THE FIRST DECADE

C H A P T E R13

C O N T I N U I N G

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TA: Zombies started at IDW withDawn of the Dead. Steve Niles wasdoing a lot of work with us andhe approached me with the ideaof doing an adaptation ofGeorge Romero’s Dawn of theDead movie. I was really

uninterested in doing it–I’d never seen the movie andit seemed unlikely to me that anyone would beinterested in a comic-book adaptation of such an oldmovie. I only did it because Steve kept asking meabout it and it was obviously important to him. So Itracked down the company that owned the rightsand did a deal with them and the series ended up

Starting with 30 Days of Night, IDW had success with

horror titles and it was natural that the company

would do comics featuring zombies. Ted Adams and

Chris Ryall discuss the history of zombie titles at IDW.

__________________________________________Zombies: Feast art by Enrique López Lorenzana.

C H A P T E R

ZOMBIESZOMBIESZOMBIES

1310yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:31 AM Page 180

TA: Zombies started at IDW withDawn of the Dead. Steve Niles wasdoing a lot of work with us andhe approached me with the ideaof doing an adaptation ofGeorge Romero’s Dawn of theDead movie. I was really

uninterested in doing it–I’d never seen the movie andit seemed unlikely to me that anyone would beinterested in a comic-book adaptation of such an oldmovie. I only did it because Steve kept asking meabout it and it was obviously important to him. So Itracked down the company that owned the rightsand did a deal with them and the series ended up

Starting with 30 Days of Night, IDW had success with

horror titles and it was natural that the company

would do comics featuring zombies. Ted Adams and

Chris Ryall discuss the history of zombie titles at IDW.

__________________________________________Zombies: Feast art by Enrique López Lorenzana.

C H A P T E R

ZOMBIESZOMBIESZOMBIES

1310yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:31 AM Page 180

because we got to work closely with Romero and hispeople. That was another one that seemed to reallyride the wave of zombie books that were cresting atthat time.

TA: Let’s discuss how we put together a licensedcomic book–from a business and creative standpoint.

The first step is that you and I talk aboutupcoming forms of entertainment andwhether or not they would make goodcomic books.

CR: That’s what drew me to theway you guys handle things atIDW. As much as a lot of these

are big business deals–whenwe look at a new title, it

really is as simpleas, “Do welike this

property?” It’s not just, “Hey we’re taking thingsbecause we can make some money.” We’re going tohave to live with a property for a number of yearsand we have to decide if we want to spend years ofour lives working on a property.

TA: There has to be some passion for it internally,whether it’s you or me or one of the other editorsworking here. Somebody has to have some passionfor it or it really is just a cash grab and you can justtell when publishers do those kinds of books.

CR: Yeah, there’s no hiding that from fans. So welook at the property and think would this make agood comic and then it’s fun to tailor it to the writerand artist we think could really bring it to life. We’vedone such diverse properties, it’s great that there areso many different things that appeal to so manydifferent types of writers and artists.

TA: That’s one of the nice things about the creativeapproach at IDW–you do a good job of findingpeople who are right for the property, rather than

______________________________________________________________Land of the Dead art, including the zombie below, by Gabriel Rodriguez.

being very successful for IDW. The comics sold outand did much better than I expected and the tradepaperback also sold more than I expected so our first“zombie” licensed book was a much bigger hit thanI ever expected. All of that happened before you gothere but around the time that you joined IDW, wewere looking at other licenses and I think youbrought up the idea to do an adaptation of Shaunof the Dead.

CR: Right. That was one of the first thingsI got involved with after starting at IDW.I think the good thing about that is thatwe were right on the cusp of zombiecomics becoming popular. At the time, fouror five years ago, they weren’t all that popularso Dawn of the Dead hit and then we had the goodfortune of riding that wave right from the start. WithShaun of the Dead, I remember I was literally two orthree weeks on the job and I went up and met withEdgar Wright, the director. We wanted to do thecomics and the rights were with Universal but he wasreally skeptical about doing it. So I met with him

and he liked the look of our books and I know oneof the books he singled out liking was the Dawn ofthe Dead adaptation. The other thing that I think kindof clinched it for IDW was that I had gotten myhands on a bootleg of the movie before it had everbeen released here so when he was talking about themovie, I already knew it. So, I think everythingseemed to impress him. The fact was that we had

nice production values, and he liked the waywe handled other properties because he’s ahuge Romero guy, and so it just sort oftook off from there.

