THE TEASING!!!

    GREETINGS, scumbags! Welcome to a new era of THE DEAD...starting right here, at this soon to be, shall we say, less OBSCURE little blog! What you are currently reading with your bulbous, bloodshot eyes is the very first WEEKLY installment of the blog, which has in days past been  infrequent at best...but no longer. As promised in our previous entry, June sees this here page become a weekly event, jam-packed with insane new content leading up to the release of THE DEAD OMNIBUS at the end of summer.
    so what do we have in store for you this night, boils an' ghouls? Well, we have our very first teaser image of the book's cover, rendered by the infamous VINCE LOCKE!!! Designed by yours truly, perfected and penciled by the inimitable JASON MOORE and turned into a one-way ticket to Hell by Locke, we guarantee this is the most fucked up thing you will EVER see lovingly depicted on the cover of a funny book.
    We can't show you...ALL of it, of course. The complete image is so foul, so rancid that it would make your wittle AMC-watching eyes melt right out of your pointed little skull...you gotta buy the ticket to take the ride kiddies, and you ain't ready JUST yet. But you're close...so have a TEENSY peak...

    ....I bet you can almost SMELL the glory hidden beneath that logo can't you, our rabid fans? You haven't long to wait...but there IS something we must ask of you. "Ah fuck, here's where they ask for cash again, the cheapskates!" Well I won't lie, we'll TAKE your money...so DO give it. Fuck rent for a month or two, your landlord won't mind. And if he does, well...do that special trick that got you out of it that one time. 

    But no, my friends, we call on you this night for a different, but no less important task entirely...we want you to fucking COMMENT!!!! Let us know you're listening! And SHARE the shit out of the attendant Facebook post...we need you to be our apocalyptic bugle boys. Let us know you care, and MAKE OTHERS CARE. And if you can't...well, we'll look the other way if those people wind up getting hurt immensely. We didn't see nothin'.

    'Til next week...same DEAD time, same DEAD channel...

    Ladies and gentlemen...welcome back to HELL!!!

    That's right...after a long, long, LONG time away, we are back, in the best shape possible, and we have a LOT to catch up on, so let's not waste any time. For those brave few of you who might have seen the original incarnation of this blog from a couple years ago, you may well remember that THE DEAD is Ralph Griffith and Stuart Kerr's followup to their iconic 1980s indy horror comic DEADWORLD, the book that brought Romero/O'Bannon style zombies to the world of comics during the black and white boom. At the end of the 80s, Deadworld slipped through Griffith & Kerr's fingers as the boom collapsed around itself, but Deadworld continued on, with different teams, and different publishers...though very much a different animal than that which the boys had originally intended in their VHS-and-grindhouse fueled salad days. However, in 1993, Arrow Comics rose again, and the boys took another run at their original idea...this time though, they pulled out ALL of the stops, and unleashed a comic book abomination  that matched not only their original concepts, but their original goal of providing a shock-and-awe splatter tale that would go where others feared, and put all else to shame. That book, of course, was THE DEAD. A nightmare at the time unlike any other. A nightmare that has since been echoed by the likes of THE WALKING DEAD and CROSSED, all while the original, unfinished masterpiece has fallen unto obscurity.

    Well, no longer.

    Our initial plan, as of 2013, was to fund a collection of the original eight (seven published, one unpublished) issues of The Dead, and launch a brand new webstrip ("Dreams of The Dead") that would tie the various little-seen incarnations of the book together, in a continuing series of two-page installments, that would slowly tell a new chapter in the book's legacy. But as you've doubtless noticed, it was not to be. Even though the players were in place, and the dominoes lined up, the devil is in the details, and the project withered on the vine for a variety of reasons, much to the chagrin of yours truly. After a lull period, trying to figure out what to do next (and unwilling to give up on the project), fate tossed us a curve ball...and that curve ball's name was DEREK ROOK.

