Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Dead Short


Always a serotonin-boosting pleasure when there's a parcel man at me door, arms holding a box of free stuff, but it's especially so when it contains the unexpected(though not so much when it's a ransom note and body parts of a close family friend).

Lurking behind the cover of Zombie Tales #7, is my first written story for BOOM! I scribbled it down in response to my increasing disenchantment with the ever-uninspiring glut of zombie movies/comics. The genre ran outta ideas a long time back, and really, the majority haven't moved past Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Same story, same idea, same stock characters. Stories that seem to take an age just to lead you nowhere, and stories that deliver nothing but a dreary sense of deja vu.


So, i wanted to have some fun with the undead, play around, try to add a little invention to the genre, and do it quick(only six pages), with no military experiment gone wrong, no social commentary, no pretension, no soap opera filling, no heroes, no apologetic scientist, no gung-ho soldier/cop/homeboy, no creepy, twitchy sleaze/coward with a gun who gets his just desserts, and no dialogue. In fact it's probably taken me longer to talk about the strip that it does to 'read' it.






It's drawn by the talented hand of Paul Harrison Davies, and it's a little firecracker; full of dinosaurs, buckets of blood, war, gore , and of course - ZOMBIES!
And, go - right now! - and take a good long drooling look at Pauls lovely(and ghastly)pictures, like this Captain Kronos pic, over at http://paulhd.blogspot.com/


4 comments:

paulhd said...

Thanks for bigging me sir, much appreciated!
Got my comp copies today, the buzz of seeing myself in print undercut by seeing all my duff bits:)
Gotta agree with your Zombie prognosis, still like the cute fellas, but it's amazing how much peopel just want to see them do the same old thing.

Unknown said...

Paul's new book looks amazing! Thanks for sharing this.We all need a little more originality in our lives.

shane oakley said...

paul - i think the problem is that most of the zombies are the ones watching...
ps;stay on that buzz!

eric - if you have trouble finding a copy at your comic store, let me know, and i'll include it in that 'legendary' package i'm sending.

Brian Lue Sang said...

I'm going to see about getting this one during the week. I agree that originality in the zombie genre is dead - great to see that someone is going outside of the box! Cheers, Shane!