I, Zombie part 2

Hmm... So, after posting the first half yesterday I found out that last summer Vertigo (DC) put out a book called I, Zombie. I guess it's not that interesting of a title, either. *sigh* Oh well. In any case because I'm not quite sure what to write about today of the high demand for closure to the compelling story, here's the rest of my 24 hour comic for all you readers waiting with bated breath. I love serials!















I haven't done a 24 hour comic since this, but it was a great time. My drawing hand was quite cramped by the end, and I faintly remember having a tough time writing dialogue (last step in the process) by the time I got there. A lot of the quips I'd thought of early on in the process were completely lost by the end, and had been sapped of a lot of their gusto when my poor, tired brain tried to arrange words in any way clever. Must've been all of those marker fumes.

I like some of the layouts (i.e. the demise of the main character's wife leading up to the BLAM! on page 15) and felt like I was doing a pretty good job telling a story when a visitor to the event read what I'd drawn up to at one point (page 9) asked me, "where's he going!?" in a way that seemed genuinely interested.

The entirely black page in the middle was not only a good way to get an extra page done, but a nod to Frank Miller's story telling trick to showing the reader a passage of time, or a character slowly coming back to consciousness.

The twist of the story (if you can call it that) is that the zombie character isn't really trying to save humanity at all, and that despite being a re-animated corpse, he's still driven by base human (in this case sexual) desires and due to the breakdown of society in a post-apocalyptic world, he's acting it out in a more caveman kind of way (knocking the girl unconscious and dragging her to his "cave"). The readers are supposed to put this together because of those images of the mercenary girl strapped to the table, close up of her biting her lip, et cetera. Also, when the other surviving member of the apocalypse, Chet, barges in on the two of them at the lab, the zombie was supposed to say, "it's not what it looks like!" as though he'd been caught having an actual romantic affair, not as though he was a zombie about to eat a human. Stupid marker fumes.

Anyway, the resolution to the story (if you can call it that) is that the scientist winds up trapped in his own mind... trapping the truth behind his own intentions moreso than the solution to saving humanity, as he persists. Too heavy? Yeah, a little. But this is what happens when you let geeks read philosophy!

Special thanks to Vincent Price, and whoever wrote The Last Man On Earth, which was the initial inspiration for the comic, not The Omega Man, I Am Legend or, of course, Fangoria's I, Zombie.

-Kung Fu Mike