ZOMBIE-PROOF VIDEO BLOG ENTRY #2

ZOMBIE-PROOF VIDEO BLOG ENTRY #1

VAMPIRE, PA Limited Edition Hardcover NOW AVAILABLE!

Finally! The Vampire, PA limited edition hardcover is now available!

Vampires in suburbia? Dean Marklin didn’t believe in vampires until a beautiful one tried to kill him! Now he’s a vampire hunter trying to hold onto what’s left of normal life. How do you think that’s working out for him?

Written by J.C. Vaughn, illustrated by Brendon Fraim and Brian Fraim, with color art and cover by Mark Wheatley, this new limited edition hardcover collects Moonstone’s three-issue Vampire, PA mini-series, bonus story pages, and the prose short story that inspired it, from the writer of Zombie-Proof and Bedtime Stories for Impressionable Children. Visit Western Pennsylvania’s oddly vampire-rich environment!

VAMPIRE, PA #1 Five-Page Preview

VAMPIRE HUNTER DEAN - Four-Page Preview

Vampire Hunter Dean is illustrated by those whiz kids Brendon and Brian Fraim, and it's based on my short story that is schedule to appear in an anthology from Moonstone Books. In fact, the comic book story picks up where the short story left off, but both pieces work fine without the other.

As usual, the guys' work has been outstanding and seems to be getting better page by page. That was my experience with them on Antiques: The Comic Strip, so I probably should have expected as much.

This is a four-page sequence from early in the story. You can click the images to see them much larger.

VAMPIRE HUNTER DEAN...?

Vampire Hunter Dean first appeared... wait, can I say he first appeared if it's not published yet? Well, he first appeared to me in a short story I wrote for a forthcoming (I'm assured) vampires anthology from our friends at Moonstone Books. The story is entitled, and this is the really clever part, "Vampire Hunter Dean."

Ever since we finished Antiques: The Comic Strip, which I dearly miss, I've been looking for something on which to work with the uber-talented brother act of Brendon and Brian Fraim. I sent them the short story, they liked it, I wrote a script for a seven-page teaser that picks up right at the end of the short story, and -- as usual -- they nailed it. We sent it over to ace letterer Marshall Dillon, who got it right back to us.

It not only worked nicely as a comic, it worked great. I knew that we definitely had to do more. So I wrote some more and the guys got to work on it. Vampire Hunter Dean #1, a one-shot, is now in progress.

So, what's it about? Dean Marklin is a HVAC (that's heating, ventilation and air conditioning) repairman from suburban Pittsburgh (Dormont, to be exact) who goes to an industry convention in Miami and meets a super hot, model-esque woman who turns out to be much more than she seems. He leaves Miami knowing there are a lot more things in the world than he ever contemplated before.

And then he finds out there are vampires in his home town. Why are they there? What's their story? And what does Dean do about them? (The title may give it away, but hey, I'm writing hype on the fly here...)

The Fraim brothers are doing a fantastic job and each page I get in is better than the previous one. The seven-page teser should appear in the Zombie-Proof one-shot, Zombie-Proof: Zombie Zoo, followed by the one-shot.

The inked page above is from the teaser story. The page in pencil shows some of the action early in Vampire Hunter Dean #1.

Sometime later we'll talk about how Vampire Hunter Dean got his name.