The People’s Publisher

There’s a band around town that performs under the moniker Fake Shark! Real Zombie! I first saw the name a couple years back on a poster advertising a gig of theirs. Now, being a zombie fan from years ago, I got what the band was referencing. There’s a scene in the 1979 film Zombie (aka Island of the Flesh Eaters) where a zombie and a shark go at each other under water. The shark was indeed rubber, and the zombie was, in essence, real. The zombie won, and I am left wondering if a sequel could not have been made with a zombie shark, thus crossing the zombie genre with the man VS animal genre (Jaws, Cujo, Them, etc). Instead we have a band regaling the desperate homeless in the delightful Downtown Eastside of Rolf Harris‘ beloved Vancouvertown.

Terrific Tom Irony’s Slaughter Incorporated blends many of the aspects Zombie fans love about the genre. There’s gratuitous violence (natch), but there’s also the diaspora of characters and their reactions to a phenomenon that can go out of control. Artist Sexy Steve Goad got the concepts right off the bat with the creation of the pinup of the book’s protagonist Gregory Heathcliff. Here’s his first go at it (dubbed “pencils” even though Steve works directly with paint from the start):

As pencils, they were approved. So Steve moved onto the so-called “inks” stage. You know, Steve is the second sequentials painter I’ve worked with (the other being Krazy Kuba Kujawa on Jazzy Jason Cook’s Blake Undying) and I’m starting to see as an editor the best way to proceed under those circumstances. So far, the painters I’ve been working with start right off the bat with colour and paint. As a way to monitor progress and keep track of revisions, the artist’s first upload will be considered Pencils_1. If revisions are requested, the next upload would be Pencils_2 and the last Pencils_3, because Z2H artists are contracted for two revisions per iteration (pencil. inks. etc…). The next set of revisions would be uploaded as “inks”. Here is what Steve presented under the “inks” step:

All that was needed was a final tweak and Voila! Pinup is done! Next stop: Page X!

Be sure to check out zeros2heroes.com and the ZedWorks Gallery for more eye-poppin’ art!

See you in the funny papers,

Julian