Blacula: Return of the King

Blacula: Return of the King

Los Angeles – the City of Angels. Two souls, one is looking for vengeance and one is looking for the truth. They share one thing in common, they are both searching for the legendary vampire Blacula. Tina Thomas is a reporter for the blog Dark Knights, which chronicles ll things unnatural, uneasy, and undead. She meets a young man named Kross whose family was forever changed by the vampire. Kross asks Tina to help him kill Blacula. 

Blacula too is on a mission, he is searching for the one who forever changed his life centuries ago. His name is Count Dracula..

Available today here!

See a sneak peek of chapter 1 below!

Killadelphia

Released in the fall of 2019, Killadelphia, written by Rodney Barnes and illustrated by Jason Shawn Alexander, was met with critical success and otherworldly sales.

The story of a homicide detective turned vampire father and his estranged son, both on the hunt for former President John Adams, now a vampire seeking to remake America in the design originally set forth by the country’s Founding Fathers, features crisp political commentary and heart-wrenching family drama while providing a critique of present day America at its crossroads. Remaining true to its horror genre roots, the story ventures into commentary that speaks to our core demographic: thoughtful horror fans of all ages seeking layered stories with a poignant take on the world in which we live. There’s a complex creative math to the tone of Killadelphia that would play out in all of the stories created, published, and adapted by Zombie Love Studios.

Killadelphia—now in its second story arc, will pick up where it left off with a son trying to step into his father’s shoes and ward off the remnants of a vampire horde in the city of Philadelphia. As was the case in story arc one, story arc two will use history, present day circumstances, and a horror tale true to the essence of the genre to thrill fans and newcomers alike.

Elysium Gardens

Elysium Gardens

Elysium Gardens, a tale which spans a thousand years where a group of North African Moors invading Sicily are cursed by stregheria witches.

Now, wandering the Earth as werewolves when the moon goes full, they are on the hunt for what’s left of the coven in the hopes the curse can be reversed.

This brings our Moor/werewolves to Watts amidst the Black Nationalist movement on the eve of the 1965 race riots that set Los Angeles ablaze.

Crownsville

Crownsville

Founded on April 11, 1910 as the Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland, Crownsville Hospital Center became a place where black people were traumatized, brutalized, and used as guinea pigs for experimental and military treatments. The state run institution was closed in 2004 and this is where fact becomes fiction and our story begins. An aging reporter with stage four cancer has been given six months to live. He cares for his mother who is suffering from dementia and nearing a point where she no longer recognizes her son. Accepting the reality of both her and her son’s lack of time, she unburdens herself of a long-held secret; a crime committed against black patients at Crownsville—experiments, death, hidden bodies. Having been a nurse there, she witnessed it all, but now with her mind debilitated, she’s lost major parts of the story. She begs her son to tell the patients’ story so she can go to her grave in peace. Our reporter considers his own plight of a mundane life. He once had dreams of making it at a big paper like the New York Times or Washington Post but resigned himself to his childhood home working for his hometown newspaper. That said, in all of his time at the paper, he never had a front page story, the kind that creates careers of note. Ending his time on this mortal coil with the biggest story of his career, one that would be splashed across the front page for all to see, would make as a nice button to his life as well as fulfill his mother’s final wish. So, he agrees to investigate the story.

After some poking around the city of Annapolis, Maryland, a former slave port with a rich political history which is the major city adjacent to Crownsville, our reporter finds that few wish to discuss both the past, or any potential crimes committed at the closed hospital which is set to be demolished. Taking a chance, our reporter enters the abandoned mental hospital and immediately, the souls of the patients, now poltergeists, attack him. Terrified, he runs for the hills. But upon reflection and a few more clues given by his mother and a shot of Jack Daniels, he returns. This time, the spirits open the door to their realm, transporting him to the 1970’s when an inhuman program akin to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment—in which black men were intentionally injected with the disease to see what the effect would be to the human body over time—was being run by the hospital, literally driving the patients insane. In the past, he puts the pieces together, but in the present, his physical body is breaking down due to the cancer. This began as a sort of ego trip for our reporter, but now he’s become obsessed with revealing the truth of what happened at the hospital. The clues in the past lead him to the former director of the hospital, now in hospice himself and near death. He tells all. This leads our reporter and police to a secret, unmarked graveyard where the bodies of the former patients reside. Our reporter, nearing the end of his life, writes his story, but collapses just as he turns it in, unsure if he’ll live to see it published. But at this point it lacks the importance it once had. He solved the mystery and freed the souls imprisoned there. He goes to his mother, explaining that he did what she asked, but she no longer recognizes him. On the day his story is published on the front page, our reporter dies. On the other side of life, he is met by the patients whose story he told, freeing them from the hospital. They welcome their hero into eternity. And for the first time in his existence, he is whole.

Florence and Normandie

Florence and Normandie

Florence and Normandie, infamous as the flashpoint of the 1992 LA Riots, will find itself at the center of another seminal moment of American history: The world’s first alien invasion.

Florence and Normandie coming in August

From Zombie Love Studios comes a new tale of monsters and mayhem!

What starts on the corner of Florence and Normandie in Los Angeles now threatens to overtake the entire world! The story comes from legendary Rapper/Actor @xzibit and me, with art from @wayshak and @margalotto.

Florence & Normandie will be available in August and will be a 5 chapter graphic novel.

I don’t want to spoil too much, but subscribe below to stay up to date with announcements about the project that are coming soon.

Monarch

Monarch

Monarch is finally here!

Monarch, the story of a boy adopted by a loving foster care worker who’s raised a number of abandoned children in South Central Los Angeles over the course of her life. In this foster family, our boy finds love, care, and connection.

Things he’s never experienced and now holds dear. There’s only one problem—the boy is an alien. The last of his species, he has been tasked with finding a planet suitable for the essence of his species to repopulate.

Initially sent to Earth to gather data for an impending droid invasion, his connection to his foster family complicates his mission, creating a dilemma that will result in the demise of either his species or the people of the planet Earth.

Monarch Issue # 1 is available today at your local comic book shop. To find a comic book shop near you click the button below. 

Check out a sneak peek below

Early Reviews are in!

“Monarch #1 is an impressive debut that builds a living, dangerous world with complex characters that already carry a considerable amount of personal history with them. It’s impossible not to root for Travon and you will keep turning the pages with a certain reluctance for fear of what might happen to him throughout. But turn them you shall, and you won’t want to stop. Monarch is just that good.” Read the full review here. 

 

Nita Hawes’ Nightmare Blog

Nita Hawes' Nightmare Blog

Nita Hawes’ Nightmare Blog, which exists in the same universe as Killadelphia, chronicles the story of Dawnita Hawes, an adjunct professor of parapsychology living in Baltimore, Maryland. After the tragic death of her younger brother Jason (now a supportive ghost) by random gun violence, begins the Nightmare Blog—a website where people in supernatural peril can request Nita’s assistance in solving said paranormal problems. 
 
In our first story arc which takes place over six issues, Nita investigates a series of murders by a catatonic, demon-possessed, blues singer seeking revenge against those that stole the rights to his music decades earlier. To exorcise the demon (Corson, one of the most powerful demons amongst their lot), Nita must face her fears, lack of faith, and a supernatural force that’s existed since the dawn of man.