TA: You wrote the Shaun of the Dead comicsand then later also wrote the Land of theDead comics.

CR: Yeah, I became the de facto “of theDead” guy. I really wanted to do Land ofthe Dead because Gabriel Rodriquezwanted to draw the book and I reallyliked what he was doing on CSI atthe time. That was a fun project

___________________________Dawn of the Dead art by Chee.

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because we got to work closely with Romero and hispeople. That was another one that seemed to reallyride the wave of zombie books that were cresting atthat time.

TA: Let’s discuss how we put together a licensedcomic book–from a business and creative standpoint.

The first step is that you and I talk aboutupcoming forms of entertainment andwhether or not they would make goodcomic books.

CR: That’s what drew me to theway you guys handle things atIDW. As much as a lot of these

are big business deals–whenwe look at a new title, it

really is as simpleas, “Do welike this

property?” It’s not just, “Hey we’re taking thingsbecause we can make some money.” We’re going tohave to live with a property for a number of yearsand we have to decide if we want to spend years ofour lives working on a property.

TA: There has to be some passion for it internally,whether it’s you or me or one of the other editorsworking here. Somebody has to have some passionfor it or it really is just a cash grab and you can justtell when publishers do those kinds of books.

CR: Yeah, there’s no hiding that from fans. So welook at the property and think would this make agood comic and then it’s fun to tailor it to the writerand artist we think could really bring it to life. We’vedone such diverse properties, it’s great that there areso many different things that appeal to so manydifferent types of writers and artists.

TA: That’s one of the nice things about the creativeapproach at IDW–you do a good job of findingpeople who are right for the property, rather than

______________________________________________________________Land of the Dead art, including the zombie below, by Gabriel Rodriguez.

being very successful for IDW. The comics sold outand did much better than I expected and the tradepaperback also sold more than I expected so our first“zombie” licensed book was a much bigger hit thanI ever expected. All of that happened before you gothere but around the time that you joined IDW, wewere looking at other licenses and I think youbrought up the idea to do an adaptation of Shaunof the Dead.

CR: Right. That was one of the first thingsI got involved with after starting at IDW.I think the good thing about that is thatwe were right on the cusp of zombiecomics becoming popular. At the time, fouror five years ago, they weren’t all that popularso Dawn of the Dead hit and then we had the goodfortune of riding that wave right from the start. WithShaun of the Dead, I remember I was literally two orthree weeks on the job and I went up and met withEdgar Wright, the director. We wanted to do thecomics and the rights were with Universal but he wasreally skeptical about doing it. So I met with him

and he liked the look of our books and I know oneof the books he singled out liking was the Dawn ofthe Dead adaptation. The other thing that I think kindof clinched it for IDW was that I had gotten myhands on a bootleg of the movie before it had everbeen released here so when he was talking about themovie, I already knew it. So, I think everythingseemed to impress him. The fact was that we had

nice production values, and he liked the waywe handled other properties because he’s ahuge Romero guy, and so it just sort oftook off from there.

TA: You wrote the Shaun of the Dead comicsand then later also wrote the Land of theDead comics.

CR: Yeah, I became the de facto “of theDead” guy. I really wanted to do Land ofthe Dead because Gabriel Rodriquezwanted to draw the book and I reallyliked what he was doing on CSI atthe time. That was a fun project

___________________________Dawn of the Dead art by Chee.

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:31 AM Page 182

just taking whoever is available and sticking them onit. With Shaun of the Dead, the Zach Howard art isgreat. It’s so much more than just a “licensed” comicbook. The art’s great and Gabriel’s art on Land of theDead, and everything else he does is amazing.

