The concept of zombies was first introduced to western fantasists in the early 1900s. Most zombie stories were self contained adventures except in the rare case of George Romeros Dead quadrilogy. But the never ending zombie story was first introduced in the mid-80s with Deadworld. But Deadworlds truly didnt take off until Gary Reed, who later founded Caliber Press, took over the series with artists like Vince Locke and Dalibor Talajic. Deadworld hit a lull in the 90s when it wasnt published very frequently only to be brought back last year by Image Comics and Desperado Publishing. I got a chance to talk with the energetic and innovative Gary Reed about republishing the adventures of the Dead Killer, the enigmatic slayer of zombies.
Buy Deadworld: Dead Killer
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Gary Reed: I was just getting some writing done and getting some stuff ready for school on Monday.
DRE: Do you teach?
Reed: Yeah I teach biology courses at the community college.
DRE: So your biology degree is coming in very handy then.
Reed: Yeah, it took me a while. I got my degree and didnt use it for 15, 20 years, what the hell. I spend most of my time teaching and enjoy it quite a bit.
DRE: How do you teach and still write so many comics?
Reed: With a patient wife. The thing is that I dont waste any time. You just get down to it and do it. I dont watch a lot of TV. I dont have too many distractions, I stay pretty focused. When youre always busy you get a lot more done because you dont have time to think about how you do or you dont want to do something, you just do it.
DRE: The latest trade paperback of Deadworld I read was the Dead Killer.
Reed: Thats actually way back from the first series of Deadworld in issues 19, 20 and 21. It appeared as a backup and then we compiled it into a one-shot and then after a little while we did a little miniseries out of it, so that was probably done in the mid to late 90s.
DRE: Now the Dead Killer is showing up in the regular series.
Reed: Yeah, he makes an appearance in number six, which should be out now. So hell be in a trade paperback that collects one through six and then for the new series starting with number seven, hell play much more of a major role. The new series actually starts with number seven but I didnt want to start the numbering over with another number one. Weve had too many Deadworld number ones.
DRE: I cant believe someone didnt convince you to put out another number one. That seems to be the way.
Reed: I think thats not as true as it used to be. It used to be an automatic given that you were going to get so many orders of number one. Maybe it might be a slight blip in sales but overall I think that longevity helps a lot, more so in the long run than having that minor blip for a number one. Well try to gear it up to be an introductory issue so if somebodys never read Deadworld they can come right in on that and understand everything thats going on.
DRE: So the character of the Dead Killer is about ten years old.
Reed: Yeah and Deadworld itself started 85 or 86.
DRE: Was the Dead Killer a character that you were always planning on putting into the regular series?
Reed: In volume two the Dead Killer played a role, not that major of a role, he came with an attitude of the wise old mentor that knew what was going on when nobody else did. I wanted to get away from that part of it where hes just this sage and deal with more how he sees the world because he sees it as very black and white. Youre either for him or against him and theres nothing in between.
DRE: Thats the way you have to be when youre all by yourself.
Reed: Yeah and he prefers it that way. He, of course, doesnt trust the zombies and hes following through his past experience, which well reveal some of. He doesnt trust humans either. Thats how I look at Deadworld and thats what [the comic] Slaughterhouse is dealing with, whats going on with the humans. You just have to look at Darfur, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia to see that what do humans do to each other might be worse than what the zombies do.
DRE: So its important to you to have the zombie books that you do reflect modern politics?
Reed: I dont know if its just modern politics. Humans killing each other goes back quite a ways. But it is modern politics in the sense that it is part of us as a race in the past, the present and unfortunately its going to be the future.
DRE: Do you know the ending of Deadworld at this point?
Reed: No idea, havent got a clue.
DRE: Will the Dead Killer be a part of that ending?
Reed: It depends on how long it goes on. I really dont know. I dont think I would kill the Dead Killer off unless it seems like the natural progression. My only superhero comic book was Seeker and by the fifth issue, I felt she had to go so I killed her off which essentially ended the series.
