Flesh-hungry zombies reign in New Deadford series – Fall River Herald News

Imagine you are working on a much anticipated fictional tale about a rapidly spreading and fatal contagion that goes pandemic. As a result, there is economic fallout, supply shortages, and the growth of rival societal factions, all trying to control the situation. Dystopia looms.

And what if suddenly, the world itself lurches that way?

If you are writer and artist Fitzcarmel LaMarre, you cautiously soldier on.

With New Deadford, a planned series of graphic novels focusing on the city of New Bedford and surrounding communities after a bioterrorist attack greatly lessens the population, LaMarre has tapped the zeitgeist.

In New Deadford, the city is reduced to marauding flesh-hungry zombies and rough-and-tumble survivor enclaves. Those survivors are based on real-life residents of New Bedford, many recognizable in crisp illustrations, including local cops, bartenders, fishermen, skateboard punks, politicians, and artists.

There are eerie parallels between LaMarres work-in-progress and reality, including barely repressed anger, a fear of strangers, and extreme caution around everyone. And then there are the arrogant ones who ignore protocol and risk everything.

In LaMarres tale, the disease is spread by zombie-centric infection in the usual George Romero or Walking Dead way: a bite, a scratch or the splatter of blood. But the zombies can be seen and physically battled, be it with a shotgun, a crowbar or a harpoon.

Yes, a harpoon...it is New Bedford after all.

In reality, we fear touching doorknobs, gas pump handles and ATM keypads because we cant see the enemy. At least, you can see a zombie coming.

In New Deadford, the infection can also be spread via mosquito bite, and so insect repellent becomes as difficult to find as hand sanitizer is in the real world. Of course, people begin figuring out how to make their own bug spray.

LaMarre conceived New Deadford in 2015, after engaging in conversations with friends about how they would handle an apocalyptic scenario. Enthralled by the history, geography and the sometimes eccentric residents of New Bedford, he was ready to kick it into high gear.

In 2018, he was Artist-in-Residence at the New Bedford Whaling Historical Park, where he engaged the community with classes and special activities. It culminated in November 2019 with a pop-up event sponsored by the National Park Service, in which just over a 100 copies of New Deadford Prologue: First Draft were given out.

Within ten minutes, all were gone. There was- and still is- a palpable buzz. But things have changed.

The reality of the world has rudely intruded. LaMarre is still working on the series but toning down the imagery he had been sharing on social media, given the understandable sensitivity given the too-close-to-home subject matter.

He has been working on some new elements of the story which flashback well over 100 years ago, bringing in an element of historical fiction. It features a conversation at the home of Nathan and Mary Polly Johnson, where Frederick Douglass and his wife Anna lived after he escaped to freedom.

That home harbored untold numbers of runaway slaves, and in contemporary New Deadford it will harbor survivors, trying to make better lives for themselves. Another offshoot will feature a gun-totin Harriet Tubman.

By infusing an element of the past, LaMarre gets to take a breather from the here-and-now while enriching the mythology of his unfolding tale.

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Flesh-hungry zombies reign in New Deadford series - Fall River Herald News