Broken Frontier

The original graphic novel Zombie Cop (Image Comics/Shadowline, January 2009) will make a featured appearance on the hit CBS TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on Thursday, October 15. The book will be seen during the opening teaser segment, being read in a coffee shop when real police gunfire breaks out.

Zombie Cop writer Jeff Mariotte said, “The show’s props department got in touch with Image Comics a couple of months ago, asking permission to use the book in an upcoming episode. Image put them in touch with me, and of course I agreed. By the end of that week, the episode had been shot.”

Mariotte has various professional connections with CSI. When he was editor-in-chief at IDW Publishing, he edited CSI comics, and wrote a CSI one-shot, as well as the first CSI: Miami one-shot, which earned him a trip to the CSI: Miami set to meet the cast and crew. More recently, he has been writing CSI; Crime Scene Investigation novels—his first, CSI: Brass in Pocket, was released in late August, and CSI: Blood Quantum is scheduled for publication in February 2010. He’s also the author of the novel CSI Miami: Right to Die, more than thirty other novels, and numerous comic books, including the bestselling Presidential Material: Barack Obama, the Desperadoes series, and the upcoming miniseries Garrison.

But, as Mariotte explains, “the show’s property master and the episode’s director had no idea of those connections when they decided to use Zombie Cop. It wasn’t until I was talking to the prop guy on the phone that we figured out all the six degrees stuff. They just loved Szymon Kudranski’s amazing cover, and the title worked well to set up the scene.”

Since its release, Zombie Cop, fully painted by Szymon Kudranski, has been well received by horror and zombie fans and critics. It was used as a prize at the Phoenix Comicon’s Zombie Beauty Pageant, and Ain’t It Cool News said that Zombie Cop “is firmly planted in a world overrun by the undead, but never loses focus of being a story about one man on a mission. Officer Joe Mundy is bitten and doesn't have long before he turns completely into a drooling zombie, so he does what he can in order to solve one last mystery, a mystery that could uncover the reason for the zombie plague itself. That's right, while other zombie stories never explain why the dead walk, Zombie Cop treats it as a mystery, which is a refreshing and new spin on the genre.”