Inland Empire Weekly – Beauty in the Beast

There’s a beauty pageant going on in Redlands this weekend, and I imagine the scene as something like this: a well-heeled girl and her letterman jacket-clad date are cutting a trail across a cemetery in the cold of night, the guy goofing on the “dead” and the gal doing her little scary face “please, don’t” wimpy cry. Unbeknownst to them, out pops these bleach white, grotesquely misshapen faces, tiaras on heads of stringy, knotted hair. The girl turns around, screams, and clings onto her boyfriend, who in his mockery finally grasps the horror of the situation. The music, deafening in its suddenness, blares on, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” plays loudly as zombies emerge, perform a stiff-limbed dance and surround the audience, ready to feast.

All right, I’m speculating, but I don’t think it’s too far from the truth. It’s kind of what A.J. Herrera, progenitor of the Inland Empire Comics Expo, would envision for his inaugural Zombie Beauty Pageant, although he remains mum about the exact details. Think Miss America going zombie….

via Inland Empire Weekly – Beauty in the Beast.