Posted in: Comics | Tagged: anthology, ben templesmith, Comics, entertainment, kickstarter, Steven Randall, The Community

Steven Randall Brings Horror To The Community

Steven Randall writes for Bleeding Cool:

Wait,  another Kickstarter Graphic Novel, with Zombies…..Seen it…Read it…or have you?

At first glance, I'll agree, this project is far from original, Zombies, Graphic Novel…Blah, blah,blah. Zombies they are everywhere these days.  Books, comics, television, and even movies have Zombies shambling and stumbling around every corner of entertainment, so what makes this project worth supporting? I guarantee this Kickstarter project, The Community,  is something you really have never seen before.

The Community captures the greatest part of any zombie outbreak, and then repeats it over and over again for the reader.  My personal favorite part, by far, of any Zombie movie or in Literature is the initial outbreak.  One moment we see our character living a perfectly normal life, the same we all live everyday. Next, we see the first zombies attack on that character, and it's instant adrenaline rush. Some characters stay the same in that moment,  others are forced to change everything about themselves, instantly to survive. The really unique part of the Community is that it keeps us in these moments for the entire novel.

Our project is a collection of over 30 short stories, told by the survivors of this Zombie apocalypse.  We meet up with these numerous characters a few years down the road as they have settled into a new community and they get a chance to tell their story to us. We hear first hand how The Teacher, The Butcher, The Homeless Man, The Fire Fighter and The Old Man with Alzheimer's all survived those first days on the road and began their journey towards the safety of the community. Normal everyday citizens such as The Water Delivery Man, The Town Drunk, The Grave Digger, and The Trucker, all tell their story of survival.

The format of the graphic novel is best described in the style of a children's book.  Short printed stories on one side of the page, followed by either a large pinup style art piece, or a short comic style scene from the story.  The characters take turns, much like the characters of the great, literary master Geoffrey Chaucer's characters did in his epic, The Canterbury Tales.  Telling their story to the readers in their own chapter format. This  original Zombie storytelling format keeps us, the reader, in those first moments of surprise at seeing our first Zombie. We get to see how each and every character reacts.  In most Zombie movies, and even the amazing comic The Walking Dead, we as the audience are only kept in that moment briefly, before moving on to progress the story line forward.  By having each character tell their own back story of how they got to the community, we get to repeat that initial excitement over and over again, over 30 times in this collection in fact.

We decided to go with numerous artists in this project to bring a real sense of individuality to each character.  By having its own artist, every characters uniqueness really is overly exaggerated, but by having only one author through the entire collection it still keeps a cohesive flow. In fact we'd like to take this time to thank the Instagram community, for bringing  the author and all of this projects artists together in the first place.  That's right, the very app I know you all have on your phone is what made this project possible in the first place. Instagram is where every artists in this project was discovered, contacted, and brought together to bring you this collection. Check us out on Instagram @zombiecomics where you can see the progression of this project from the very beginning.

See, I told you we were unique. Social media being extremely social.  We launched our kickstarter campaign last week and are already 20% funded.  We are in the process of adding a video in our first update this week to give you a better idea of this projects goals.

We also have secured for our cover,  an original piece by Eisner Award winning artist Ben Templesmith. 

At this time we'd also like to extend a special Bleeding Cool Kickstarter only reward option for you personally, for putting up and reading all this information about our project.   Starting right now and going to February 9th every Kickstarter backer who selects the Signed limited edition copy reward will also receive the Zombie Comics T-shirt for Free. That's a 15$ value, for free for this limited time only. Just send us a message that you heard about us on Bleeding Cool and your good to go for the free T-shirt. In the future we are looking to do a more traditional comic book format to bring to you more of the most popular characters continuing journey towards the Community.

Thank you again for reading the ramblings of this Zombie lover and we hope you decide to help fund our project so we can get it printed, and into your hands.

Kickstarter The Community Graphic Novel

www.kickstarter.com/projects/1668442186/the-community-graphic-novel-short-story-art-collec

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