By J.D. Nelms
Being a Photoshop artist is much like being a studio musician. You begin your career creating for others and you may do well at it, but the real path to success is promoting a brand or property, completely of your own creation.
In 2010, I had attempted to create a graphic novel about a drug treatment counselor in Kansas, circa 1990, who has startling visions of the undead among the meth addicts he counsels. He literally believes the addicts are true zombies, turned that way by the potent blend of dark magic and methamphetamines, supplied by a local biker gang known as Riders of the Apocalypse.
The counselor, who we learn is an untreated late-onset schizophrenic, refers to himself Ezekiel. He hunts the undead, mostly at night and always in disguise so that he can blend in with the zombies that he preys upon. On the walls of his crime scenes and occasionally on the foreheads of his victims, using paint, marker pen or often human blood, he scrawls the intitials ZK. According to his journal, the ZK stands for both Zeke and Zombie Killer.
His crimes baffle authorities, since his victims are often heavily under the influence of narcotics. Survivors if any, can't identify him because of the latex zombie skull mask and Rastafari wig that he wears during his murders. Ezekiel commemorates his successes in a detailed private scrapbook journal, filled with his hand written screeds, along with newspaper clippings, and personal Polaroid photos of his crimes.
FBI, Kansas State and local homicide police believe the ZK homicides are the work of a motorcycle gang, Riders of the Apocalypse, who are led by a man known as Red Horse. The authorites however, have no evidence or leads due to the fact that anyone who gets close to the notorious bike gang, end up dead or missing.
Red Horse, whose real identity is unkown, is named for the sword wielding red horseman from the New Testament book of Revelation. Do to his appearance, authorities beleive that Red Horse is either the son of the original founder or perhaps a title given to the current leader of the motorcycle gang, as records of the gang's existence go back to the end of WWII. Ezekiel however, believes that Red Horse is an eighty year old vampire who feeds on the addicts his gang creates and supplies.
Scrapbook Splash Page
The splash page and end page of each story, would be the latest page from Ezekiel's scrapbook. He believes he was ordained by an angel to kill all those who enter from the portal of Hell.
Alternate Splash Page
This alternate splash page gives some backstory to Ezekiel, who believes as a child, that he was visited by Charon, the Roman god of the underworld who now serves as a minor functionary in the Christian celestial bureaucracy.
Pilot Pages; Color and B&W
In the comic industry, a ten page pilot is often used to sell the idea to publishers and distributors. Often this should be a scene or scenes from the the story, but never the intro. The two pages I have illustrated here would have been from the second issue, which I had not fully written.
The Red Horse
Both a splash page and a character intro page, it served to introduce us to Red Horse and hopefully spawn a series title all it's own.
Despite being a story of a deranged man who believes he's killing the undead, The Zombie Killer's Scrapbook was largely written in first person, so I was more influenced by Dexter, than I was The Walking Dead. Since my main character was the only person who could see the zombies, John Carpenter's They Live was also an influence.
However, serialized fiction writing was not my strength. The first draft script was a complex mess, packed with far too much dialog and exposition. Worse, by 2011, I had lost interest in the project, and never completed the second draft. Instead I began a new one.
It was the Wizard Of Oz set in 1960's war torn Vietnam.
More on that in a different article.