CR: That’s always the nice challenge of thesethings–we’re taking movies that people can watchfluidly on screen and we put them in static imageson paper. That can fall apart if it doesn’t havesomething different to bring to the process. Zach’sart was so expressive and humorous and Gabe’s art isso kinetic and detailed–even for people that arefamiliar with the properties, it gives them somethingdifferent. That’s always the main thing that I strive todo with these books–find some way to re-presentfamiliar material in a new and interesting way.

TA: The storytelling that Gabe brings to Land of theDead is just so strong. There’s this page where thebad guys are smashing through a door with a bighacksaw and Gabe’s storytelling is so much betterthan just about anybody else in comics.

CR: That brings up another one of the steps in theprocess of doing licensed books–finding somebodywho can do good likenesses, because most of thesetitles have actors approving the way they look in thecomic. So, you need someone who can not onlydraw faces properly but who can do more thanjust look like they’re tracing faces onto paper.The artist really needs to bring it to life andmake it work as comic art. It doesn’t soundlike it should be a big challenge but it’ssomething that very few people do well.Almost no one does it as well as Gabe.

TA: Yeah, Gabe is one of a kind. Anotherchallenge with licensed books isaccommodating the people who createthe underlying entertainment–in the caseof movies that’s typically the director orsome of the on-screen talent. Iremember that Land of the Dead was oneof the tougher projects.

CR: That was a good trial by fire.

TA: Getting the first issue approved was difficultbecause you were working off an old version of thescript.

CR: Yeah, it was an old version of the script and thensome of the scenes were cut from the movie afterthey didn’t test the way they wanted and we had acouple of the actors that didn’t like their likenesses.It gave me a real crash course in what it’s like to puttogether a licensed book. It was just all of thesedifferent challenges hitting all at once.

TA: That’s the thing you do better than anybody I’veever seen–you have the ability to roll with thepunches, get the changes made to make a licensorhappy and still get the book out the door.

Let’s talk about some of the original zombie titlesthat we’ve published over the years. We’d hadsome success with our licensed zombie titlesand, at some point, I approached you with theidea of trying to create some of our own.

CR: Yeah, zombiecomics were working wellin the marketplace and wethought, “Why don’t wedevelop some of our own?”

TA: Zombies: Feast was thefirst one.

_________________________Opposite Page: Shaun of theDead art by Zach Howard.

________________Zombies: Feast artby Chris Bolton.

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:31 AM Page 184

just taking whoever is available and sticking them onit. With Shaun of the Dead, the Zach Howard art isgreat. It’s so much more than just a “licensed” comicbook. The art’s great and Gabriel’s art on Land of theDead, and everything else he does is amazing.

CR: That’s always the nice challenge of thesethings–we’re taking movies that people can watchfluidly on screen and we put them in static imageson paper. That can fall apart if it doesn’t havesomething different to bring to the process. Zach’sart was so expressive and humorous and Gabe’s art isso kinetic and detailed–even for people that arefamiliar with the properties, it gives them somethingdifferent. That’s always the main thing that I strive todo with these books–find some way to re-presentfamiliar material in a new and interesting way.

TA: The storytelling that Gabe brings to Land of theDead is just so strong. There’s this page where thebad guys are smashing through a door with a bighacksaw and Gabe’s storytelling is so much betterthan just about anybody else in comics.

CR: That brings up another one of the steps in theprocess of doing licensed books–finding somebodywho can do good likenesses, because most of thesetitles have actors approving the way they look in thecomic. So, you need someone who can not onlydraw faces properly but who can do more thanjust look like they’re tracing faces onto paper.The artist really needs to bring it to life andmake it work as comic art. It doesn’t soundlike it should be a big challenge but it’ssomething that very few people do well.Almost no one does it as well as Gabe.

TA: Yeah, Gabe is one of a kind. Anotherchallenge with licensed books isaccommodating the people who createthe underlying entertainment–in the caseof movies that’s typically the director orsome of the on-screen talent. Iremember that Land of the Dead was oneof the tougher projects.

