HIT GRAPHIC NOVELS GET LITERARY TREATMENT
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| ZVR artwork © Ashley Wood. All Rights Reserved. |
OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE:
IDW Unleashes Prose Program for Breakout Comic Series: ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS
35 Writers Explore, Expand and Remix ZvR World
San Diego, CA (September 6, 2011)—IDW’s gleefully subversive
ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS comic book series from creators
Chris Ryall and
Ashley Wood will soon be eating readers’ brains from the inside via a series of short stories, novellas and more. As announced at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con in July, the company plans for an ambitious slate of original prose stories set at different points in this epic adventure of a zombie apocalypse. In
ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS, the clanking robots are built to fight the shambling braineaters, in a desperate attempt to save Earth’s dwindling population.
"It’s gratifying to see that ZvR has taken on an unlife of its own," asserts
Ryall, series co-creator and Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief for IDW. "Expanding from comics into prose is a logical progression, though as the heretofore sole writer of the series I must admit that letting other writers into our subversive little world was at first troubling. But now I’m fine with it. Really. Mostly. Especially since editor
Jeff Conner has corralled such a talented array of writers to tackle some really bizarre and creative prose stories. As long as no one expects me to let them write ZvR comics, too..."
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| ZVR artwork © Ashley Wood. |
A lurching cohort of writers—including such notable talents as
John Shirley, Nancy A. Collins, Rio Youers, Brea Grant, Steve Rasnic Tem, Amber Benson, James A. Moore, Rachel Swirsky, Norman Prentiss, and
John Skipp & Cody Goodfellow, led by
Ryall himself—has been assembled to pen original stories of life during wartime in the ZVR world. "It’s our biggest project so far," states
Conner, the IDW contributing editor helming the ZVR prose program. "In a way it’s a follow-up to our Classics Mutilated release, at least in terms of its anything goes spirit. The results so far have been—um, riveting."
The rest of the ZVR writer roster includes:
Dale Bailey,
Amelia Beamer,
Jesse Bullington,
Simon Clark,
Lincoln Crisler,
Stephen Dedman, Rain Graves,
Rhodi Hawk,
Robert Hood,
Stephen Graham Jones,
Nicholas Kaufmann,
Steven Lockley,
Nick Mamatas,
Jonathan McGoran,
Joe McKinney,
Gary McMahon,
Mark Morris, Bobby Nash,
Yvonne Navarro,
Hank Schwaeble,
Ekaterina Sedia,
Sean Taylor,
Simon Kurt Unsworth,
Kaaron Warren, and
Don Webb.
A film version of ZVR is currently in development through Sony Pictures, with
Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes as producer.
Visit
IDWPublishing.com to learn more about the company and its top-selling books.
About IDW Publishing:
IDW is an award-winning publisher of comic books, graphic novels and trade paperbacks, based in San Diego, California. Renowned for its diverse catalog of licensed and independent titles, IDW publishes some of the most successful and popular titles in the industry, including: Hasbro's The TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE, Paramount's Star Trek; HBO’s True Blood; the BBC's Doctor Who; Toho’s Godzilla and comics and trade collections based on novels by worldwide bestselling author, James Patterson. IDW is also home to the Library of American Comics imprint, which publishes classic comic reprints; Yoe! Books, a partnership with Yoe! Studio. IDW's original horror series, 30 Days of Night, was launched as a major motion picture in October 2007 by Sony Pictures and was the #1 film in its first week of release. More information about the company can be found at
IDWPublishing.com.
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Read more about Zombies Vs. Robots at
http://www.idwpublishing.com/news/article/1951/
This edition features "The Wall!" a story by one of All Pulp's Spectacled Seven, Bobby Nash. Learn more about him at
http://www.bobbynash.com/.
I wanted 'Mars Attacks' to fit into these universes by the rules already established in these books. So if there's a Popeye story, the Martians can only cause as much damage as you'd see in an old Popeye strip or a Fleischer cartoon. It's not going to be quite as over-the-top violent as John Layman's 'Mars Attacks' comic. It'll fit well into the Popeye universe. So every issue is a stand-alone story, and they roll out chronologically by era. Popeye comes first and takes place further back in the timeline around the 1930s." 