DRE: In Deadworlds run when did you first come up with the idea of intelligent zombies?
Reed: That was actually in the very first issue that was put together by Arrow Comics [with creators Stuart Kerr and Ralph Griffith]. They introduced a group of intelligent zombies at the end of the first issue. I dont think they meant for King Zombie to become so big but people were responding to it. So King Zombie became this more vocal character and became the focal point of representing the plan of the zombies.
DRE: Was that before [George Romeros] Day of the Dead came out [in 1985]?
Reed: I think the Arrow guys were heavily influenced by Night of the Living Dead. I dont know about timeframes because I wasnt really ever into zombie movies.
DRE: Really?
Reed: I loved Night of the Living Dead because that was a classic.
But for Deadword they departed from that pretty quickly with the intelligent zombies and developing different types of creatures. They were a little bit derivative but I think a lot of books are when they first come out. But people get enthused and pull away from that pretty quick. Then when I took over I pulled away even more because I dont watch any zombie movies, I dont read any zombie books or comics. I dont want to get influenced by anything Im doing with zombies.
DRE: When did Deadworld move to Image?
Reed: What happened was that I closed up Caliber, which went out with a whimper. One day I said, Ah, I dont want to do this anymore. It was a losing battle. The market had changed dramatically. There were so many of the publishers and it got to the point where I could keep it going but its like Whats the point? What am I trying to accomplish here? I didnt see much point in it so I just closed it up and Joe Pruett started Desperado Publishing and he used to work for me so we talked a lot about what strategies to do. Then he decided to go with Image and he asked me about Deadworld. At the time I really wasnt interested in doing much with comics but I came back with Byron Preiss because he wanted to reprint Baker Street. So we did that with Simon and Schuster and then Byron asked me about writing some more books. I wrote a couple graphic novels for Penguin. I said Ok, well, Im certainly enjoying writing and not publishing. Then Joe asked Why dont you bring back Deadworld? A lot of people would like to see that. I had my doubts about that but he was pretty persistent so I said, Ok, well bring back Deadworld. The first issue of Deadworld with Desperado came out in September of 2005. We had a long delay in the shipping between issues one and two and two and three but since then its caught up quite well.
DRE: How has this resurgence of zombie material helped out the sales of the books?
Reed: I think its just doing ok. Theres another book from Image called The Walking Dead [created by Robert Kirkman]. The thing that really bothered me was that people said, Oh youre just jumping on the zombie bandwagon. I say, Deadworld had 50 issues before there was ever a Walking Dead. But I dont blame the writer. Hes doing what he wants to do and this is a separate entity. I dont know how similar they are. Ive never read an issue. I dont want to read an issue. Maybe once Im done with Deadworld Ill go back and read them but I never read anything thats similar to what Im doing. Id kill myself if I ever found out I accidentally took something. Most people dont plan to do that but it just gets into your subconscious so I dont want to get to that point.
Im bringing back a few Caliber titles like Raven Chronicles and The Realm is supposed to be coming back as a whole new series. So I guess well be jumping on the fantasy bandwagon when we do that.
DRE: Screw everyone who says shit like that. Hows that sound?
Reed: Yeah, thats my feeling but it just surprised me. But it just shows that most of the fans arent aware of the long history of it.
DRE: How did you keep Caliber going so long after the comic glut of the early 90s?
Reed: We lasted a little bit longer than the rest but we didnt make it. We had some problems that were outside of all that. There were a number of different problems and they all came at the same time but cthe major one was the Power Cardz game we did. It was a collectible card game like Magic and we invested everything we had because we had guaranteed purchase orders from Target, Toys R Us, K-Mart, Wal-Mart for millions of dollars. So we put everything we had into it. We had two guys, Joe Martin and Tim Parsons, who were working 20 hours a day, every single day, so we got the game done. It looked great. It played great. We tested it and retested it and retested it. We sent it off to the printer and we flew around the country, talked to a lot of different printers, but the printer we chose outsourced it without telling us and the new printers that took over had no idea that you had to allocate the cards in a random fashion so youd buy a deck of 50 and have 50 of the same cards.
