Thursday, January 31, 2013

We're BACK!

Greetings, Dead Things! What you have stumbled onto is the most putrid comic to ever infest the racks; a book so vile, it's been banned in Canada and the UK, a comic so unholy, it was featured on The 700 Club...the original...the foul...THE DEAD!

Long before The Walking Dead made ongoing, black and white zombie comics hip, long before Crossed shattered boundries and ravaged taboos, The Dead was planting corpses in the same fertile field. Created by Detroit natives Ralph Griffith and Stuart Kerr, groundwork for The Dead was laid waaay back in 1986. The concept was reworked, expanded, and ultimately grew into the insanely influencial Deadworld, which hit the stands in 1987 and took the indy comic scene by storm. Illustrated by a pre-Cannibal Corpse Vince Locke, it spilled blood and set trends, and as it's cult grew so did it's notoriety...but as the horrific comic was snowballing into a bonafied success, the indy comics crash obliterated the market, and Arrow Comics, Ralph & Stu's company, was pulled into the void. Deadworld was ultimately rescued by Gary Reed and his Caliber Comics imprint, where it lived on to cult success (proving a must-read, even to this day)...but never again would it be spearheaded by it's original creators, and never again would it have the feel it had in the early days. One could only wonder what the book might have been like had it stayed in Ralph & Stu's hands...as it turns out, one wouldn't have to wait very long to find out. 

In 1993 Arrow Comics rose from the grave, and the first title it published was The Dead...and it was very much a return to form for Griffith and Kerr, who took the core idea of Deadworld and brought it back to it's creative roots, and let it run wild. The horror and gore returned ten-fold, and the story took on truly hellish dimensions, with heretofore unseen levels of sadistic slaughter and harsh sexuality. It was a comic with a wickedly depraved gleam in it's eye, a giddy nightmare blend of wanton, oldschool carnage and high adventure. It was alternately campy and gritty...bottomlessly dark and sick, but undeniably fun and exciting at the same time. But, like before, troubles arose in the ever-unstable indy comics market, and Arrow closed it's doors once again.

An attempt was made to revive the title when Arrow crawled from the tomb in 1998, but the curse struck once more, and The Dead took another blow to the head. But this is truly a comic too dead to die...Ralph and Stu are at it again, and with psychotic up-and-comer Deidre Crouch (creator of the cult webstrip Putrid Meat) spilling the ink, the book is ready to shred more flesh than ever before. Currently offered as a semi-annual treat for hardcore, in-the-know fans, The Dead is poised to attack the mainstream yet again, just in time for it's 20th anniversary. In a world where the twisted antics it pioneered are taken for granted in a bevy of other titles, The Dead has no choice but to reclaim it's throne with extreme predjudice...by any means necessary.
 
 
So keep it here, Dead Things...get in on the ground floor, because 2013 is the year of THE DEAD!

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook...get INFECTED today! http://www.facebook.com/ArrowComicsTheDead

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