Ross Campbell creator of The Abandoned

Ross Campbell creator of The Abandoned

By Daniel Robert Epstein
Jun 19, 2006

The Abandoned is a really awesome graphic novel. If you haven’t heard of Ross Campbell and his book, Wet Moon, then sit up and take notice because when The Abandoned catches on it’s going to send this guy’s Q rating to the moon. For The Abandoned, Campbell has created the character of Rylie, the punk mohawked lesbian who just convinced her long time pen pal to move into her town. On the eve of the big move a huge hurricane hits and then everyone over a certain age dies and comes back as a flesh eating zombie. Rylie and her friends must now fight to stay alive.

Buy The Abandoned

Daniel Robert Epstein: So you’re in Rochester [New York], do you go to Nick Tahoes and get the garbage plate?
Ross Campbell: I don’t eat that stuff, come on.
DRE:
[laughs] Did you grow up there?
RC:
Yeah I’ve been here forever except when I lived in Savannah, Georgia after going to school there. But since then I’ve been here.
DRE:
So you don’t do any of the stuff the tourists do.
RC:
Yeah, it’s just always been here so whatever. I had a garbage plate once many years ago. I was like, “What is this? Oh God.” I never ate it again.
DRE:
With The Abandoned, was it in your mind to do a zombie story or did the characters come first?
RC:
I always wanted to do a zombie book or comic because I’m a big horror nerd. I’m into all the George Romero stuff. Also I was really poor at the time. I’m still really poor but I was poorer before and living with my parents. Then TokyoPop came and asked me “hey, do you want to do a three volume series thing?” I was like, “good God, yes.” I was just like, “how about a zombie book?” and they’re like, “whatever.”
DRE:
When I first started the book I had no idea there were zombies in it. I just thought it was a punk lesbian love story.
RC:
I like writing lesbian characters so it just came out of that. There aren’t really any teen zombie stories. There’s Return of the Living Dead but that’s those crazy punk rockers and stuff in it.
DRE:
Yeah but not even like real punk rockers.
RC:
Yeah, they’re just like ridiculous. A guy with like a giant chain in his face and stuff, that’s totally absurd. I wanted more down to earth characters. I like rednecks and trailer trash characters so I rolled all that into one.
DRE:
So The Abandoned is the first of a series of three books with the character of Rylie?
RC:
Yeah, it’s supposed to be three books. But TokyoPop makes all those Manga Japanese books so that’s why there’s no Volume One written on the cover. They pulled the one off the cover at the last minute. They were like, “well we don’t know if there’s going to be a second volume or not.” Blah, blah, blah.
DRE:
I hope they’re not expecting it to sell as well as their Japanese stuff.
RC:
I don’t know.
DRE:
How old is Rylie supposed to be?
RC:
Like 17 or so.
DRE:
Do you ever plan on explaining how the zombie phenomenon came about?
RC:
I don’t think I’ll ever explain it. At age 23 the people die and come back as a zombie so with all the adults dead there’s nobody left to figure it out. There’s just no non-cheesy way to have the characters figure it out.
DRE:
I totally thought it was going to turn into some like post-modern horror book like The Faculty or something because Rylie was a fan of horror movies.
RC:
What do you mean exactly? My brain is fried.
DRE:
Did you see The Faculty?
RC:
With Jon Stewart?
DRE:
Yeah.
RC:
He had his eye stabbed out or something.
DRE:
There’s a character in it that’s like a big science fiction fan so she’s making comments on it, like “this is what we should do because this is the way it worked in this movie.” Was that something you wanted to avoid?
RC:
Rylie’s a fan of this stuff so it is supposed to be ironic that the zombies come. But I didn’t want to hump the leg of these movies too much. I’m totally into them and I would like cream my pants if I met Romero or something and there’s a lot of references to him in the book but I didn’t want to be like a complete disgusting fanboy nerd. I wanted to have some class.
DRE:
Did you draw the book knowing it was going to come out in a Manga size format?
RC:
Yeah, unfortunately.
DRE:
Well, it helps the books sell.
RC:
Yeah, I know. I just don’t know anybody that likes small comics. But that’s the size that most comics are in Japan. Whenever I talk to people they’re always like, “you know, I wish it wasn’t so small.” All the publishers are like, “oh, this is the size, the digest size, that people want.” Nobody likes that small stuff but it’s somehow popular.