DRE: Oh my God.
Reed: So all the purchase orders were canceled. The things that we did ship earlier, including the direct comic market which was quite a bit of money, all came back so thats what killed us. I sued the printer. It took about six years but I won the lawsuit but by that time they had been bankrupt for a couple years. They had nothing.
DRE: You must have been crushed.
Reed: It was a pretty depressing time so if it wasnt for that, Caliber would have been a monster because that would have made more profit than we made in ten years. Not only was there the initial purchase orders but we had three additional games ready to roll out.
DRE: To talk about comics again, I really liked the prose story that was in the Dead Killer trade. I read youre working on a Deadworld novel.
Reed: Yeah, Im actually probably going to venture more into prose. My wife says to forget the comics, just go into prose. I did a young adult prose book with Actionopolis called Spirit of the Samurai. Its part of a series of books all dealing with mythology. Each story deals with a different type and Im dealing with Japanese mythology. I really enjoy doing the young adult novels and theyre getting a real good response at libraries and bookstores. I am writing a Deadworld novel with Gary Francis. Hes done the bulk of the work so far and now Ive got to go back through and rewrite a lot of it and change the focus in certain areas but its a good collaboration. I have a couple other prose stories coming up in Negative Burn then I have a couple things I really want to get into in the prose. The Plague was a comic I did with [A History of Violence co-creator] Vince Locke and it was stories of people who lived and died during the plague. Vince did the full page illustrations that accompanied each narration so each page was a narration of somebody who either lived or died during a plague.
Also with my science background Im going to do some more science stuff like a book with Chuck Bordell who is an anthropologist. Were going to do something about evolution and looks like I already have it set up as a textbook for some colleges. Im in the position where I can write what I want to write not what I have to.
DRE: I interviewed Guy Davis about a year and a half ago. Do you think the two of you will ever finish Baker Street?
Reed: Well that was my first comic. When I read the first issue now, I just cringe. Guy just has got a lot on his plate just like I do and it is just chasing something if you try to bring back Baker Street. I think maybe a one shot would do it but I think Guys passion has turned towards [his creator owned book] The Marquis.
DRE: Did your biology degree lead you to doing zombie comics?
Reed: No. But it is an influence on the new storyline. I think a lot about the biological aspects of zombies and Slaughterhouse is a biological testing facility. Basically theyre injecting people with AIDS, leprosy and some other diseases to see what happens when the zombies eat them.
DRE: What made you want to write Deadworld in the first place?
Reed: It was floundering. Vince [Locke] wanted off the book. Guy [Davis] and Vince were like 18 when they first started Deadworld for Arrow but by the time I took over publishing they both wanted to get out. They wanted to do something else. Vince wanted to do something besides zombies. Guy wanted to do something besides The Realm. Vince did a lot of short stories and then he got hired by DC for Sandman. So we were trying to figure out who was going to do it. At that time I really wasnt interested in writing that much. I took up Baker Street because Guy wanted to do some Sherlock Holmes and I knew Sherlock Holmes pretty well. I was dabbling and I started plotting out some issues of Deadworld. I said we should take the story here and here and here and it ended up that I was just faster and cheaper than anybody else. I wanted to wrap the first volume because it was a mess of deadline problems. So I ended it and then in volume two I wanted it to look fresh and bring everything into focus and then go from there. But one of the hardest things as an independent publisher is that unless you can pay a lot of rates you have this influx of talent coming in and out all the time. Most people are going to spend two or three issues then move on.
DRE: Whats the next thing youre working on that youre excited about?
