Awkward Zombie

File:AwkwardZombie 2010.png

How awkward.

Awkward Zombie is a wacky weekly gaming web comic by Katie Tiedrich. While many of the strips are stand-alone gags from various games such as The Legend of Zelda or World of Warcraft, the webcomic also features many recurring Super Smash Bros. characters living together in a building and dealing with various hijinks.

Could until very recently be described as not actually having much to do with its title, up until this strip.

There are also many pages that appear on her DeviantArt gallery only.

She has also started to illustrate (but not write) a brand new webcomic called Aikonia, which can be found at this site.

The author is also currently trying to raise money to print the comic book, which can be found here. It's currently well over it's goal, and the Kickstarter isn't even done yet. Hell yeah.

Tropes used in Awkward Zombie include:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Ruto, who was weaponized by Link here.
• All Powerful Bystander: Master Hand, sorta. He mostly just chews Roy out for sticking around after he was fired.
  • Well, he also brainwashed the Smashers (with Mewtwo's help) to fight for him.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Done in universe with Marth especially, but also Link and a bunch of others as Jerkasses.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: "Aw, you know me! I had my own game? Sword of seals, Blah Blah Blah? My hair points to the left no matter what direction I'm facing?"
  • Rather than directly referencing the game, however, this seems to be a minor jab at the artist's way of drawing Roy.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Mass Effect is used for lots of advanced technology from Faster-Than-Light Travel to Artificial Gravity; but not the translators, that's magic.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: MAGICAL LAWYER SUPERPOWER #3: BASIC LOGIC
• Ate His Gun: Snake found that preferable to Otacon droning on about Pokémon.
• Author Avatar: Appears when telling autobiographical vignettes.
• Awesome but Impractical: The scoped shotgun, seen here.
  • Let's not forget this little beauty, a ship made entirely of guns.
• Back for the Dead: Roy gets killed by the Master Hand. A short time later, Roy comes back, and is killed off again almost immediately.
• Beat Panel: Or even three.
• Birds of a Feather: Katie and many of her friends are gamers, and several comics just show Katie hanging out with her friends to play/talk about Pokémon, Guitar Hero, and many others.
• Bishounen: Katie's version of Marth is a parody of the character type.
• Catch Phrase: "Add [X] to the list of things I can't draw."
• The Chew Toy: Marth, sometimes literally!
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: Link wears his red tunic instead of his green one, and gets beaten up because it's St. Patrick's Day.
• The Comically Serious: Marth. Most of the time.
• Cross Player: If Katie's Author Avatar using the male trainer's outfit during Pokémon strips is any indication. Interestingly a bonus strip shows her with a full-pants variant of the RSE female.
  • As well as Norrin (her boyfriend, possibly) wearing a full-pants version of the B&W female player character.
    • And if you get to the forums, some users have shopped Norrin into wearing the cutoffs version. And hairy legs.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Some sounds should not be ringtones.
• The Dandy: Marth
• Desperation Attack: Exploited here
• Doppelganger Replacement Love Interest: Subverted when OoT Link cannot defeat Dark Link, so he makes a loud proclamation of his love for Princess Ruto, then hides, leaving Dark Link to deal with the amorous Zora. Navi thinks this is a bit mean.
• Dumb Blond: Link.
  • But he is good at puzzles.
• Exploding Closet: How Katie plays the Fallout games.
• Eye Scream: ALL OF THEM.
• The Face of the Sun: Seen here.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Invoked. The sudden Mood Whiplash from the other Advance Wars games to Days of Ruin apparently makes it this in her eyes.
• Foreboding Architecture: Katie Shepard knows what a room with waist high walls means.
• Freaky Is Cool: The Horde may be this to Katie. Almost all of the WoW comics are of the Horde, with Tauren, Trolls and the Forsaken being prominent; the only comic that is about the Alliance, is about the Worgen, and Katie wishes they were a Horde race.
  • Her comics about Oblivion had a Khajiit main character.
• Fridge Logic: Invoked. Katie's specialty is pointing out the logical holes in her favorite games.
• Furry Confusion: As seen in Animal Crossing.
• Genius Ditz: Link, as mentioned under Dumb Blonde.
• Guest Strip: Katie did a guest comic for VG Cats.
• Have We Mentioned Katie Is Sexually Active Today: Forum reaction to Katie's 24-hour comic.
• High-Pressure Blood: As seen here.
• Ho Yay: Invoked. You can thank Mewtwo.
• Incendiary Exponent: "My truck is going so fast it burst into flames? Awesome!"
• Incredibly Lame Pun: This
• Infinite Canvas: This strip; also a Visual Pun.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Link is key-challenged.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Bowser puts his stairs to good use.
• Karma Houdini: Two hundred years of community service helps.
• Kick the Dog: All part of Plan B.
• Large Ham: Katie, in her author notes at the bottom of the page.
  • Don't forget Master Hand. Also has No Indoor Voice.
• Logical Fallacies: You SURE you don't have any blood to track him down with?
• Lucky Charms Title: Technically the title of the comic is Δwkward Zombie, as Katie tends to write capital As as Δs.
• Male Gaze: This strip (and especially the commentary) lampshades Mass Effect 2's usage of it.
• Man in a Kilt: "As much as I love hanging in your shadow, you REALLY need to start wearing pants."
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: In the Pokemon comics, Katie usually wears the male trainer's outfit (though for RSE she had a pants variant of May's outfit), and Norrin wears a variation of the female trainer's outfit from Black/White (with jeans instead of shorts). In the short-lived Nuzlocke comic he wears Green's outfit, skirt and all, after losing in rock-paper-scissors.
• Mind Screw: Ike does this to Marth for kicks.
  • Same for Mewtwo, only more literally.
• Money for Nothing: The description of Carry On explains how Katie plays video games not to defeat the Big Bad but to sell Vendor Trash for money that she won't spend. But it's totally worth it.
• More Dakka: "This possibly could have been avoided if you hadn't BUILT THE SHIP ENTIRELY OUT OF GUNS."
  • I... REGRET... NOTHING!
• Neat Freak: Marth.
• Nice Hat: Katie is normally depicted wearing a large red hat, though she has recently switched to a gray one. Fans did not like the change, for some reason.
  • She also has a nice green fuzzy one.
    • Norrin is always seen wearing a Diamond Helm in the Minecraft comics.
• No Indoor Voice: Master Hand. "FOOOOOOOOOOOLS!!"
  • Or in one comic, where he finds out Roy is back. "NO"
• Noodle Implements: In the Mythbusters flash cartoon:

