‘Needing to Know the Plural of Apocalypse’

In the television series Angel (1999–2004), the vampire with a soul encounters a group of lawyers-turned-zombies (‘Habeas Corpses’, 5.8) while trying to save his son Connor. Connor has never encountered a zombie before and having been raised in a hell dimension, he has never seen a zombie movie either. As such when Angel explains that the lawyer who keeps standing up despite looking dead is actually undead, a zombie, Connor naturally asks ‘what's a zombie?’, leading to the following exchange:

Angel not only emphatically distinguishes between himself and the zombie but seems to take offence at Connor's suggestion that they are the same. Angel's stance mirrors the position of many fans, writers, filmmakers and scholars who emphasise the distinction between the ‘undead’ and the ‘living dead’, two creatures that are rarely presented as existing in the same universe and that have both developed separate histories of folklore, literature, comics, videogames, cinema and television. In fact, many scholars emphasise strict definitions that separate the undead into class-divided social groups in which, as Ian Conrich argues, ‘vampires are the aristocrats’ and ‘zombies are the lumpen proletariat’ (Conrich 2015: 19). Conrich's position is seemingly supported by Romero who has claimed that ‘the zombie for me was always the blue collar kind of monster and he was us’ (quoted in Simon 2000). Romero's perception of this class distinction is driven home in his graphic novel Empire of the Dead (2014–15), in which both zombies and vampires exist and conform to this well-established hierarchical division. Max Brooks’ graphic novel Extinction Parade (2013–15) also brings the two creatures together with the zombies portrayed as the masses, overwhelming humanity and bringing the living to the verge of extinction. In contrast the vampires are presented as aristocratic monstrous children, weakened by the fact that they are, according to Brooks, at the top of the food chain and therefore have never had to fight to overcome adversity nor have they ever faced an equal opponent.