About the comic

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• Previous comics
• Why zombies, again?
• Character biografies
• Political background & controversy
• The location

Previous comics

Before Halloween 2k4, we drew a few similar comics. First there was President Evil, which simply started as a spoof of the movie Resident Evil and the series Dragonball Z and later evolved into an epic Matrix-like fight for humanity. The main characters were friends from our school class, making fun of each other and shouting out random insider jokes. Since we started drawing not long after 9/11, the bad guys had to be both Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush.

Inspired by the awesome Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, we did our own Halloween comic. It contained two stories, one by Kristof and one by me. His part was about my character waking up and going to school, and then something strange and scary happens. Suddenly he wakes up again, goes to school, and it just gets crazier and crazier. Mine was very Futurama, with Einstein kidnapping a poor guy into a distant future, were he runs into Pacman versions of the Futurama-characters. He realizes that the world is in the hands of a fascist America when he fails to speak English and is imprisoned. There was no happy ending, nor was there much humor in the story, so nobody really liked it.

Nevertheless there had to be Halloween-comic the following year. We already had a funny story, 3 colored pages and some more unfinished pages, but we abandoned the project because we had missed the deadline. It should have been about a group of students exploring the reason why nobody is allowed to enter the school park. At night, they sneak in and run into the deadly killer squirrels. The comic already had much in common with H2k4: It was in grayscale, the location was our school and the squirrels looked very much like the zombie Pacmans. On the other side, the characters were simply human, and the story was much like the typical American horror movie where teenagers are killed off one by one. To add, the resemblance with John Rios' Resident Beaver is pretty obvious.

Why zombies, again?

Probably because of the many new zombie movies that came out during the time we were actively drawing comics. Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead are some of them. We thought it would be funny to put people we knew in these surreal situations, let them be scared of, run away from, or fight against zombies.

Character biografies

The story for Halloween 2k4 was originally written for a small audience, the students at the school we went to. In our previous comics the characters were exaggerated versions of a few fellow students. This time we felt that we shouldn't just include people from our class, but from the whole school. We realized that we had become a part of a larger community that extended beyond our own classroom. We tried to put as many known students as possible in the backgrounds, so they would have fun looking for themselves.

Thomas
In reality, he is mostly known for playing guitar really well (he also played in a band), his ever-changing hairstyle and his straightforward attitude. His hobbies range from photography, painting to carpeting, modifying his moped or car. In the comic, he is the main character, since he only was a sidekick in previous comics.

Lilith
She was always a bit in the background in class but one of Kristof's friends, so we thought we should make her a main character.

Christian
At the time of writing, he was new in the class and still fitting in, so we thought it would help to make him an important character. Nowadays he is fascinated by motorcycles, road trip series on TV... uhm... yeah.

Gruftie
His voice is his weapon in a constant fight against stupidity all around him. He became quite a prominent figure at the school after he was elected school representative a year before. In his term, he didn't change much but did organize a foosball tournament.

Johanna
Seemingly always pissed off about something; she often stood out for making complaints to the teachers. She probably felt that she was being treated unfair by male teachers, which was totally unjustified according to the male students. (Most of the students in the class were female, as well as most teachers)

Julian
After Gruftie, he was the school representative and a true politician. Being very "left" and willing to go on strike to reach his goals, he was very popular for the pupils but annoying for teachers and especially the principal, who he constantly bothered.

Ingo
Being one of Julian's close friends, he supported him in "political" matters.

Stefan
Originally we didn't want to appear in the comic ourselves, but we couldn't resist. I appear on pages 2 & 3 and later turn into a zombie, as you can see on page 17. On the cover, you can see me hanging on a pole just above Johanna. Also check out the Credits.

Kristof, also known as Tori
He also appears a couple of times in the background, on page 5, 8 and 17. You can read a short biography in the Credits.

Theo, the old man
When you don't have any change and you want something to eat from one of the vending machines, he is the person you go to. We don't know if he really knows about everything that goes on in the school, but we like to think so.

Mr. Seidl
Our most loved physics teacher, because of the way he makes all the lessons enjoyable with his extreme gestures. Sometimes female students called him a macho or a sexist, since he was often joking about women and technology. We had many discussions with him that were hilarious, but if you wanted a good mark you definitely needed to study hard.

Other appearances
Two of Thomas' band members appear on page 3. On the same page, you can see my brother Peter (second panel). The people who have a secret meeting on the 2nd page are the school's principal & former minister of education, Mrs. Gehrer. The zombie that is killed on the 7th page is a friend of ours (recognizable by the single eyebrow)...

Political background & controversy

When we wanted to sell the comic at school, we asked for permission at the principal's office. It would've been no problem if I hadn't written a sentence about the "political background" on the back cover. This was the reason why we weren't allowed to hang any posters to advertise the comic. We sold the copies anyway, but mostly to people we already knew personally.

We wanted the comic to have a deeper meaning, to criticize the government, and especially Mrs. Gehrer (minister of education). One of her unpopular measures was to reduce the number of lessons per week by two as of September 2003, while keeping the same amount of subject matter. The teachers had to figure out what to keep and what to leave out so they didn't need to rush the matter. Another measure was the introduction of study fees, which many of us get to notice now. The changes were justified according to the government, as they wanted to achieve a balanced budget.

But at the same time, they ordered 18 of the ultra-modern and expensive Eurofighter Typhoon to defend the small airspace of Austria. We couldn't believe that they would rather spend money on defense than on education in a modern democracy, so we put it in direct relation in the comic. The fact that the right-wing Freedom Party had made it into the government as a coalition partner also seemed pretty disturbing to us. Recently, the current Social Democratic government has begun to deal with the issue in a committee, and it is possible that they can cancel the order because bribe money was involved in the deal.

Another problem for the comic's release was the "drug scandal" in our school. A few students smoked weed in the smoking area and vomited near the secretary shortly after. It once again proved the school's reputation as being full of "creative yet alternative hippies", but also had the consequence that the smoking would be banned at school. One newspaper even claimed that someone had died of an overdose. This event happened shortly before the comic was completed. The scene on page 8 was interpreted as drug abuse, although clearly a cigarette is smoked and the moral is actually that you shouldn't smoke too much. Nevertheless, it was another argument to not let us promote our comic.

The location

The BRG Klagenfurt-Viktring is a school that offers special classes for students that are interested in fine arts or music. Creativity, art & culture have a high value. People who graduate here can not only use their abilities and understanding of art in their future careers, many of them have come to this school from all around the country. The shared interests and talents alone make the students form friendships and build up such a great community.

The school's building hasn't always been there just to teach young people about art; it has a long history before that. It was founded as a monastery in 1142, and became a textile factory in 1788. After the Second World War the factory was taken over by several new owners before it was eventually acquired by the Austrian state and became a school in 1970.