CR: That was a good trial by fire.

TA: Getting the first issue approved was difficultbecause you were working off an old version of thescript.

CR: Yeah, it was an old version of the script and thensome of the scenes were cut from the movie afterthey didn’t test the way they wanted and we had acouple of the actors that didn’t like their likenesses.It gave me a real crash course in what it’s like to puttogether a licensed book. It was just all of thesedifferent challenges hitting all at once.

TA: That’s the thing you do better than anybody I’veever seen–you have the ability to roll with thepunches, get the changes made to make a licensorhappy and still get the book out the door.

Let’s talk about some of the original zombie titlesthat we’ve published over the years. We’d hadsome success with our licensed zombie titlesand, at some point, I approached you with theidea of trying to create some of our own.

CR: Yeah, zombiecomics were working wellin the marketplace and wethought, “Why don’t wedevelop some of our own?”

TA: Zombies: Feast was thefirst one.

_________________________Opposite Page: Shaun of theDead art by Zach Howard.

________________Zombies: Feast artby Chris Bolton.

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:31 AM Page 184

_________________________________________________Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons art by Ashley Wood.

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_________________________________________________Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons art by Ashley Wood.

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TA: I think that’s what you accomplished. Like yousaid, when people first hear Zombies vs. Robots theirinstant response is, “Wow, that’s really stupid,” butwhat ultimately happened was that Zombies vs. Robotsbecame one of our most critically acclaimed books.Everybody who read it loved it. The first series wasnominated for an Eisner Award.

CR: Let’s be honest about it, though–had I writtenthe story for anybody else, it would have probablybeen pretty stupid. But when Ash Wood takes it on,you can take something like that and really make itinto something that I don’t think anybody else couldhave.

TA: No question, Ash definitely raises the bar oneverything. And, of course, Zombies vs. Robots led toZombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons.

CR: Yeah, at that point, we’d embraced theridiculousness of it and thought, “OK, what’s thenext thing?” And I thought, “We did a series with

Ash where he was drawing robots and zombies buthe loves drawing women, so how do we work thatin? All right, let’s give him Amazons–let’s give himthe ultimate woman.”

TA: And what’s the third book in the series going tobe called?

CR: At the end of Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons, weintroduced mermen so we could take it underwater.We’re planning to do a book called Zombies vs. RobotsAdventures where we can tell different sorts of storiesset in and around the world.

TA: Over the years, we’ve had a lot of interest fromvarious Hollywood people who want to try to makeit into a movie. I know that that’s something that’shopefully still in the works.

CR: Maybe, by the time people are reading thisbook, we’ll have made an announcement that a filmis in the works.

189

_______________________________________________Zombies: Eclipse of the Undead art by Jeremy Geddes.

IDW

CR: I reached out to a few writers and told them wewanted to do a zombie book and asked them tothrow some ideas at us. Shane McCarthy came upwith Feast–the twist was that rather than a group ofnice, innocent people being attacked by zombies, wehad a prison chain gang getting attacked. Now youhave this group of people that are almost as much adanger to each other as the zombies are to them.

TA: Zombies: Feast did OK for us both as comics andas a trade which led us to do Zombies: Eclipse of theUndead. If I remember correctly, that title wasbrought to us by Sulaco Studios, a studio in Spainthat used to do a lot of creative service work for IDW.

CR: Yeah, and it was interesting because it was set inAmerica and was written by creators from Spain. Iliked that you got this different take on America andAmericans and the way they would handle these sortof zombies.

TA: One of the best things about Eclipse of the Undeadwas the Jeremy Geddes covers. We haven’t been ableto get him to do much for us but those are some greatcovers.

Much later we did Brian Lynch’s Everybody’s Dead–the story of a zombie infestation at a collegefraternity.

CR: Yeah, Brian has been doing Angel and Spike forIDW for years and we all really love his writing.Brian’s hilarious script combined with DaveCrosland’s art made for a fun, and funny, take onzombies.

