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“THE DAILY DEAD: Is there any feedback in particular that surprised you? What have you found that readers are taking away from this story?

MARK SABLE: San Diego has a large military community, and when we debuted the book at Comic-Con we had a lot of veterans and active duty service members come up to us. If there’s one thing members of the military and comic fans have in common it’s that they aren’t afraid to speak their mind, so I braced myself for the worst. I could have imagined them pissed at us for trivializing their experiences.

Instead, they thanked us for calling attention to the fact there’s a war going on, something you might not know from walking around the U.S. right now. And they shared their stories, which were heartbreaking.

For me, the most moving reaction was a request from a vet who wanted to use Paul’s cover from the first issue – a helmeted skull with a poppy plant running through it – as a tattoo. He wanted to ink the names of his fallen comrades in the roots. To this day that remains the best interaction I’ve ever had with a reader.

So it’s been particularly rewarding that people who served in Iraq or Afghanistan were not only okay with what we were doing but felt we did a good job of capturing what they’d experienced.

No word from the zombies yet, though.”

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“…It’s cliche to say something like, “this is not your classic zombie story,” especially in the post-Walking Dead world we inhabit. However, very much like Kirkman’s opus, this does feel different. Much of that has to do with Graveyard’s treatment of characters and the messy politics of war; in this case, both with the undead and, more terrifyingly, with ideas….Azaceta’s art accomplishes the admirable task of being expressive without being overly detailed, and pairs gorgeously with the story.”

SCORE: 5/5

-from Steven E. Paugh’s review of THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES TPB on ComicBastards.com