    Around the dawn of the millennium, Rook (seen here with his paramour SARAH MICHELLE, The Dead's very own Mistress of Sales & Promotion) illustrated a graphic novel adaptation of Lucio Fulci's immortal ZOMBIE (a film which was itself a massive influence of Ralph & Stu), along with the still-unfinished GATES OF HELL and HALLOWEEN COMES TO HADDONFIELD, which he also published. I first crossed paths with Derek when I was writing my old COMIC CASKET column for the one and only FANGORIA, and we both wound up contributing several pin-ups for Gary Reed's illustrated prose collection VOICES FROM THE DEADWORLD. Not long after, Rook decided to once again enter the world of publishing comics, and he called upon me to write the twisted works he was planning on unleashing unto the world. Derek is a die-hard, lifelong fan of Deadworld (and it shows in every line of his Voices work), and so I showed him some of The Dead, a book he'd vaguely heard of, but had never actually seen...it happened quickly from there. It was like watching a bomb going off. Like watching pieces of a puzzle just put themselves together. In no time at all, it was decided - we were going to bring back The Dead.

    And so it has come to pass that ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING - headed by Derek, and assisted by yours truly - is producing what has come to be known as THE DEAD OMNIBUS. Not only will it feature EVERY produced issue of The Dead up to now...including long lost unpublished material...not only will it feature a complete, full color cover gallery, and definitive collection of behind-the-scenes errata, it will feature an ENTIRE ISSUE'S worth of new content, to tie up the story as we've seen it these past 22 years. We've worked directly with Ralph and Stu to craft this 28 page coda, with the boys providing the storyline, myself writing the script, and Derek handling the art. Words cannot express the honor placed upon me to further this work...if my 15 year old self could see this day, he'd lose his goddamned mind.

    And to make matters even more powerful, even more INSANE, we have drafted the artist who started it all, the one and only VINCENT LOCKE to illustrate six book-ending pages that act as a prologue and epilogue to the main event, and what's more, will be painting the cover. Myself and original series artist JASON MOORE toiled endlessly to come up with the most depraved, indefensible, hardest-hitting cover design possible, and once we landed on it, Jason tight-penciled it up and sent it out to Vince to finish...and believe me children, your years of collecting Crossed and devouring gore metal STILL haven't prepared you for everything (just be glad it's not scratch and sniff!). And that's to say nothing of the psychotic back cover by legendary Deadworld alum MARK BLOODWORTH (pictured above), that you'll be BEGGING for us to release as a poster.

    And that's not nearly the tip of the maggot-encrusted iceberg...we have plans for more. Much more. Dreams of The Dead (our ill-fated webstrip) just might mutate into our first annual. And that's to say NOTHING of the big, five-part...well, that would be telling. If you could only be a fly on the Rough House walls...

    But nothing in life is free. The simple fact of the matter is, the book has nearly doubled in size from what we had originally intended. This thing is going to be a goddamn phonebook. Come with a barf bag. And it is guaran-fuckin'-teed to change your life on the spot. But that's a lot of pages, sport. Frankly, we need your help. We're gonna put out this book come Hell or high water, but if you want it to come out SOON, and you want it to come out RIGHT, you can make that happen. We are holding out our mold-stained top hats to you, the loyal deadthings, our children, our army, our fans. Pull out your bloody pocket change, and throw it at us.

                                                   
                                                     http://www.gofundme.com/sbf7cvs

    We've tested out a crowdfunding campaign with GOFUNDME (which we'll be expanding there and on other platforms soon enough), but the fact is, not enough people know what the hell The Dead is all about. But that can change in an instant. YOU can make this happen. YOU can bring about the rise of the most foul, depraved, apocalyptic book of all time. The book that SHOULD have crushed the 90s. The book that SHOULD have had a Charles Manson-like following. To quote The Joker, all it takes is one, little push.

    So keep your eyes on this spot. This two-fucking-years-in-between-posts thing is over and done with. As of June, we'll be going weekly with our updates here, if not even MORE frequent. You'll be seeing interviews with the creators, and you just might see crazy shit like prose pieces expanding on the world of The Dead. Anything's possible, but what we have in mind is pure insanity. We'll be at FANTACO mastermind TOM SKULAN'S very own end-all-be-all bash FANTACON this August, and if you slither out that way, there's a safe bet we just might have something...COOL for you. And you'll probably need a tetanus shot when you're done, but it'll be worth it.

