Ok, normally at this time, we focus on something that’s happening in the news, but given that the news was rife with useless information all about the Royal Wedding, in which another unholy tale of rich people laughing at everyone unfolds before our tired battered eyes, and there is bad weather in Cornwall which comes as a complete surprise to dead people given the time of year, let’s focus on something that is rather strange in our culture.

Zombies and Vampires, there’s something that we can all relate to.

The two sets of creatures you wouldn’t see opening rival ice cream parlours next to each other for a bit of friendly competition. For years, various graphic novels, horror films and bad adverts for trains have been the only places you’ve seen them, with the films normally being stuck on the end of BBC 2’s Saturday night schedules after a 12 hour marathon of Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook.

For some reason though in recent years, they have enjoyed a kind of success only the zombie Jesus Christ could ever dream of (He died and rose from the dead, that counts as being a zombie, no matter what the pope says). But while one set of creatures have been adopted for mainstream success providing a different array of entertainment, the other has got their trousers stuck on a stick and can’t move anywhere.

Vampires seem to have degenerated from being fearful blood sucking machines hiding in the shadows to sexual cock sucking machines thanks to recent efforts in the various media worlds.

Granted throughout the years there has always been an element of romance around vampires, thanks to the various Dracula incarnations and Interview with the Vampire (the interview was then serialised for the Sun with a foreword by Jerry Springer, another vampire who fed off the misery of hillbillies), but it all seems to have gone too far right now.

True Blood, which has been thrown about the place by HBO after being adapted from various books written by Charlaine Harris, has gone down a right treat. Though from looking at the series itself as a whole, either shows that the woman writer needs to get her freak on as watching dirty videos is no longer doing it for her, or HBO has used the show as one huge flimsy pretext to get some more porn/art on the network.

No-one of course thinks vampires now, without thinking about the Twatlight series of films, in which all sorts of action is overshawdowed by the male leads being incapable of wearing a shirt for more than 30 seconds.

The fact that it has been created by a morman woman who doesn’t believe in naughty before marriage, has lead to various comments that the Twatlight Series promotes abstinence, which given the young audience going mental over the stars, means the films come across as picking up the pieces after school education, which could only give out a leaflet on the sex matter and then gets on teaching about pineapples. Let’s be fair, it’s just a load of bollocks.

Conversely as the vampires have been turned into rampant rabbits, the zombies for the most part seem to have turned into truly frightening beasts. Back when Dawn of the dead’s zombies looked like a bad experiment in make-up from Laboratoires Garnier Paris (because they’re worth it), zombies were basically slouths. Just shuffling around the place, moaning like they were standing in line waiting for the post office to open.

But recent changes have meant, they have become more aggressive, fast and changing into some altogether different and more scary than ever before. They have also been responsible for the some of the best comedy devices in history.

They also have had the most exposure from the media outlets, arriving through the door via various computer games such as Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, House of the Dead, Dead dead, and of course Mr. Dead teaches knitting to films such as Zombieland, Shawn of the Dead, and the Resident Evil series all of which provided some welcome humour to the whole grizzly affair (though Resident Evil made people laugh for different reasons, for starters, it’s not meant to be funny). Lest we forget the various books like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, and of course, our good friend “Dr. Dale’s Zombie Dictionary”.

The zombies have become a device for different themes as well, such as Charlie Brooker’s Dead set, where the contestants on Big Brother begin it all, not knowing that the world’s gone to hell outside.

“The Zombie Diaries” gave us the oncoming storm from the perspective of stupid gimps with a camera, and “Land of the Dead”, gave us something to think that zombies may actually evolve, remembering skills from their previous lives. Somehow I’m not sure how remembering how to make a Big Mac will come in handy for a zombie, but there we are.

Finally, The Walking Dead series on FX, has shown a different human side to the apocalypse, with people struggling to rebuild after it all happens, and the drama that occurs as a result.

Somehow, zombies are being used in more creative ways while vampires have been reduced to cold blooded replacements for human men.

One would be fair to say that the rise from the dead into the popular public domain for both the tribes of death has a huge debt to those who were willing to make changes to the preconceptions that you would have with various monsters of old, and given the lack of innovation with the rest of the genres as it stands, a new generation is taking over the world of entertainment, and we can only continue to keep chewing on the guts of their labour given the lack of anything else right now.

But for the love of Satan, can the vampires man the f*ck up?