by: Decapitated Dan Royer

Most of the zombies that we see in our horror comics are your typical slow paced, brain eating drones. So imagine the shock of finding a bad ass biker zombie who is hell bent on world domination in 80’s. Welcome to Deadworld and the creation of King Zombie.

Deadworld was written and created by Stuart Kerr and Ralph Griffith in 1987 and still has volumes coming out today. Now headed by Gary Reed, the storyline follows a group of survivors as they try to escape from the zombie invasion. The one thing no one expected though were the intelligent zombies lead by, my hero, King Zombie. Like our other famous zombies we recognize this month, King Zombie has control over his actions. He also has the ability to summons other demons and monsters from hell.

The creation of King Zombie added another dimension to horror comics. We no longer need to just follow the human survivors. We could now jump back and forth with storylines, either seeing how people ran from him, or how he went about with his destruction of the human race. I can’t think of a volume, where this wasn’t put to use. 

So how did I get to be this huge King Zombie fan? Well about two years ago I was rummaging through a 50¢ comic box and I came across this amazing cover that just screamed out “BUY ME!” So when I got home later that day I sat down to read Deadworld Vol. 1 #5 and I just fell in love with it. I loved the concept, the artwork and I had to know more as fast as possible. Luckily there is a very good Deadworld website out there, full of information and news.

My main attration came when I got my hand on the Dead Killer TPB. In this mini series the Dead Killer is after the biggest game of all, King Zombie. But to no avail he can not succeed, because of the supernatural forces that KZ controls. Just this sheer gore in that collection is enough to make a horror fan happy.

Deadworld the series was rebooted in 2005 by Desperado/Image comics. I mean there was almost 20 years worth of material before that so it was a nice touch. Since the reboot there have been two main storylines, Frozen Over and Slaughterhouse. A third is on the way, possibly in late 2010. IDW is also collecting the original Vince Locke collection (1-17) and releasing them in two volumes, and then later on there will also be a Deadworld Omnibus collecting the stories since the reboot.

King Zombie is the face of this series and it is rightly so. In the 80’s Stuart Kerr and Ralph Griffith started an amazing zombie series that is still re-animated (get it) and kicking today. With an action figure on the way, Halloween masks, t-shirts and more it is easy to see why we celebrate King Zombie during Zombie Awareness Month.

Decapitated Dan Royer
Deadworld Fan 4-Life (and death)