George Romero's Empire of the Dead: Act One #1
This debut issue marks the only original comic work George A. Romero — the filmmaker who effectively invented the modern zombie genre with 'Night of the Living Dead' (1968) — ever created for Marvel Comics, and one of only two comic scripts he wrote in his entire career. It introduced a quarantined, post-apocalyptic Manhattan where zombies and vampires coexist as rival factions of the undead, a genre mashup that extended Romero's signature use of horror as social commentary into a new medium. As CBR observed, the complete 15-issue series would become the last comic Romero ever wrote and the final fully finished installment in his Living Dead franchise, making this first issue the gateway to what is effectively his creative farewell to the mythology he built over nearly five decades. The series attracted enough attention to prompt a TV adaptation announcement at Cannes in 2015, underlining how seriously the industry regarded Romero's comic-book voice.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Romero's only prior comics credit was a six-issue zombie series he wrote for DC Comics' Toe Tags anthology in 2004–2005, so his jump to Marvel in 2014 was itself a noteworthy cross-publisher move. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Romero wrote the property in screenplay format rather than a traditional comics script, with the adaptation work handled by Eisner Award-winning artist Alex Maleev, known for his acclaimed run on Daredevil. Marvel editor Bill Rosemann framed Romero's intent as using horror as a 'scalpel' to dissect social undercurrents, situating the book squarely within the director's long tradition of genre-as-critique. The series was announced in October 2013 as a planned 15-issue miniseries divided into three five-issue acts, with each act assigned to a different illustrator.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of the core cast: Penny Jones, Paul Barnum, Mayor Chandrake, Bill Chandrake, and the zombie character Zanzibar all debut in this issue.
- Writer George A. Romero's only Marvel Comics work; his entire comics bibliography consists of just two projects — DC's Toe Tags (2004–2005) and this Marvel series.
- Artist Alex Maleev, an Eisner Award winner celebrated for his work on Daredevil, illustrated the entirety of Act One (issues #1–5).
- The series introduced a zombie/vampire coexistence mythology — a deliberate departure from Romero's films, which never featured vampires — into his Living Dead continuity.
- Act One #1 shipped January 22, 2014 (cover-dated March 2014); Romero reportedly scripted the story in screenplay format rather than a standard comics script.
- Variant covers for issue #1 included work by Arthur Suydam, the artist who created the Marvel Zombies cover homage series, billed as a 'Zombie King' team-up with Romero.
- The complete 15-issue run was collected in a single hardcover (George Romero's Empire of the Dead, ISBN 9780785185185) as well as three individual Act trade paperbacks.
- In 2015, production company Demarest announced a TV adaptation at the Cannes Film Festival, to be written and executive produced by Romero alongside his longtime collaborator Peter Grunwald — though the series was never produced.
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Reprinted in George Romero's Empire of the Dead: Act One #[nn] (2014), George Romero's Empire of the Dead #[nn] (2016)
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