    In the meantime, you can hit us up on Facebook, at both the Rough House and official Dead pages...stop by, pay your respects, and be a part of the revolution. We await your presence. And if you DON'T make yourself known, we'll start with your FAMILY...and work our way down 'til we find you.

    see you all soon....

https://www.facebook.com/ArrowComicsTheDead?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/RoughHousePublishing?fref=ts

http://www.fantacon.co/

A Long Day's Journey into HELL

FINALLY, precious dead things...it can be seen. The horror so foul, so staggeringly apocalyptic, that it was locked away, unseen by human eyes for 20 years. A tale of nihilistic, take-no-prisoners zombie perversion unlike any at the time...or today. Echoed by many late-comers in the ensuing decades, Arrow Comics' nightmarish splatter holocaust THE DEAD still has no equal...as you are about to see.

We present to you, for the first time ever, a taste of A Long Day's Journey into HELL, the lost, never-published third issue of The Dead, all the way from 1993.

The story up to this point has been a tragic one...two families (and a handful of friends) vacationing in the wilds of rural Michigan are set upon by a group of very bad people...very bad dead people.

 

An old, local farmer...with no pulse (but a double barrel shotgun to make up for it) drops in unexpectedly, and he's brought a few friends. The kind that draw flies.

The parents of both families are wiped out - tortured, massacred, eaten - the survivors, piled into a battered Winnebago headed for a fate unknown. But the dead do not stop...nothing gets between them and their prey. And they are not alone. They are everywhere.

And so our beleaguered group of survivors face danger and horror at every turn, until inevitably, one of them - pretty young Michelle - is bitten.

Unconscious, suffering massive blood loss, she dreams of the world to come...which is even worse than the one they have been ruthlessly thrust into. The one just outside their camper door...

 

While we work to upgrade the Dead blog to a full website, we'll be premiering the three-page teaser on the official Facebook page...

 

https://www.facebook.com/#!/ArrowComicsTheDead

 

...and our brand-bleedin'-new Flickr account.We highly recommend you subscribe.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63073461@N07/sets/72157633262620973/

Believe us when we say, when this kicks into high gear, it's gonna be more fun then a girl scout meeting in a cemetery full of hungry zombies. We plan on dripping a little here, a little there into your drooling mouths as the weeks go on, to keep you hungry for what is to come...so stay tuned, necrophiliacs...it's about to get WET.

 

Don't forget your vomit bag...

Dreams of The Dead!

Alright, Dead Things...we have something special lined up for you, raised and ready to hit you in the face like a sledge hammer in 2013: DREAMS OF THE DEAD!

A bi-weekly webstrip brought to you by Fangoria Writer Mike Wasion and soon-to-be-superstar artist J. Paolo Yu-Asensi (he'll be stolen away by one of the Big Two within a year, just you watch!), DoTD ties directly into the coninuity of the DEAD comic - all three versions - and goes deeper into the hellish scenario unfolding therein.

17 year old Tina Summers is driving across the state of Michigan with her father to attend the funeral of her recently-departed mother. Things are bad. As bad things can be. Little does she realize, things are about to get a lot worse. Nodding off on the long drive up, Tina is wracked with horrific nightmares...bizarre images and scenarios that seemingly come out of nowhere, every time she shuts her eyes. What she doesn't know...what she could not possibly know...is that the "dreams" she cannot escape are about to become a reality she cannot run from!

DoTD plunges into the nightmarish 'behind-the-scenes' of the ongoing DEAD comic book, and exposes some of the demonic undepinnings of the apocalyptic scenario...Satanic entities, unnamable beasts, and unthinkable torments await Tina...and the reader. DoTD promises to usher in horrors yet unseen in the world of comics...levels of perversion that crawl deep into the mind...and stay there. Other titles take a scattershot approach to hardcore horror, and that's well and good...but DoTD hits you like a surgeon...a surgeon who knows just how to make you hurt. And badly.

So stay tuned...coming soon is an interview with J. Pao Yu-Asensi, along with a sneak peek at the ongoing DEAD comic book by Griffith, Kerr, and Crouch. You'll EAT IT UP!

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