The last time KISS hit comics, it was entitled The End. What is the next logical step for the greatest rock band? Zombies, of course. In KISS: Zombies, the iconic rockers find themselves in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, and only their iconic tunes can help fight the hordes of undead.
Decades after the fall of civilization, humans are on the endangered species list and are being held in isolated strongholds such as the central New Detroit. Because the zombies are attracted to sound, everything is banned, including music. But that doesn’t stop a group of teens from trying to track down KISS to help fight against the new world order. The greatest band in history may be the key to humanity reclaiming the planet.
Writer Ethan Sacks (Old Man Hawkeye, Star Wars) and artist Rodney Buchemi (Death of Hawkman) lead the team on this limited series by Dynamite Comics. Colors and letters will be handled by Dijjo Lima (Assassin’s Creed, Doc Savage) and Troy Peteri (Amazing Spider-Man, Witchblade), respectively. The series will also feature covers by Arthur Suydam (Marvel Zombies, DCeased), Stuart Sayger (Vampirella vs Reanimator), and Buchemi as well as a photo cover of the band.
For Sacks, this series is his first comic book work outside of Marvel, where his work on the “Old Man” franchise extended to Hawkeye and Star-Lord and received much acclaim from critics and fans alike. The writer has described the new KISS series as “a cocktail of Land of the Dead, A Quiet Place, Seven Samurai, and even Footloose.” And his experience as a journalist definitely helped him find the right approach to the book.
“In my two and a half decades as an entertainment journalist, one of my most proud achievements was interviewing Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley for a 40th anniversary retrospective of KISS,” said Sacks. “After all this was a band that had provided the soundtrack for much of my life, and their eerie black and white makeup aesthetic seared itself in my brain during my childhood when I first spied those album covers in an older cousin’s record collection. So, all these years later, I jumped at the chance to write a KISS comic. Then my editor, Kevin Ketner, went and threw in zombies, too. Allowing a George Romero uber-fan to pen a book about the undead is like waving slivers of brain in front of an actual zombie.”
“It’s great to be back with KISS. The first series I did was a sensational experience,” said Buchemi. “Working on Ethan’s scripts has been great fun on every page and every panel. And of course, drawing zombies is fun!”
“With each new KISS series, we try and push the mythology of this iconic band even farther and surprise fans,” said Nick Barrucci, Dynamite CEO and Publisher. “We’ve been thinking over this zombies concept for a long time, but knew a great writer was needed to execute it as well as have the needed passion for both the band and the cultural hallmark of zombies. We literally could not have found a better match than Ethan, and we’re honored to work with him as he expands his career to other publishers.”
KISS: Zombies #1 will be available for preorder this September and is slated for a November release. It will also be available digitally on Comixology, Kindle, iBooks,Google Play, Dynamite Digital, ComicsPlus, and more. In addition to the new series, fans of the band can also snag their trade paperback of Kiss: The End by Amy Chu (Red Sonja, Poison Ivy) and Edu Menna (Twilight Zone, ZNation), which is set to release the same month.
