Keep Your Head! The Zombies Are Coming!

Many years ago, and I cannot even remember how many, my pal Chris Lore walked up to me at the Wal-mart. “Hey Rhys, you’ve been making comics for a while,” he said. I had. “Can you tell me how you do that?” Chris wanted to make a zombie comic. Now, at the time I didn’t have much of an interest in zombies. They were pretty much everywhere, and me, I was in the middle of building a superhero universe. But we talked about scripting and we talked about looking for artists and that was kind of that.

Now, Chris has been a long-term fan of Forces of Good and Evil, and so we’ve kept touch. When he found out about the first High Plains Mini-Con, he was stoked, demanding we save him a table. Of course we were going to save him a table–Chris is good people. Chris had finally gotten together with artist Benjamin Solorio and co-writer Davis Lee Kirk; and they were about finished with the first issue of his comic Z-bites.

The day of the con, Chris shows up with the cardboard box. He plops it down on the table, cracks the top, and hands me issue number one. “Read this!”

I did.

It was funny and subversive, and not what I was expecting.There is government-conspiracy, and a military desperately trying to keep it a secret. There is a scientist frantically looking for a cure, and there’s kids, just normal kids. It’s a hoot and I still can’t wait to see where it goes.

After Issue One, Chris found himself creatively alone, and after a few years of trying to find someone who had the same right fire for the project, earlier this year he met Shanti Suhr and Z-bites is back in production.

This summer, Chris and I were talking stories and projects. I mentioned that Z-Bites has some fun stuff in common with Ideal Comics’ alternate history, and suggested we plan some sort of crossover. Chris said, “That would be cool.” Last week Chris asked me, “What about more than a crossover?” I jumped all over that like a Ziggy-Piggy.

After juggling details over the weekend, Z-bites is officially part of the Ideal Comics canon. We couldn’t be more happy, and proud, to have Chris and the gang on board! Look forward to Issue Two emblazoned with the IC buckler coming to a web shop near you!