Dark Horse Hungry For Plants Vs. Zombies

by Vince Brusio

PREVIEWSworld loves zombies. We can’t get enough of ‘em. We’re proud to say that when The Walking Dead came out, we were among the first to say “This is gonna be a monster!” Pun intended. Well, here we are standing again, saying “get ready!” because Plants Vs. Zombies: Bully For You #1 (APR150047) is here, and we got to talk to the two people driving the train on the new book: writer Paul Tobin and artist Ron Chan.

Plants Vs. Zombies: Bully For You #1 (APR150047) is in comic shops June 17.

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PREVIEWSworld: Congratulations on keeping the fun alive! What is it about this game franchise that makes you want to bring it to the world of comics?

Ron Chan: There's just a lot of fun stuff to draw, and Paul keeps it exciting for me by creating fun situations to put these characters into. Also, cartoon violence is very fun to draw. I'm particularly fond of drawing Bonk-Choy punching zombies.

Paul Tobin: PopCap really opened up their world for me, and in fact basically let me create the world. So that’s been fun. I’ve been able to gear it towards wacky adventure, and a strong sense of absurdity. That makes it constantly fun for me to write. It changes things from “am I going too far” into “how can I push this even farther?” And, at a base line, it’s got that constant hook: plants vs. zombies. It’s right there in the title! So we get to have fun with a thousand permutations of that, and now we’re having fun by giving both the plants and zombies some personal characteristics, with individual plants and zombies, and that makes it even more fun.

PREVIEWSworld: How did Plants Vs. Zombies: Bully For You #1 (APR150047) come together? Who got the ball rolling, and how many late nights were involved in making this project happen?

Ron Chan: The first two volumes worked out really successfully, and PopCap was so thrilled with it that they decided they wanted to expand the PvZ comics universe to single-issue comics as well as the hardcover collections. As far as late nights? This may not be the way of the typical freelancer, but I actually try not to pull late nights. Sometimes, that means I do nothing but work all day, but I still try to get to bed on time.

Paul Tobin: Yeah! What Ron said! We’ve have so much fun on the earlier incarnations, that it was a given to keep the team together. PopCap and Dark Horse decided they wanted to do an ongoing, so they had me come up with a whole bunch of possible storylines, including what eventually became Bully For You. Basically we all sat down together and discussed things, the direction we wanted to take, etc, you know… being very professional. And then it turned into jokes the way these things do, because if we were really adults we wouldn’t be doing comic books. We’d be doing… I dunno… umm, whatever adults do.

And, it was during this time period that I decided I wanted to do short stories in each issue. Since each issue is 24 pages long, there’s plenty of room to do the same style of short stories I do in my Eisner award-winning “Bandette” comics. For PvZ, we can focus on secondary characters, shine a bit of light on them, cutting loose even more than usual and use a wide array of really interesting / amazing guest artists, like Dustin Nguyen, or Jennifer Meyer, Peter Bagge, Karim Friha, Nneka Myers, and many others we haven’t announced yet.

PREVIEWSworld: If you had to give a presentation at a panel, how would you describe this book to the audience? What visuals/characters would make it into the Power Point? And what would be the tone of your narrative?

Ron Chan: I'd say the comics are an extension of the game, with a story all their own. We follow three central human characters who are friends with the plants: Eleven-year-olds Nate Timely and Patrice Blazing, and of course, Crazy Dave, who is Patrice's uncle. They get into all sorts of hi-jinks trying to thwart the zombie invasions set forth by Zomboss.

Paul Tobin: Yep. Ron’s got it. Mostly, we’re just doing an adventure book, here. A non-stop full-on charge-ahead adventure with a lot of humor to it. I grew up watching Monty Python, and the Goodies, and the Kids in the Hall, and Benny Hill, so absurd humor is sort of my thing.

PREVIEWSworld: If you tweeted about your experience writing this book, what key words or phrases would you drop that would make the gamers sit up and take notice?

Ron Chan: You know, I wouldn't say "gamers" are necessarily a target demographic so much as kids are. Maybe the marketing team might have something else to say, haha, but to me as the artist, my top priority is to make something that kids will really enjoy.

Paul Tobin: What key phrases? Umm, free pony? That’s all I got. Dark Horse has a million marketers who do a GREAT job, so when I’m tweeting about PvZ I generally just talk about how much fun we’re having, because that… I think… always translates into a good read. Plus Dark Horse still won’t give me the go-ahead on the free-pony-with-every-issue promotional idea anyway.

PREVIEWSworld: How is the story of this comic rooted in the game, and yet an altogether different beast?

Ron Chan: I guess I kind of answered this above on accident. We have our central human characters, and we include lots of plants and zombies from the game, but we've also created new unique plants and zombies just for the comics!

Paul Tobin: One of the real challenges I had in the beginning is that I was brought aboard to write the comics when only the first game had been released, meaning there was literally nothing but “plants fight zombies, in columns, in one yard.” That meant the entirety of the world had to be created. It was an interesting challenge, one where I wanted to stay true to the wacky humor inherent in the game, and the touches of humor that we see in Zomboss and Crazy Dave, but there needed to be more relatable characters too… so I created Patrice Blazing (Crazy Dave’s niece) and Nate Timely so that we could have, in this case, some literally human perspective. Someone we could relate to, and… in Patrice’s case… someone who could translate what Crazy Dave was saying all the time

And then we placed the adventures, for the most part, in the town of Neighborville. With our comics, we can deal with stories to a deeper degree, while the games are always about action. That said, the two blend, because our stories are so madcap that there’s always action going on, whether that’s a full out zombie assault, Dave heading back to the past to win disco competitions, or particularly intense lemonade breaks.