This Wednesday, the zombie infection continues to spread throughout Evans County as Double Take releases their ten #3 issues of Ultimate Night of the Living Dead. The comic book series is packed with eclectic characters and a wide range of intriguing settings, including a grocery store overrun by the living dead in Dedication. For our latest Q&A feature, we recently caught up with Dedication writer Matthew Summo, who discussed expanding the world of George A. Romero's classic film and much more.
Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us, Matt. The backdrop for Dedication is one of my favorites from the entire Ultimate Night of the Living Dead universe. How did you come up with the grocery store setting for Dedication?
Matthew Summo: The grocery store setting is something that is very near and dear to me. I spent many years of my young life working in a grocery store very similar to George's with managers that are also very similar to George himself. I like to think of this book as my love letter to my time in retail.
Ultimate Night of the Living Dead expands upon George A. Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead film. Were you a big fan of Romero’s film growing up? Can you tell us a little bit about your first experience watching the movie?
Matthew Summo: I love the original film so much. Romero crafted an amazing piece of cinema and, fortunately for us, never filed a copyright for it. I recall first seeing it when my good friend Jason showed it to me and he specifically mentioned that the ending was amazing. If anyone reading hasn't seen it for any reason, do yourself a favor and check it out. I always mention it when talking about films with great endings.
Dedication has a lot of humor mixed in with the horror. How do you balance the well-timed jokes with the constant threat of the living dead roaming the aisles?
Matthew Summo: While writing, I took the approach of, “How would I react if I was placed in this situation?” and took it from there. The characters don't know that the people attacking the store are zombies, so naturally they would think that they're on drugs or something of that nature.
Have any comedic or horror-themed comics or movies influenced how you’ve approached telling the story of Dedication?
Matthew Summo: I'm influenced by Clerks by Kevin Smith. He's a master as far as his dialogue writing goes. Good dialogue can make or break a book or movie, I feel. Internally, when we write dialogue, it has to be Interesting, Informative or Funny. If not, it gets rejected until it is at least one of those three. I'm also a huge fan of Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, and, how those characters initially responded to the zombies informed how I wrote my characters as well.
Were there any alternate scenarios or different directions with characters that were planned for the first three issues of Dedication that didn’t make it to the final drafts?
Matthew Summo: I had originally started the book with Trip waking up for work and eating dinner with his dad before heading off for the closing shift. His dad worked for a store called “4E Electric” (Shaun of the Dead reference) and wore a similar uniform to Shaun's. This was ultimately cut because it slowed the pace of the book to a crawl and that reference was horribly ham-fisted. Initially, the main character “Trip” got his nickname because he was clumsy and we were going to play that up visually by having him actually tripping over things and being a slacker. We've thankfully cut most of that but the nickname remains.
What has been the most challenging scene for you to write so far?
Matthew Summo: I'd have to say the “hand scene” in issue 2 was pretty challenging for me to write as a series of still frames, but Young Heller (the artist for issue #2) is amazing and he really made that scene come alive. I'm extremely fortunate and grateful to have an amazing team on this book (and an amazing team at the Double Take offices as well).
The living dead in Dedication and the rest of the Ultimate Night of the Living Dead universe have several unique traits that set them apart from your average zombies. What has it been like taking your zombies down a less-traveled road?
Matthew Summo: It's fun because zombies have been done to death (no pun intended). We're not doing zombies for the sake of doing zombies. We're focused on the event that created the zombies in Night of the Living Dead and using that to create an entire universe.
Will you be returning to continue the story of Dedication in future issues? Can you give our readers a little tease of what’s to come?
Matthew Summo: The story will continue, yes, but we’ll see which characters survive.
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Dedication #3 will be available on February 24th. To learn more about Double Take’s Ultimate Night of the Living Dead comic book series, visit:
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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