Comic Vine: How much of Raise The Dead #1 inspired your work on Raise The Dead #2? Will we see the same characters or will this be a new cast?
Mike Raicht: I really had a lot of fun reading Raise the Dead I. I'm a zombie junkie and I loved everything Leah Moore and John Reppion did in the first series. I dug how they would weave the current story in with the character's back stories to give us a glimpse of what came before for each character. It added an extra layer of complexity to each character and their motivations. What we were seeing was not always what it seemed. Hopefully that is something we can accomplish in this new series. An air of mystery to each character.
And, of course, I also loved the gore.
When i was brought on board Raise the Dead II, Leah and John had already set up a very cool outline for the course of the limited series. They then set me loose. It's always fun to play in someone else's playground and I am thankful for the opportunity. It has been a blast so far.
We will see the survivors of the first series and also introduce new meat... uh, characters to the cast. We are moving forward in time a touch and we will get a chance to see how the world is coping so far. (small spoiler... not too well.)
== TEASER ==
CV: What is the premise of the second volume, and is it in any way a continuation of what we saw in the first series? Does it digress completely?
MR: This arc digs right back into the story John and Leah started in volume one. The biggest change is that the zombie apocalypse is in even fuller swing. People are being eaten. The alive version of the human race is on the verge of extinction. Society has devolved to small pockets of humanity, some good and some bad. Fun stuff.
This second volume does some different things. It not only follows some of the original characters but also shows a bit of more of a governmental view of the event. How are they dealing with it? What is their plan?
It also introduces us to the residents of Alfredo Bay. We will unveil what happened to this town as well as its residents. I think all of the stories will dovetail nicely and give the reader a great sense of how wrong things have gone in this world and how difficult it would be to actually survive in it.
MR: I love zombie books myself so I'm in heaven right now. It is just a genre I can't get enough of.
Walking Dead is my favorite the soap opera book. Great characters thrust into an unimaginable situation forced to survive any way they can. The zombies are there but it is really about the characters living in this horrible new world and adapting.
Marvel Zombies is a fun romp. Who doesn't want to see Zombie Spidey and the rest doing horrible, unspeakable acts to other heroes in the Marvel Universe? It is an awesome What if? tale of the Marvel Universe. How do you survive a superpowers zombie outbreak? You don't. That's the fun of it.
Our book, like the other two, is focused on the survival aspect of a zombie outbreak, but it is also asking the how and why of the Zombie outbreak. How do we stop it? Can we stop it? Where can we turn for help? This series is still trying to find where rock bottom is. They've survived the initial onslaught. They think it can't get worse but it keeps getting worse.
But just like Walking Dead and Marvel Zombies, it also really about the characters that inhabit it. John and Leah have created some great characters and it is going to be fun to see them put to the test.
CV: We have seen at least two cover images for the new series that seem to have been inspired by pop culture. One being the timeless image of V-J Day in Times Square first published in LIFE by Alfred Eisenstaedt, and another that seems to be inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's classic film, The Birds. Do these images bear any relevancy to the content in the series? If so, how?
MR: There is some relevancy to both, but I don't want to be the one to give it away. They are amazing covers to look at and each addresses a story point in some way. Beyond that my lips are sealed.
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