TA: Our only Eisner-nominated zombies series is, ofcourse, the book you did with Ash–Zombies vs. Robots.

CR: I’d always wanted to do something with Ash butI also thought, here’s a guy doing his own stuff–Popbot and Lore and everything else. He doesn’t needanybody else but I think it was as simple as he toldyou, “Hey, have Chris write me a book aboutzombies fighting robots,” and it was the stupidestand also greatest, premise ever. It was a challenge ofhow do I write a story that’s going to take thisridiculous idea and make it, hopefully, intosomething that Ash would want to spend his timedrawing.

188

____________________________________Everybody’s Dead art by Dave Crosland.

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TA: I think that’s what you accomplished. Like yousaid, when people first hear Zombies vs. Robots theirinstant response is, “Wow, that’s really stupid,” butwhat ultimately happened was that Zombies vs. Robotsbecame one of our most critically acclaimed books.Everybody who read it loved it. The first series wasnominated for an Eisner Award.

CR: Let’s be honest about it, though–had I writtenthe story for anybody else, it would have probablybeen pretty stupid. But when Ash Wood takes it on,you can take something like that and really make itinto something that I don’t think anybody else couldhave.

TA: No question, Ash definitely raises the bar oneverything. And, of course, Zombies vs. Robots led toZombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons.

CR: Yeah, at that point, we’d embraced theridiculousness of it and thought, “OK, what’s thenext thing?” And I thought, “We did a series with

Ash where he was drawing robots and zombies buthe loves drawing women, so how do we work thatin? All right, let’s give him Amazons–let’s give himthe ultimate woman.”

TA: And what’s the third book in the series going tobe called?

CR: At the end of Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons, weintroduced mermen so we could take it underwater.We’re planning to do a book called Zombies vs. RobotsAdventures where we can tell different sorts of storiesset in and around the world.

TA: Over the years, we’ve had a lot of interest fromvarious Hollywood people who want to try to makeit into a movie. I know that that’s something that’shopefully still in the works.

CR: Maybe, by the time people are reading thisbook, we’ll have made an announcement that a filmis in the works.

189

_______________________________________________Zombies: Eclipse of the Undead art by Jeremy Geddes.

IDW

CR: I reached out to a few writers and told them wewanted to do a zombie book and asked them tothrow some ideas at us. Shane McCarthy came upwith Feast–the twist was that rather than a group ofnice, innocent people being attacked by zombies, wehad a prison chain gang getting attacked. Now youhave this group of people that are almost as much adanger to each other as the zombies are to them.

TA: Zombies: Feast did OK for us both as comics andas a trade which led us to do Zombies: Eclipse of theUndead. If I remember correctly, that title wasbrought to us by Sulaco Studios, a studio in Spainthat used to do a lot of creative service work for IDW.

CR: Yeah, and it was interesting because it was set inAmerica and was written by creators from Spain. Iliked that you got this different take on America andAmericans and the way they would handle these sortof zombies.

TA: One of the best things about Eclipse of the Undeadwas the Jeremy Geddes covers. We haven’t been ableto get him to do much for us but those are some greatcovers.

Much later we did Brian Lynch’s Everybody’s Dead–the story of a zombie infestation at a collegefraternity.

CR: Yeah, Brian has been doing Angel and Spike forIDW for years and we all really love his writing.Brian’s hilarious script combined with DaveCrosland’s art made for a fun, and funny, take onzombies.

TA: Our only Eisner-nominated zombies series is, ofcourse, the book you did with Ash–Zombies vs. Robots.

CR: I’d always wanted to do something with Ash butI also thought, here’s a guy doing his own stuff–Popbot and Lore and everything else. He doesn’t needanybody else but I think it was as simple as he toldyou, “Hey, have Chris write me a book aboutzombies fighting robots,” and it was the stupidestand also greatest, premise ever. It was a challenge ofhow do I write a story that’s going to take thisridiculous idea and make it, hopefully, intosomething that Ash would want to spend his timedrawing.

188

____________________________________Everybody’s Dead art by Dave Crosland.

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