The great thing about the zombie sub-genre is that every time you think it’s played out, a new creative team arrives to inject some fresh life into it. Everything Dead and Dying, the new Image Comics series by Tate Brombal and Jacob Phillips, imagines the last living farmer on the planet, sitting satisfied on his homestead, surrounded by his dead and rotting loved ones. The corpses he once called friends and family are trapped in the routine of their last living day, performing mundane tasks such as delivering the mail and receiving a bedtime story. If he squints hard enough, the farmer, Jack Chandler, can soldier on as if each new day is as good as the old ones were.

Everything Dead and Dying is a deliciously, satisfyingly sad zombie story, and like the best entries in this sub-genre, it has a lot on its mind and heart. The first issue is easily one of our favorites of the year, and demands attention from those already fond of walkers or those who’d rather avoid them. Brombal and Phillips have constructed a perfect zombie gateway comic.

Having recently visited the Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh, the site where George R. Romero shot the classic Dawn of the Dead, we were eager to chat with Tate Brombal and Jacob Phillips about what drew them to this particular story engine. What do the undead offer us as metaphors, especially in a culture so near its own global catastrophe?

On this week’s podcast, we discuss their connection to zombies, why they previously never considered contributing to the sub-genre, and how Jacob Phillips built an entire town from scratch. Final Order Cutoff for Everything Dead and Dying#1 is Today (8/11), so call your comic book shop asap so you won’t miss out on reading this story when it arrives on September 3rd.

Make sure you're following Tate Brombal on Blue Sky and Instagram, as well as Jacob Phillips on Blue Sky and Instagram.

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Tate Brombal and Jacob Phillips on Everything Dead and Dying