Racks and Stacks - Escape of the Living Dead from Avatar Press

 In the Racks and Stacks series, Cody discusses the comic books he has been reading.

A comic book follow-up to Night of the Living Dead.

After collaborating on Night of the Living Dead, director/writer George A. Romero and co-writer John A. Russo took their zombie stories in different directions. As Romero explored the concept of a zombie apocalypse with the likes of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, Russo considered the idea that the authorities managed to get the zombie outbreak under control at the end of Night of the Living Dead – and honestly, when I was a kid, before I learned about the existence of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, that’s the impression I got from the ending of Night. I thought everything was going to be okay. The zombie outbreak was taken care of and the corpses of the living dead incinerated. 

Russo wrote a novel called Return of the Living Dead, which inspired the film of the same name, though none of his story made it to the screen. The movie was so different from his book, he was even able to write a novelization of the screenplay. He added scenes to Night of the Living Dead for a 30th anniversary release, and in 2001, he had a hand in the making of a film called Children of the Living Dead… which turned out to be quite the disaster. In 2008, it was announced that he would be writing and directing a film called Escape of the Living Dead, with Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Amber Stevens, Kristina Klebe, and Gunnar Hansen signed on to star. That would have been awesome to see. Unfortunately, the movie never made it into production – but at least we have Avatar Press comic book adaptation of Russo’s story. The adaptation was handled by Mike Wolfer, who split the story across five issues that feature the art of penciler Dheeraj Verma, inker Lalit, and colorist Andrew Dalhouse.

Fans got to see the story of Escape of the Living Dead on the page a couple of years before Russo’s film was announced; the issues were published between September 2005 and March 2006.

The story picks up in 1971, three years after the zombie plague swept across Pennsylvania (and the eastern third of the United States). Most of the zombies were put down and destroyed, but the government ordered that some of them be captured, as they wanted to study the ghouls and find a cure to the zombie sickness. Some of those captured zombies ended up at the Melrose Medical Research Center just outside of Pittsburgh. The center is headed up by Doctor Melrose, who claims to have found an answer to the zombie plague and created a serum that would stop it from happening again… but there’s shady business going on at the center, so first issue begins with a local sheriff named Harkness raiding the property on a mission to destroy the zombies. Doctor Melrose ambushes them and gets killed – but uses his dying breath to inform Harkness that his son has taken a truckload of zombies offsite. 

Problem is, they’ve been hauled off in a truck that’s disguised as being from an electronics store, so it gets robbed by a pair of bikers called Bones and Drake. Instead of electronics, they find that the truck is packed with zombies, which proceed to spread out across the Pennsylvania countryside, biting people and re-starting the plague.

Our lead character is Sally Brinkman, who has just moved back to her family’s horse ranch after going through a divorce. The ranch is one of the locations the zombie reach after accidentally being set free – and Sally’s mom is one of the first victims. Sally runs for help at the saloon her father owns, but there’s more bad luck to be found there, because that’s where Bones and Drake’s criminal associates Slam, Honeybear, and Bearcat seek shelter. When the restless bikers decide to leave the saloon, they abduct Sally and her dad gives chase. It all builds up to an epic climactic confrontation between Sally, her dad, Harkness, cops and posse members against an army of the living dead on the Brinkman property.

It’s a shame the movie never got made, because Escape of the Living Dead would have made for quite an entertaining follow-up to Night of the Living Dead. It wouldn’t have been on the level of that classic, of course, but it would have been fun. There’s plenty of zombie action and the usual set-up of other humans being a bigger threat to people’s survival than the flesh-eating dead they’re all trying to avoid. The fact that cast members Tony Todd and Gunnar Hansen are no longer with us makes it even more disappointing that we didn’t get to see the work they would have done in the movie.

Since his Return of the Living Dead story hadn’t really gotten a film adaptation, Russo also took the opportunity to work some of his Return ideas into Escape. The rampaging criminals are reminiscent of those in his Return novel, and there’s a scene where they camp out in the woods, keeping zombies away from them by stringing electric fence wire between the trees and hooking the wire up to a generator. That scene is straight out of the Return novel.

The Avatar Press adaptation of Russo’s story is very cool and delivers what you would expect from an Avatar book of the time: a whole lot of gore and gratuitous nudity. Zombies are splattered across the page in multiple gruesome panels, female characters are prone to taking their clothes off, and female zombies are frequently either naked or wearing revealing clothes. Even heroine Sally Brinkman gets a moment of full-frontal nudity when she goes to take a bath before the zombies show up at the ranch.

Escape of the Living Dead is a good read, and it’s interesting to imagine “what could have been” if the movie had gotten made.

Note: Marvel Comics will not be covered in Racks and Stacks articles, as they have their own article series.