Issue 1x1

Issue 1x1
**Cover Gallery**

**Creator, Writer**
George A. Romero

**Penciler, Inker**
Alex Maleev

**Preceded By**
**Succeeded By**
None
Act 1 Issue 2

**Issue 1x1** is the 1st issue of Marvel Comics' *Empire of the Dead* and the 1st issue of Act 1. It was published on MMMM DD YYYY

## Plot

1. Cover
2. The issue opens with two establishing shots; a panel of a rats' nest and then some men loading crates onto the back of a flat-bed truck. Slipshod, one of a group of a dozen men in SWAT uniform tells Paul Barnum, the only man not in uniform that they have a visitor.
3. The visitor is Penny Jones,  Jones and Barnum introduce themselves. Barnum tell Jones that the men are loading rats, and that the rats are for food, sold to people in low rent areas. Barnum gives the impression that he knows about Jones and perhaps has even been expecting her. We get a glimpse of a figure standing a little ways back from the main group. The figure is wearing a SWAT uniform with the name tag "XAVIER".
4. Jones asks why Barnum isn't going to arrest the men loading crates of rats, Barnum explains that: he's not a policeman, and that the policemen with him (in SWAT uniforms) are there to protect him. Jones tells him that she's a medic from Columbia. Barnum interrupts her, assuming that she's there to study the stinkers, the living dead but Jones corrects him saying that she's there to study him, because he's already tamed them. Barnum reveals that he choose stinkers for the arena and that he's not looking for "tame", just a spark of intelligence.
5. They watch a stinker brushing the porch of a building and discuss how much intelligence that implies. Jones argues that it's just memory and says that she's looking for a particularly intelligent one. They talk about the morality of having stinkers fight in the arena as entertainment and watch one as she tries and fails to hang out washing to dry.
6. In the park they watch two stinkers playing checkers. Jones sees the SWAT uniformed figure in the distance again and tries to point him out to Barnum, but the figure has gone by the time he looks. He says it can't be one of theirs - but then reveals that they "lost" an officer here a couple of weeks before, that she, not he, had been bitten but then had gotten away before she could be shot. He also says that anyone left here would be eaten unless they had "amazing survival skills" and tells Jones that the officer they lost was called Frances Xavier, X, for short.
7. They catch the train and, leaving work and the protecting SWAT officers behind the, chat, flrting a little, him seeing her home. Jones catches sight of the figure in the distance again as she boards the train.
8. We see Xavier walking on the tracks near the station and see her get a shock from the electrified line. The fatally powerful shock doesn't harm her and we "see" her thoughts. She knows that she is one of the "Living Dead". We also see that she thinks she still has "work to do".
9. Full page shot of the stadium in Central Park. A view from above, showing the surrrounding area. The stadium is empty but obviously in use, chimney smoke is rising from the surrounding buildings and figures can be seen around the stadium and area.
10. Barnum and Jones are watching some uniformed and armoured men putting two stinkers into a cage cage, or cell, and she asks what time the games begin. Barnum tells her that the arena opens before the games start and that people come early to watch what goes on. He points out a stinker and says that he's called Zanzibar , that he's won (survived) "dozens" of fights and is naturally agressive.
11. Slipshod tells Barnum that "they" wanted Zanzibar out early. "They" turn out to be Mayor Chandrake who has a habit of asking for stinkers to fight and die for private parties. Barnum is pleased when Slipshod tells him that he made an excuse and supplied four less valuable stinkers to fight for the mayor; he says that Chandrake understands Zanzibar is too valuable and that he was just reminding Barnum that Chandrake was the boss. Jones puts her hand flat on his chest and says "Well, he is. Isn't he?" It's a surprisingly intimate thing for her to do and is the first time these two characters have been shown touching.
12. They walk on and, as they pass a large stinker chained to a post, Barnum deliberately takes hold of Jones and "dips" her, like a dancer, near the stinker - who reaches for her. Barnum pulls her back up and turns her, she leans against him slightly as the stinker yanks against the chain on his neck. She doesn't comment on what he's done. They watch him reaching for them as they talk. Barnum tells her that he saw his father killed by one and doesn't want to see anything like that again. When Jones is surprised that he's put himself in the middle of them if he feels like that he says that in the middle is the best place to be,
