For a $200 donation, boosters can be zombified in the pages of “HVZA: Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse.” You’ll have to forgive Ken and Janine Frederick if they’ve seemed a little dead to the world on recent mornings, if they’ve been shambling around their Hazlet home like some gray-skinned extras from a horror movie before they’ve had their coffee.
The Fredericks are independent comic book creators, and their latest project, a graphic novel about a world overrun with zombies, often kept them up late into the evenings.
They say a few bleary-eyed mornings were a small price to pay to be part of “HVZA: Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse,” a fresh take on the series of novels of the same name written by ghost investigator Linda Zimmermann.
This black-and-white anthology explores the untold tales of medical student Rebecca Truesdale and her quest to find a cure for the zombie outbreak. It also, pardon the pun, breathes life into some of the supporting characters.
Ken and Janine Frederick Janine has written a story titled “Life of the Party” that focuses, as she puts it, on “the degradation of humanity that occurs when hope is fleeting.”
It seems to be cut from the same bloodsoaked cloth as the graphic-novel-turned- AMC-drama “The Walking Dead” in its examination of what happens when human nature takes over after society breaks down, when it becomes harder to tell who is worse — the living or the “living dead.”
“I’m hoping people realize after reading this why they feel it’s OK to rubberneck at horrible car accidents or stop and curiously stare at someone else’s tragedy when they seemingly have anonymity,” she said.
Ken deftly spots his blacks — that’s comic book art parlance for using large areas of black ink to create a dramatic or cinematic effect — in an eight-page origin story called “Deflated” about how one of the more memorable female characters became infected with the zombie parasites.
“Anyone can draw zombies with rotting flesh and rotting brains,” said Nick Mockoviak, the art director on “HVZA: Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse.”
“You have to be able to tell a story to get people involved and get them to emotionally invest,” Mockoviak said.” That’s what Ken does. He’s just not drawing gory and graphic zombies. It’s what to show, when to show it and how much to show. That’s what Ken does.
“That said, he does draw some convincing zombies.”
In fact, Ken jokes that he hopes “to get the chance to ‘zombify’ someone.”
You see, to offset the printing costs, the creators have turned to indiegogo.com, a site that enables users to raise financing. The Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse campaign works on a perks-for-pledges basis. For $5, you will be listed as a supporter. For $25, you get a copy of the graphic novel, which will clock in at between 80 and 100 pages.
But for $200, you will be immortalized as a zombie on the pages of the graphic novel, or as Ken puts it, you get “zombified.” All you need to do is provide a few photos.
Although the indiegogo campaign ends June 16, they’re hoping these unique perks help raise some capital, because making it in the competitive field of comics is tough. In fact, Ken couldn’t find work out of college. His spirits sank with each rejection. He eventually took a job as a graphic designer, closed up his home studio and gave up on his dream.
But Janine wouldn’t let it die.
“If you have a dream, there is no reason, barring survival and responsibilities, why you should not try to achieve it,” said Janine, who works as a Web designer for Monmouth University. “You’d be amazed at what happens when you do. So, I kept trying to convince him to go into his studio and create for years.”
Nothing worked until she bought him a correspondence course from the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and GraphicArt, a threeyear accredited school in Morris County.
“Drawing my first assignment for the course lit a fire under me,” Ken said. “I threw myself back into drawing comics, and now I make it a point to draw for at least an hour a day, every day, no matter what else I am doing.”
Soon they collaborated on a webcomic called “Aleksander Christov: Assassin” and entered it into an “American Idol”-type contest for comic creators sponsored by the DC-financed site Zuda. They finished second, but America discovered they’ve got talent.
Ken has gone on to work on a handful of independent books, including the critically acclaimed one-shot “Forgotten Dead.” It’s a story about workers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who must decide which cultural treasures to protect when there’s — you guessed it — a zombie invasion.
Janine likes to curl up on the couch with a blanket, her iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard to write scripts. One of her pitches was recently turned down by the editors at Legendary Comics, the new graphic novel line at Legendary Pictures.
However, Don Smith, the project director and editor for “HVZA: Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse,” said it’s only a matter of time before publishing heavyweights such as IDWor Dark Horse begin to turn her scripts into comics.
“She captures the characters well, meaning if you read one of her characters, you could easily see someone acting like that,” Smith said. “She has a great way of taking what you see in real life and transposing it to the comic book page, and doing it believably.”
For more information about “HVZA: Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse,” log on to http://www.indiegogo.com/Your-Chance-to-be-a-Zombie-in-a-Graphic-Novel-H….