tripleiron at 2010-09-11 22:07:23:

Vampires have been over done the past few years (True Blood is still my favorite). And though Zombies have been marginalized as characters, there is plenty of story room for them to be heroes.

@Martin - Fido was an excellent example of a zombie hero. Another example (less well done) was 'Return of the Living Dead III'. They definitely tried to turn the guys on with that one.

I was hoping this past decade would bring about a new monster like Freddy in the 80's. I guess it's better to go with the monsters you know.

Atlanta at 2010-09-12 10:28:49:

Zombies will never be heroes because they smell. (Nuzzling and inhaling your darling, what comes to mind? Heaven. Nuzzling and inhaling a zombie? ...Rotting flesh.)

That said, there's still lots of turf around zombies to be mined, and wow was 28 Days Later brilliant, redefining the mythology in such a scary way.

Robert Kirkman uses zombies as background (ie, a zombie apocalypse) for Walking Dead, the real story are the humans, what they do to survive and how they change living in such a world. On surface, his story is kind of boring (one guy he pitched to wanted to add ninja zombies to jazz things up). On his pitch that sold the project, he actually mentioned the possibility of an alien angle... which he delivered on with recent issue #75 (after story closes, in a special a treat for readers, he includes a few pages delving into the alien angle story).

OT, Kirkman turned down a bunch of tv/film offers for Walking Dead before Frank Darabont came along, and I am so excited we get to be the beneficiaries of that wonderful collaboration this Halloween on AMC. And woo hoo Milla Jovovich kicking zombie ass! What a fun series, Resident Evil.