tattoo man

Ladies and gentlemen, for your ghoulish viewing pleasure …

If you think you’re a little too obsessive, let me put things in perspective. Meet Rick aka Zombie Boy. He’s slowly, and no doubt painfully, turning himself into a walking work of undead art. He lives in Canada and he’s spent thousands and thousands of dollars and 24-hours (in total) painstakingly etching his body with tattoos to look like … a rotting corpse.

Is it attention-seeking art? Or is it inspired lunacy? You decide.

Bizarre magazine, the publication that specializes in all things fetish, exploitation, freaks, and the more subversive elements of sexuality, interviewed Rick to find out just what it is about the dark art of tattooing and the macabre allure of death that compelled him to combine the two on such an intimate and provocative level.

Here is an extract from the interview:

What look are you trying to achieve with your tattoos?
They’re about the human body as a decomposing corpse – the art of a rotting cadaver. It’s also a tribute to horror movies, which I love.

What influenced your tattoos?
When I was a kid I was a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I wanted to be a ninja turtle and live in the sewers. But as I got older I fell in love with zombies and wanted to become one. Oh, and I love George A. Romero’s Living Dead movies.

Anyway, the closest thing I could get to becoming a zombie was to get tattooed like one. I see my tattoos as celebrating the art of obscenity and the macabre.

When did you decide you wanted to get your face and body tattooed?
I thought long and hard about what I really wanted, what my passion was. And I decided I wanted to be a fucking zombie. My first big move was getting my hands outlined as skeleton print. They say that once you get your hands tattooed it’s harder to find a job.

… But it does look a little different to how I’d imagined. I expected some portions of my tattoos to look more bloody and gory. Probably because I’ve got an overactive imagination and I’d never be satisfied with the results.

What would you have changed?
I’d have a lot more blood in general, dripping and oozing everywhere. I’d have loved to have blood pouring out of my eyes and a few more bugs here and there. But it just didn’t happen like that.

So what other body modifications are you planning?
I still want to get my brain shaded in. I want to get it all nice and grey like hamburger meat. And then I want to get Frankenstein bolts sticking out of my head around the rim of where my scalp’s ‘cut off’.

And I’ve thought about getting my eyes blacked in. I’m thinking that in five years from now, if no one’s gone blind from it by then I’ll go and get my eyes tattooed black, so there’d just be big holes in my face.

As for tattoos, I’ve still got to get under my arms done, then I’ve got to finish the intestines and get a contour added to the demon on my chest. I’m going to get bones sticking out of my knees, my toes done in skeleton print, and have patches of muscle scattered around – with worms coming out of the wounds.

Have you ever thought about having the tip of your nose removed?
Yes, and I’ve seen it before on TV. This guy had a flesh-eating disease and he was able to get his nose cut off because they gave him a prosthetic replacement. I was so jealous. I wanted it so bad. If I get my eyes blacked in I’ll get my nose removed.

Would you have your ears removed?
Maybe just the one. I was thinking of having worms coming out of one ear and a spider’s web in the other. But I’m an extremist, so if I met someone who could remove my ear and get the right result, then that’d be cool as hell. If I saw someone walking around like that I’d shit myself.

Would you burn yourself with acid to get texture on your skin?
I don’t know. I’m not a pro. But it has nothing to do with pain. I like pushing the limits to see how much I can take. I’d get my tongue split, I’d get my teeth sharpened.

I wouldn’t cut off one of my fingers, because I want to play guitar. I’m not going to cut off my arms and legs to look cool. But there are no rules about how zombies look. My buddy has a tattoo where his throat’s slit and bugs are coming out with worms up the side. It looks fucking awesome.

… Since having [the tattoos] done I’ve become a much happier and nicer person. Before, I hated pretty much everything and everybody. I just wanted to pass out in the gutter and swear at cars as they went by, shit like that. I wasn’t a happy person at all.

That’s why I got the skull tattooed on my face in the first place, I suppose – I wanted to fucking kill everybody. But then, as time went on, I started getting all this positive feedback – people would come up to me and say how cool they thought it looked. I started getting invited to parties and bars all the time. Strangers ask to have pictures taken with me.

Righto. Rick is officially fucking nuts. I know my tastes are a little freaky, but I’m not a freeeeeaaak! Eeeeeek! I’d get a kick out of meeting Zombie Boy though, shake his hand - rattle his bones, so to speak. Ha!