Reed: I wrote Doctor Syn with Tom Mandrake. Tom has the script and as soon as he finishes drawing it well release it. I think hes got 12 pages fully done and it just looks fantastic.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy Deadworld: Dead Killer
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Gary Reed: I was just getting some writing done and getting some stuff ready for school on Monday.
DRE: Do you teach?
Reed: Yeah I teach biology courses at the community college.
DRE: So your biology degree is coming in very handy then.
Reed: Yeah, it took me a while. I got my degree and didnt use it for 15, 20 years, what the hell. I spend most of my time teaching and enjoy it quite a bit.
DRE: How do you teach and still write so many comics?
Reed: With a patient wife. The thing is that I dont waste any time. You just get down to it and do it. I dont watch a lot of TV. I dont have too many distractions, I stay pretty focused. When youre always busy you get a lot more done because you dont have time to think about how you do or you dont want to do something, you just do it.
DRE: The latest trade paperback of Deadworld I read was the Dead Killer.
Reed: Thats actually way back from the first series of Deadworld in issues 19, 20 and 21. It appeared as a backup and then we compiled it into a one-shot and then after a little while we did a little miniseries out of it, so that was probably done in the mid to late 90s.
DRE: Now the Dead Killer is showing up in the regular series.
Reed: Yeah, he makes an appearance in number six, which should be out now. So hell be in a trade paperback that collects one through six and then for the new series starting with number seven, hell play much more of a major role. The new series actually starts with number seven but I didnt want to start the numbering over with another number one. Weve had too many Deadworld number ones.
DRE: I cant believe someone didnt convince you to put out another number one. That seems to be the way.
Reed: I think thats not as true as it used to be. It used to be an automatic given that you were going to get so many orders of number one. Maybe it might be a slight blip in sales but overall I think that longevity helps a lot, more so in the long run than having that minor blip for a number one. Well try to gear it up to be an introductory issue so if somebodys never read Deadworld they can come right in on that and understand everything thats going on.
DRE: So the character of the Dead Killer is about ten years old.
Reed: Yeah and Deadworld itself started 85 or 86.
DRE: Was the Dead Killer a character that you were always planning on putting into the regular series?
Reed: In volume two the Dead Killer played a role, not that major of a role, he came with an attitude of the wise old mentor that knew what was going on when nobody else did. I wanted to get away from that part of it where hes just this sage and deal with more how he sees the world because he sees it as very black and white. Youre either for him or against him and theres nothing in between.
DRE: Thats the way you have to be when youre all by yourself.
Reed: Yeah and he prefers it that way. He, of course, doesnt trust the zombies and hes following through his past experience, which well reveal some of. He doesnt trust humans either. Thats how I look at Deadworld and thats what [the comic] Slaughterhouse is dealing with, whats going on with the humans. You just have to look at Darfur, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia to see that what do humans do to each other might be worse than what the zombies do.
DRE: So its important to you to have the zombie books that you do reflect modern politics?
Reed: I dont know if its just modern politics. Humans killing each other goes back quite a ways. But it is modern politics in the sense that it is part of us as a race in the past, the present and unfortunately its going to be the future.
DRE: Do you know the ending of Deadworld at this point?
Reed: No idea, havent got a clue.
DRE: Will the Dead Killer be a part of that ending?
Reed: It depends on how long it goes on. I really dont know. I dont think I would kill the Dead Killer off unless it seems like the natural progression. My only superhero comic book was Seeker and by the fifth issue, I felt she had to go so I killed her off which essentially ended the series.
DRE: In Deadworlds run when did you first come up with the idea of intelligent zombies?
Reed: That was actually in the very first issue that was put together by Arrow Comics [with creators Stuart Kerr and Ralph Griffith]. They introduced a group of intelligent zombies at the end of the first issue. I dont think they meant for King Zombie to become so big but people were responding to it. So King Zombie became this more vocal character and became the focal point of representing the plan of the zombies.
