Roadkill: From the CP Cutting Room Floor

Not a CP Classic Rewind; more bonus content.  I originally wrote this piece for last year's zombie topic but in the end I had more content than I could use.  Besides, I'd done zombies to death by that point and the ISBA files needed to be updated.  I did major research for this piece (which means I reread the comics and did some internet searching) so it seems a shame not to share it, even if it is not part of this year's theme.

In honor of Halloween and the general topic of zombies, today we are looking at a Deadworld oneshot from 1993 entitled Roadkill, a Chronicle of the Deadworld.  Written by Del Stone and art by Dave Dorman, Roadkill is the story of an intelligent zombie biker named Hitch.  Published in comic book format, the oneshot is actually a prose text with several full pages of black and white illustrations by industry favorite Dave Dorman.  As such, it is not really a comic book, nor is it a graphic novel, but the pace, the story, and the style reads easily like a good comic should, making it more a short story than anything else.

Wrap Around Cover of Roadkill

I've discussed Deadworld before, in my ongoing quest to demonstrate that Walking Dead is not the greatest example of zombie media, indeed to underscore my belief that it is mediocre and derivative at best.  This stand alone tale does not require that the reader be intimately familiar with the story of Deadworld, but if you are, then you get more out of it.  The protagonist, Hitch, is an intelligent zombie, which is rare in the Deadworld setting.  There are a few, such as the villain King Zombie, but that is explained within the setting as those zombies are not the people that died, but rather host bodies for the spirits that the evil forces sent to Earth to open the invasion path.  Hitch, therefore, is unique in that he is intelligent and free-willed, while still being the person he was in life, only now he is a zombie.  This is expressed to the reader, but never explained.  We simply accept that Hitch is unique and move on.

Hitch, our protagonist

Along with being a thinking free-willed zombie, Hitch can mentally command other non-thinking zombies.  Again we are given no explanation for why this is, and that's fine because the reason is not important.  The story has Hitch in Amarillo, Texas, running away from the events in Michigan (which would be the main Deadworld story where King Zombie is trying to open a portal to bring in his masters) when he comes across a compound with a weapon that causes the dead to turn and eat each other, and also fries them up.  Your basic sci-fi raygun death beam weapon.  Hitch rescues a woman named Dakota and hatches a scheme to get access to the compound, called Spandau, where he intends to claim the weapon and its designer, a man known as the Little Hitler.  Said man was a scientist for NASA and now runs the compound under his own ideological fourth reich.  Hiding inside a tanker truck of pesticide, driven by Dakota, Hitch intends to capture his quarry with the aid of an army of zombies he's amassed outside with his powers.  Dakota betrays him to the humans and he winds up on a slab heading for a necropsy.

Hitch is in trouble, folks.

Always arrogant the Little Hitler decides to show Hitch his true power but things go south when Hitch's specially selected "skeleton crew" of zombies his put leather jackets, bandannas, and strapped with ordnance blow the fence.  In the ensuing chaos our hero breaks his leg, which will not heal.  He manufactures a splint out of a fresh femur he pulls from a soldier and goes on to fight the Little Hitler in his diesel powered mech walker.  You know, as I write this it sounds a bit ridiculous, but trust me it all works in the story.  It has verisimilitude.  Our story ends with Hitch's plans derailed by the death of the Little Hitler and the loss of the death ray, but he does make a deal with the surviving humans and leaves with a nuclear warhead and a plan to stop King Zombie.
Why?
Essentially Hitch does not wish to die again, and he sees the efforts of King Zombie as a threat to his new existence.  While this does not make him heroic, it does make him a reasonably sympathetic protagonist.  Being intelligent he has no craving for human flesh either, so that helps to make him more likable.

Hitch returns for one more tale.

Hitch returned in a short called December, published as a special insert for Hero magazine.  The story was only about 5 pages of text but the issue included an interview with Del Stone and Dave Dorman about their creation and their plans.  In December we find Hitch up in Michigan in the snow with his bomb, a pair of Sears Die-Hard batteries strapped to his back and wired to his muscles to prevent his becoming a zombie statue, as all the non-intelligent zombies have become.  He has a run in with some human survivors and kills them, then heads off to look for something called the Golem out in the desert somewhere.  It's not much of a story and really serves as a link to the next chapter of Hitch's overall story, which was to be entitled Heat.  
The interview revealed to the readers how Hitch was first created as a piece of art by Dorman for the last issue of Deadworld, and how he and Stone developed the character and story.  As stated by the creators, they wanted to minimize the amount of Deadworld links so the story of Hitch would not be intrinsically linked to the Deadworld story, allowing them creative freedom to tell stories of the character.  They also retained the rights to the character and stories themselves.
This might be why Heat did not get released, as such, but instead became a full novel entitled Dead Heat.

The novel reworks the elements of Roadkill and December into a larger narrative that tells the full tale of Hitch's unlife and adventures, removing the explicitly Deadworld references.  

For stories with zombie protagonists you could do worse.  Much worse.  You could read Marvel Zombies, for example.  <SHUDDER>  For stories about intelligent zombie bikers that carry a meat hook and fight a would-be Hitler with a mech and a death ray before killing Santa Clause and running off with a nuke to fight a monster that creates super zombies...I'm pretty sure you cannot do better.

Once again, when I look at it written down like that it looks insane.  Maybe it is insane, but it's insane in all the best ways.  Any zombie media is a bit insane.  Superheroes are a bit insane.  Sci-fi, action films, all of that stuff is wacky, is it not?  We create little imaginary worlds in fiction and as long as we are internally consistent we buy into it.  Hitch was a mechanic, just a regular Joe, then he had a motorcycle accident and awoke as a zombie during a zombie apocalypse and to his surprise had intelligence and will, but no purpose.  It's an existential zombie story about finding a purpose!  It's the quest for human meaning with a crazy wannabe Hitler and death rays and mechs and...
Look, it's a million billion times better than Walking Dead.  It's Z Nation levels of crazy.  It's the Zombie Biker Hero story you never knew you wanted!  When you consider the shite that is produced in the zombie media, how can a Hitler in a mech not be warranted?

Keep your pumpkins lit.