Writer Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred of i,ZOMBIE fame (on sale next Wednesday!) expose their black, white and gray matter in a q & a with editor, Shelly Bond.

So grab a shovel, crack a skull and dig in!

FIRST COMIC:

Read -

M: The MAD MOD issue of Teen Titans.

C: I honestly don't remember the first comic I read. It seems like they were *always* around. But I was hooked by the time I was eight, when I bought a mass-market paperback collection of Superman stories at a school book fair.

Bought -

M: I remember paying actual money for NEW GODS #8.

C: Probably the first comics I bought for myself were the DC Blue Ribbon Digests that were ubiquitous at supermarket checkout lines in the late 70s. I used to carry the Batman one that came out in 1979 with me *everywhere* (and got in trouble more than a few times for sneaking it into church).

Bagged –

C: I went through a bag-and-board phase that didn't wear off until I was in my 20s. I think the first issue that I went out of my way to "preserve" was Uncanny X-Men 151.

M: Never. The few I bagged never got read again so I never locked in to the whole Bag and board thing. They still lay around everywhere
vulnerable to thrashing.

Cherished -

C: If my house were to catch fire, the first things I'd grab would probably be my boxes of Alan Moore's comics. Probably unnecessary, since I've read and reread them so many times that I've committed them to memory, but I'm sentimental like that.

M: The childhood faves are a blur of mad love, I'd have to say Love and Rockets became my first mature romance with a comic

FIRST TIME YOU:

Stole something from a sibling –

M: My big brother’s Legion comics. True.

C: My kid brother's copy of Michael Fleisher's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SUPERMAN. It was justified, though. He got it as a gift from a family friend, and would never have appreciated it like I did.

FAVORITE:

Album of all time that is the soundtrack for your life -

M: My favorite album of all time changes every day. But today it would be David Bowie's Diamond Dogs

C: I'm lucky if my "favorite" lasts a whole day, but at the moment it's probably David Bowie's HUNKY DORY.

Book -

M: Catcher in The Rye

C: At this very moment? Not a single book, but a *series* of books, Kage Baker's "Company" novels.

Movie –

C: Infinitely variable, but I'll go with Brad Bird's INCREDIBLES.

M: A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

TV show –

M: BATMAN, THE MONKEES, or LOST

C: LOST, without a doubt. Best. Show. Ever.

Comic book -

M: I, ZOMBIE

C: I'm with Mike on this one. (Though Paul Grist's WEIRD WORLD OF JACK STAFF is a close second.)

This weekend Vertigo heads to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, WA for the first time. Editor Shelly Bond will be in attendance with Mike and Laura Allred (I, Zombie), Chris Roberson (I, Zombie), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, The Nobody), Sean Murphy (Joe the Barbarian), G. Willow Wilson (Air), Peter Bagge (Other Lives) and others! So join in the fun Sunday at 2pm in Panel Room A (4C1-2)

Here’s a peek at a few things you’ll see:

Amazing interior art from i, ZOMBIE by Mike Allred colored by Laura Allred

Fantastic cover of JOE THE BARBARIAN #6 by Sean Murphy

This October, Vertigo is publishing its first ever HOUSE OF MYSTERY Halloween Annual with insert stories from some of our ongoing series including HELLBLAZER, MADAME XANADU, and the upcoming I, ZOMBIE.

This special issue also includes some fun Halloween related questions answered by many of its amazing contributors. Here’s an exclusive sampling. Enjoy!

What’s the eeriest thing that’s ever happened to you?

MICHAEL ALLRED, artist I, ZOMBIE
When I was in high school I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep. I opened my eyes to find a black figure looking down at me about eight inches from my face. It had no features. And it filled me with pure terror. It absolutely had an evil presence to it. There was a street light outside my window giving the room a soft glow, yet I couldn't make out anything but a shape as I froze in a freaky staring contest. I eventually got the nerve to move and quickly rolled off the other side of the bed and grabbed my baseball bat on the floor. When I sat up it had moved to the far side of the room which was open to the stairs. The figure had its back up against the wall and slowly oozed down the stairs. I yelled for my folks who slept downstairs. I heard them stirring. They were kind of mad actually that I was yelling my head off late at night. I ran to the light switch and as soon as I turned on the lights, the shape was gone. I hope I never see it again.

GIUSEPPE CAMUNCOLI, artist HELLBLAZER
I have no eerie story, but if you allow me, I can tell you this: I met my wife at Halloween (which makes it very easy for me to remember the day we met!). It was at Lucca, in Italy, during the annual Comic Convention. I met Jessica in the evening, through common friends, and we really couldn’t wait until dinner was done to kiss each other, when she invited me over the counter, to have a couple of drinks on our own, in a more intimate corner. That was an unforgettable moment for us. Oh, wait, now I remember an eerie detail: The day after we met, at night, we were making out in my car, and at some point we heard some noise, and there was a bunch of cosplayers from the Comic Convention passing on the street: an elf, an ogre, a magician—Now, that was creepy!!

MATTHEW STURGES, writer, HOUSE OF MYSTERY
I went rock climbing once when I was twelve. I'd just pulled myself up onto a narrow ledge and had begun to ascend the incline beyond when I slipped on a loose rock and tumbled backward. In that instant, I pretty much knew I was dead, because the ground was about fifty feet below me. Instead of plunging to an early demise, however, I slammed into a tree that was growing improbably out from the corner of that narrow ledge. Now, the weird thing about this was that when I was climbing up the ledge, that tree WASN'T THERE. I'm sure of this, because if it had been, I would have used it to climb up. I climbed down, shaken, and didn't climb anything more dangerous than stairs for years afterward.