DRE: Was that before [George Romeros] Day of the Dead came out [in 1985]?
Reed: I think the Arrow guys were heavily influenced by Night of the Living Dead. I dont know about timeframes because I wasnt really ever into zombie movies.
DRE: Really?
Reed: I loved Night of the Living Dead because that was a classic.
But for Deadword they departed from that pretty quickly with the intelligent zombies and developing different types of creatures. They were a little bit derivative but I think a lot of books are when they first come out. But people get enthused and pull away from that pretty quick. Then when I took over I pulled away even more because I dont watch any zombie movies, I dont read any zombie books or comics. I dont want to get influenced by anything Im doing with zombies.
DRE: When did Deadworld move to Image?
Reed: What happened was that I closed up Caliber, which went out with a whimper. One day I said, Ah, I dont want to do this anymore. It was a losing battle. The market had changed dramatically. There were so many of the publishers and it got to the point where I could keep it going but its like Whats the point? What am I trying to accomplish here? I didnt see much point in it so I just closed it up and Joe Pruett started Desperado Publishing and he used to work for me so we talked a lot about what strategies to do. Then he decided to go with Image and he asked me about Deadworld. At the time I really wasnt interested in doing much with comics but I came back with Byron Preiss because he wanted to reprint Baker Street. So we did that with Simon and Schuster and then Byron asked me about writing some more books. I wrote a couple graphic novels for Penguin. I said Ok, well, Im certainly enjoying writing and not publishing. Then Joe asked Why dont you bring back Deadworld? A lot of people would like to see that. I had my doubts about that but he was pretty persistent so I said, Ok, well bring back Deadworld. The first issue of Deadworld with Desperado came out in September of 2005. We had a long delay in the shipping between issues one and two and two and three but since then its caught up quite well.
DRE: How has this resurgence of zombie material helped out the sales of the books?
Reed: I think its just doing ok. Theres another book from Image called The Walking Dead [created by Robert Kirkman]. The thing that really bothered me was that people said, Oh youre just jumping on the zombie bandwagon. I say, Deadworld had 50 issues before there was ever a Walking Dead. But I dont blame the writer. Hes doing what he wants to do and this is a separate entity. I dont know how similar they are. Ive never read an issue. I dont want to read an issue. Maybe once Im done with Deadworld Ill go back and read them but I never read anything thats similar to what Im doing. Id kill myself if I ever found out I accidentally took something. Most people dont plan to do that but it just gets into your subconscious so I dont want to get to that point.
Im bringing back a few Caliber titles like Raven Chronicles and The Realm is supposed to be coming back as a whole new series. So I guess well be jumping on the fantasy bandwagon when we do that.
DRE: Screw everyone who says shit like that. Hows that sound?
Reed: Yeah, thats my feeling but it just surprised me. But it just shows that most of the fans arent aware of the long history of it.
DRE: How did you keep Caliber going so long after the comic glut of the early 90s?
Reed: We lasted a little bit longer than the rest but we didnt make it. We had some problems that were outside of all that. There were a number of different problems and they all came at the same time but cthe major one was the Power Cardz game we did. It was a collectible card game like Magic and we invested everything we had because we had guaranteed purchase orders from Target, Toys R Us, K-Mart, Wal-Mart for millions of dollars. So we put everything we had into it. We had two guys, Joe Martin and Tim Parsons, who were working 20 hours a day, every single day, so we got the game done. It looked great. It played great. We tested it and retested it and retested it. We sent it off to the printer and we flew around the country, talked to a lot of different printers, but the printer we chose outsourced it without telling us and the new printers that took over had no idea that you had to allocate the cards in a random fashion so youd buy a deck of 50 and have 50 of the same cards.
DRE: Oh my God.
Reed: So all the purchase orders were canceled. The things that we did ship earlier, including the direct comic market which was quite a bit of money, all came back so thats what killed us. I sued the printer. It took about six years but I won the lawsuit but by that time they had been bankrupt for a couple years. They had nothing.
