No contest in my book. Vampires are so gay. James Poulos compares and contrasts:
Consider the theatrical contrast between zombies and vampires. (A few people have weighed in on this subject, but not quite in the following way.) Vampire drama draws its power perversely from the depths of human hope: beyond transgressive erotic titillation, there's the semi-secret fantasy that life as a vampire can, ultimately, be successfully negotiated within the structures of normal human life. Vampires are like celebrities -- gaunt, exclusive, tormented -- but they're also just like us! Because, after all, they're us plus: not just alive, but too alive.
Zombies, of course, aren't too alive. They're not dead enough. And where vampire drama plays devilishly on our all-too-human hopes, zombie drama plows straight through our fears to hit us where it really hurts: at the level of human despair. Good zombie drama lowers us to the bottom of hopelessness, only to let us -- when the show's over -- return to the real world, in all its ordinary graces, stingingly thankful for the decencies, great and small, of nature and nature's God.
I find myself instantly hooked on "The Walking Dead", btw. I'm not the only one. And it's great that these new zombies aren't as devastatingly fast as the post-28 Days Later ones. Gives you time to bob and weave. Which gives you time for more plot.