DCeased

Ah, zombies: they never go out of style.

DC Comics held off on doing a zombie-heavy, universe-wide crossover for as long as they could, but after seeing the ongoing success of undead-related properties like the wide-ranging ‘Marvel Zombies’ series and the effective comic-to-TV transfer of ‘The Walking Dead,’ they figured it was high time for one of their own.  Enter the forthcoming mini-series ‘DCeased,’ coming this May to a local comic shop near you.

Tom Taylor, the man who has already put many of the DC heroes through the wringer in his comic-to-video-game series ‘Injustice: Gods Among Us,’ will be handling the writing duties for the series.  DC has announced that the artists for the series will be Trevor Hairsine, Stefan Gaudiano, James Warren, and Rain Beredo.

The story itself will revolve around a “techno-virus” that is unleashed on Earth by the villain Darkseid; the virus will turn all 6 billion-ish civilians on the planet into rage-style zombies, and it will be up to the superheroes to defend themselves as best they can.  The assumption is that many morally-gray decisions will have to be made, and the further assumption is that this tale will not be taking place in the “main” DC Universe, but likely an Elsewords-esque type of alternate-universe story.

In an interview to announce series, Taylor talked about the genesis of the story itself:

“The idea originated with editor Ben Abernathy. He had an idea to do a horror/zombie tale at DC, and hit me up to ask if I’d like to be involved. At the time I was pretty busy, but over the next few days, my mind was racing. I couldn’t stop thinking of new and terrible ways to torture my favorite heroes in ways that made Injustice look tame by comparison.”

DC has seen great critical and audience response to the “darker” style of stories in its comics lately, with strong sales and good reception to story arcs such as ‘Dark Nights: Metal’ and ‘Batman Damned,’ among others.  The six-issue mini-series of ‘DCeased’ is set to be released starting on May 1st.