DRE: You must have been crushed.
Reed: It was a pretty depressing time so if it wasnt for that, Caliber would have been a monster because that would have made more profit than we made in ten years. Not only was there the initial purchase orders but we had three additional games ready to roll out.
DRE: To talk about comics again, I really liked the prose story that was in the Dead Killer trade. I read youre working on a Deadworld novel.
Reed: Yeah, Im actually probably going to venture more into prose. My wife says to forget the comics, just go into prose. I did a young adult prose book with Actionopolis called Spirit of the Samurai. Its part of a series of books all dealing with mythology. Each story deals with a different type and Im dealing with Japanese mythology. I really enjoy doing the young adult novels and theyre getting a real good response at libraries and bookstores. I am writing a Deadworld novel with Gary Francis. Hes done the bulk of the work so far and now Ive got to go back through and rewrite a lot of it and change the focus in certain areas but its a good collaboration. I have a couple other prose stories coming up in Negative Burn then I have a couple things I really want to get into in the prose. The Plague was a comic I did with [A History of Violence co-creator] Vince Locke and it was stories of people who lived and died during the plague. Vince did the full page illustrations that accompanied each narration so each page was a narration of somebody who either lived or died during a plague.
Also with my science background Im going to do some more science stuff like a book with Chuck Bordell who is an anthropologist. Were going to do something about evolution and looks like I already have it set up as a textbook for some colleges. Im in the position where I can write what I want to write not what I have to.
DRE: I interviewed Guy Davis about a year and a half ago. Do you think the two of you will ever finish Baker Street?
Reed: Well that was my first comic. When I read the first issue now, I just cringe. Guy just has got a lot on his plate just like I do and it is just chasing something if you try to bring back Baker Street. I think maybe a one shot would do it but I think Guys passion has turned towards [his creator owned book] The Marquis.
DRE: Did your biology degree lead you to doing zombie comics?
Reed: No. But it is an influence on the new storyline. I think a lot about the biological aspects of zombies and Slaughterhouse is a biological testing facility. Basically theyre injecting people with AIDS, leprosy and some other diseases to see what happens when the zombies eat them.
DRE: What made you want to write Deadworld in the first place?
Reed: It was floundering. Vince [Locke] wanted off the book. Guy [Davis] and Vince were like 18 when they first started Deadworld for Arrow but by the time I took over publishing they both wanted to get out. They wanted to do something else. Vince wanted to do something besides zombies. Guy wanted to do something besides The Realm. Vince did a lot of short stories and then he got hired by DC for Sandman. So we were trying to figure out who was going to do it. At that time I really wasnt interested in writing that much. I took up Baker Street because Guy wanted to do some Sherlock Holmes and I knew Sherlock Holmes pretty well. I was dabbling and I started plotting out some issues of Deadworld. I said we should take the story here and here and here and it ended up that I was just faster and cheaper than anybody else. I wanted to wrap the first volume because it was a mess of deadline problems. So I ended it and then in volume two I wanted it to look fresh and bring everything into focus and then go from there. But one of the hardest things as an independent publisher is that unless you can pay a lot of rates you have this influx of talent coming in and out all the time. Most people are going to spend two or three issues then move on.
DRE: Whats the next thing youre working on that youre excited about?
Reed: I wrote Doctor Syn with Tom Mandrake. Tom has the script and as soon as he finishes drawing it well release it. I think hes got 12 pages fully done and it just looks fantastic.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
zoetica:
The concept of zombies was first introduced to western fantasists in the early 1900s. Most zombie stories were self contained adventures except in the rare case of George Romeros Dead quadrilogy. But the never ending zombie story was first introduced in the mid-80s with Deadworld. But Deadworlds...
annisa:
I miss Caliber comics, one of the best things to come out of Detroit.