Adam: "To bust this myth, I'll need four owls, a dog skull, and seven gallons of pudding!"

• Not What It Looks Like: The zombie's not grabbing his ass. Really!
• Odd Couple: Marth and Roy.
• One Size Fits All: Or not.
• Perpetual Frowner: Marth, which comes as no surprise considering what he's putting up with.
• Popularity Polynomial: The Pokemon Effect.
• Product Placement: Parodied and taken Up to Eleven in this comic where all the Mass Effect characters are wearing the Runaway Entei t-shirt for no reason and The Rant hyperlinks to the store page.
  • Done again in this comic with a "Have You Ever Tried To Punch a Bird" shirt.
  • The last frame here alternates between the punchline and an over-exaggeratedly blatant plug for the Awkward Zombie book.
• Quip to Black: Done here.
• Raised By Birds: Seems that Samus and Falco share a morning ritual.
• The Rant
• Remix Comic: A popular activity on the forums. Usually, the Dominion Rod comes up at least once.
  • Katie's Dad and Entei are also popular.
    • The Entei t-shirts are on the rise as well. Shortly after the release of the comic, a number of forum members shopped a shirt onto their avatars.
• Required Secondary Powers:
  • Being a Blood Mage has its downfalls.
  • Don't pick flowers using your fire hand.
• Resurrection Sickness: This comic reveals why World of Warcraft players suffer from this if they resurrect at a graveyard.
• Schedule Slip: When Katie went to college, site activity (justifiably) slowed to a crawl. Now it's back up to normal.
• The Scrappy: Invoked. Katie is not fond of Miranda from Mass Effect 2
• Self-Deprecation: Loads, but it might get better.
• Sidetracked By the Golden Saucer: Katie has a bit of a problem with this.

I have turned the game on, played Voltorb Flip for like an hour, and then turned the game off without actually looking at any Pokemon. TEAM ROCKET'S INSIDIOUS PLOT WAS A SUCCESS.

• Sphere Eyes: How Katie usually draw eyes.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Pit for Roy. Foreshadowed in an early comic after it was announced that some characters wouldn't be returning to Brawl, made official after the game was released, Roy was kicked out of the house by Master Hand and Pit started taking his place in the jokes, though Pit annoys the others a lot less.
  • Lampshaded here.
  • Even more similar, Ocarina of Time Link is replaced with Twilight Princess Link; due to Katie's drawing style, they are almost indistinguishable.
    • In that case, OOT Link murdered TP Link and took his clothes and gear. While Mario, Fox and Pikachu were watching.
  • He's now been replaced by Skyward Sword Link for the most part.
• Take a Third Option: Here.
• The Tetris Effect: "Vwingtone"
• Title Drop: Veeeeery subtle one here.
• Too Awesome to Use: Katie has a bad case of this, as seen in this comic.
• Unreliable Narrator: Katie's bio smacks of this.
• The Uriah Gambit: Katie tries to kill off Miranda in the suicide mission.
• Urine Trouble: The strip is even called "Urine Trouble Now". If don't get it: there's blood in the pee.
• War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Subverted HARD at the last second in this Advance Wars strip.
  • Also an example of Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick
• The War On Straw: Carefully read the journalist's shirt in the first panel of this comic. For those whose prescription isn't good enough: I am made of straw. Okay, not subtle, but subtle in its own illegible way.
• What the Hell, Hero?: This seems mean.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Roy tries to break back into the Smash Bros. house, and is confronted my Master Hand who says no one is allowed to return, except Dr. Mario... and a couple Links... and Mewtwo.

Marth: Nobody actually left, did they?