life, the book is anything but political.

“I just love horror movies, and I really love zombies,” Murphy said. “It's just funny, I hope, and silly.”

As it turns out, both books also are incredibly prescient.

They come in the midst of a virtual monster explosion in pop culture, though neither author intentionally timed it that way. Sure, there's “True Blood” and “Twilight,” but there's also the zombie war novel “World War Z.” The CW has a new series called “The Vampire Diaries,” and there's next year's movie “The Wolf Man,” starring Benicio Del Toro. There's even “The Walking Dead,” one of the most popular comic book series of the past decade, soon to be an AMC cable TV series, and “Zombieland” starring Woody Harrelson, releasing next month.

The time, it would seem, is right.

“Yeah, I'm not sure how things worked out like that,” Jensen said, “But if it helps the book, we'll take it.”

Murphy agreed.

“It's kind of a perfect storm, I guess,” he said. “Who knew a handbook on morphing into a zombie would have its moment?”

Contact the writer:

444-1339, wesley.taylor@owh.com