DRE:
It’s what the kids want, I think. But it’s not what I wanted when I was a kid.
RC:
No, it’s not what I wanted either and all of the fans I talk to say the same thing, “oh, I wish TokyoPop would make their books bigger.” TokyoPop wants all their books to be the same size so they all fit on the shelf. If there’s one book that’s bigger then it doesn’t work anymore. It completely topples TokyoPop’s whole deal.
DRE:
[laughs] What did you use to draw The Abandoned?
RC:
It’s in sumi ink. I ink with a brush and then all the tones are markers and ink wash, which is ink mixed with water and it works like watercolors. Then all the red stuff was done on the computer.
DRE:
Did you do the computer stuff too?
RC:
Yeah, that’s why the book took me so frickin’ long.
DRE:
How long did you work on it for?
RC:
I think something like 11 months.
DRE:
That’s not so bad. How big is the book again?
RC:
Not counting the chapter pages and stuff, I think it’s like 184 pages.
DRE:
Less than a year to do that size of a book is pretty good.
RC:
I don’t know, it was tough.
DRE:
Well if you’re not getting a huge page rate, maybe it’s not as good [laughs].
RC:
Yeah. Like my stuff for Oni Press with my Wet Moon book, it’s all black and white so I can do one of those in like five or six months.
DRE:
Are you at all like the characters in your book?
RC:
[laughs] Not at all. I’m just a nerd guy or something. I don’t have any tattoos or piercings or anything like that.
DRE:
Are your friends like that?
RC:
Not really. My one friend Dan has tattoos and earrings and stuff but he’s pretty much it. All my other friends are pretty normal people.
DRE:
What helped you get into that mindset?
RC:
Not to sound like some New Age guru but I just know how people are, particularly girls. I’m friends with a lot of girls. I just take pieces and remove pieces and just make these new personalities.
DRE:
Besides the fact that lesbians are awesome, what do you like about writing lesbian characters?
RC:
It just seems really natural for me to write a girl-girl relationship. When I approach straight relationships in my other book, Wet Moon, initially I was like “what do straight people do?” even though I am straight.
DRE:
Beside the Romero zombie movies, what zombie movies do you like?
RC:
I like the Evil Dead stuff. I like Dellamorte Dellamore.
DRE:
Cool, I think there’s a special edition DVD coming out soon.
RC:
Finally. I can graduate from my crappy VHS copy I’ve had forever. I like some of Fulci’s stuff like Zombi 2. The Beyond is pretty good.
DRE:
I love that movie so much.
RC:
Yeah, with the spiders ripping people’s eyes out.
DRE:
He loves to rip out people’s eyes.
RC:
There’s an eye theme in The Abandoned with many eyes getting stabbed and popped out. Like in Zombi 2 when the scientist’s wife gets her eye jabbed with that chunk of wood.
DRE:
Yeah, it’s gross.
RC:
But some of his other stuff like City of the Living Dead and House by the Cemetery are so bad.
DRE:
I’ve seen like six Fulci films and the only one I really liked was The Beyond. I always think “Why do people like this guy?
RC:
Yeah, he’s really like hit or miss. Like a lot of the Italian films they rely so much on the shock moments. Which are good but then half the time it’s so boring in between. It’s like, “oh when’s somebody going to get disemboweled or something? Hurry up.”
DRE:
[laughs] But then they don’t disappoint.

Were there zombie killing scenes in The Abandoned that you’d been waiting to do for years?
RC:
I made most of that up when I was writing it and it just got grosser when I went to draw it. I would write, so and so gets bitten, blah, blah, blah, but then when I’d go to draw it I’d change it to make it grosser. To have an eye popping out when there wasn’t an eye popping out in the script.
DRE:
What is Wet Moon about?
RC:
It has a lot less crap than The Abandoned. It’s just these character doing pretty normal stuff and there’s some weird stuff too. But for the most part, it’s really slice of life type stuff. It’s got a lot bigger cast than The Abandoned too. I regret it because it’s hard to juggle all the characters. But I think some people are turned off by Wet Moon, because nothing happens in it.
DRE:
What else are you working on?
RC:
I’m working on a top secret project with Vertigo editor Shelly Bond, but I’m not supposed to talk about that.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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