13. [cont] that there are no surprises if you can see it's bad everywhere. They sit in the stands while stinkers fight in the arena and use binoculars to watch a group of people in a private room above the stand opposite. Barnum explains that she can see the Mayor's son, Bill Chandrake, and that if she looks past the women dressed in white that she will be able to see Mayor Chandrake. The women are all dressed as if they are going out for the evening.
14. As they watch, first the woman in white with her head on the mayor's shoulder appears to look straight at them, and then the mayor himself. Barnum and Jones watch the stinkers fight for food suspended by a hook above them and, answering Jones' question, Barnum explains that they get the human flesh (the only thing stinkers eat) from the same man who sells rat burgers.
15. The stinkers fight viciously and Jones goes back to watching the group in the private room opposite. The Mayor and the woman next to him are looking straight at her. Jones lowers the binoculars and looks back.
16. One of the stinkers wins and the guards recapture him. Barnum's phone rings and he tell Jones that the Mayor wants to meet her.
17. Once they are in the private room Mayor Chandrake flatters and flirts with Jones. Jones doesn't say much, even when he kisses her hand. Barnum says nothing at all, even when the Mayor tells him to arrange for him to see more of Jones.
18. Jones seems quite affected by meeting the Mayor "when he kissed my hand a chill went all through me". Barnum changes the subject by reminding her that she'd promised to buy him a beer. Jones smiles and suggests a gin instead. In a bar we see Bill Chandrake flirting with a young woman in a blue dress.
19. Barnum and Jones are drinking in a bar with an armed guard outside. They are talking about stinkers and Jones compares them to chimpanzees or three year old humans - and says that her qualification in paediatrics is applicable to working with the living dead. She asks for a stinker to work with for a couple of weeks so that she can make them less aggressive. Barnum thinks that it isn't possible but agrees.
20. He ask her why she thinks the living dead are trainable, why she has faith in them. Jones pauses for a moment and then tells Barnum about the events related in the film *Night of the Living Dead* and tells him that her older sister is Barbra Blair. She tells the story of the film but then adds to it, saying that when her sister was dragged from the house by her dead brother that he took her to the barn and didn't harm her. That he was destroyed when the sheriff's men came they were going to shoot her, but her brother stepped in front of her to protect her from the shots and was killed a second time himself. Barnum isn't convinced and says that they, the stinkers, are dangerous.
21. As if to prove his point, a stinker choose that moment to crash through the bar's window dragging a human victim in with him (so much for the armed guard outside). The stinker kills his victim and is then destroyed himself as Jones opens fire on him, shooting him in the head and saving Barnum.
22. The police arrive and Barnum takes responsibility for shooting the stinker rather than Jones. The police take him into custody.
23. The final pages of this issue show Xavier underground by railway tracks. She finds a stinker eating a dead human and we can see her thoughts - we know that she thinks it's wrong to kill. She leaves the stinker to his meal and walks on.
24. She then sees Bill Chandrake with blood on his face and with the body of the girl we saw him with earlier, in the bar. The girl's throat is bitten and we realise, with Xavier, that this is a different kind of undead creature, a vampire.
25. Bill Chandrake, having been discovered, stands and runs off down the track leaving Xavier looking at the body of the girl on the ground.

## Credits

In order of appearance.

* Slipshod
* Paul Barnum
* Penny Jones
* Xavier
* Zanzibar
* Bill Chandrake
* Mayor Chandrake

## Notes

This is the issue that fits *Empire Of The Dead* into the Romero *Living Dead* series of films.

Penny Jones' story of how her older sister survived her first encounters with the undead and of her brother's death that were related in *Night of the Living Dead* helps us date this story - to some extent at least.

*Night of the Living Dead* was released in 1968 and the technology in *Empire* (the size of the mobile phones, for instance) lets us date this no earlier, I suggest, than 2000. So, given her apparent age of early thirties, Penny would have had to be born sometime after 1970.

## Gallery

Penny Jones telling Paul Barnum about her brother Johnny saving their sister, Barbra Blair