DF Interview: Chris Ryall sets zombies against aliens in a ‘complete B-movie of a story,’ ‘The Colonized’

By Byron Brewer

Where there's aliens, there's zombies! These otherworldy threats converge in the secluded Carbon Falls Collective. A 2nd-gen off-the-grid'er, Huxley Robertson is dealing with both loss and the elders' pushback against his plans for a fully sustainable town. Amidst those volatile circumstances, a vainglorious alien explorer inadvertently re-animates the town's dead! Add a rogue ATF agent into the mix and let's just say this is a bad time for the sleepy town to be cut off from the outside world.

From Image Comics comes The Colonized, a one-shot book by writer Chris Ryall and artist Drew Moss. I had the pleasure of sitting down with scribe Ryall to discuss this zombies vs. aliens mashup.  

Byron Brewer: Chris, tell us the inspiration for your coming one-shot, The Colonized. Is this story self-contained or does it spin off other material?

Chris Ryall: It’s a self-contained 100-page story. Drew and I have talked at times about revisiting the world – we both especially had fun with the vainglorious alien Captain Bemis – but the story wasn’t designed with a sequel in mind, we just wanted to tell a fun, complete B-movie of a story.

Byron: Describe to readers the canvas we will be dropped in for this one-shot, the atmosphere and environs that serve as the backdrop for this tale.

Chris Ryall: When I wrote this, I’d been thinking a lot about drop-out societies, and how both the right-wing militia types and the lefty live-off-the-grid eco groups weren’t all that different in terms of wanting to do their own thing without any established government-enforced rules. Politically as divided as can be but also not dissimilar in terms of what they want and don’t want from a society. So I thought it’d be fun to start there, with a separate society full of both types.

Which wasn’t out of any desire to make this a political story—it’s definitely not—it just felt like a fun dynamic to play with in terms of that generational divide. But also, I just needed a town that was cut off from the larger world so that when things go wrong, which they very quickly do, the last thing anyone in the group would even consider doing is calling the police or the military to help.

Byron: Introduce us to Huxley Robertson. What is his backstory and what in that past life has brought him to the point we meet him in The Colonized?

Chris Ryall: Hux is a guy born from one world—his dad was a founding member of the Carbon Falls Collective militia who established this separatist society—so he was weaned on distrust of outside authority figures. But he’s also much more sympathetic to the needs of the community and the environment, so when Hux’s dad dies, both sides of the community look to him to run the show the same as it ever was. He may not have been up for that challenge even without the otherworldly events that affect the town but certainly the situation isn’t helped when the aliens come to town.

So The Colonized title is used to refer to both this separate colony that the group has established, but also the marauding aliens who arrive and screw everything up.

Byron: What other characters are important to this book? Can you spotlight a few here?

Chris Ryall: Bemis is the lead alien character we meet early on, and as otherworldly as he might be, he does share some all-too-human traits: he’s arrogant and boastful, worried more about his legacy as the captain of a vessel that made it to another world than he is taking proper precautions upon arrival here.

So he plows into doing the usual alien thing of using a tractor beam to pull a human onto their ship for examination… only he mistakenly pulls a dead body from the town’s cemetery on board. Even worse, the tractor beam’s energies reanimate the body, leading to a zombie outbreak among aliens, humans, and farm animals alike.

Hux’s wife Darlene is also a key player in the series. Hux is torn between two worlds in a lot of ways, and so is more indecisive about what to do when everything blows up in his town. Which isn’t helpful, but Darlene has a more level head on her shoulders and just might be able to help things turn out okay. Well, not for everyone, that is. No one in the town is equipped to handle what comes their way.

There’s also Randy Roy Grist, an older hardliner who thinks he can shoot and kill their way to victory… and a junior ATF agent named Lew Dawson, who had secretly been keeping tabs on the town to make sure they weren’t stockpiling guns or doing anything else overly nefarious. So lots of opposing viewpoints all clash when the aliens and zombies come to town.

Byron: Give readers an overview, a summation of the goings-on in this sci-fi/horror mashup.

Chris Ryall: I’ve previously laid the groundwork, and so the story basically blows up from there: the Carbon Falls Collective is reeling from the recent death of its patriarch, Huxley’s father, and if that wasn’t bad enough, aliens come to town and kickstart a zombie onslaught that goes in some really wild directions. Which is especially challenging since Hux is a pacifist and he’s done all he can to remove guns from his community. Which is fine in theory but not all that helpful when the town is overrun by zombiefied creatures of all shapes and sizes.

Byron: Aliens AND zombies??!

Chris Ryall: Two of the three recurring elements in so many comics I write… the third being robots. Someday, I’ll really have to combine all three.

Byron: Talk about the art of Drew Moss, and of the awesome cover by the great Francesco Francavilla.

Chris Ryall: Drew’s art is perfect for this kind of story – he strikes a great balance of horror and comedy, which is the aim of the story itself, too. It’s not played for laughs but still, there’s something so ridiculous about the setting and these characters that made it a blast to see how Drew approached each page. And I really love his alien designs, too. Our aim was to give this the same feel as a 1950s sci-fi film and I think in Drew’s hands, especially with Locke & Key colorist Jay Fotos’ hues added to his lines, that it all worked so well.

Byron: Chris, tell readers of any other projects in which you are involved coming out soon.

Chris Ryall: We’ve been doing a nice mix of titles and genres through my Image imprint, Syzygy Publishing. We’re halfway through a unique ghost story called A Haunted Girl, and launching a really fun, vibrant series called The Cabinet soon after, too. Meanwhile, I just sent to print the fourth issue of our Tales of Syzpense split-book. I’m writing one of the two stories in that series (“Dreamweaver,” with art by Nelson Daniel).

And separately from Syzygy, I have a book coming out from Abrams ComicArts in early 2014, too: The Mighty Marvel Calendar Book: A Visual Celebration. Doing the best I can to stay busy in as many parts of the comic industry as I can.

Dynamic Forces would like to thank Chris Ryall for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. The Colonized one-shot from Syzygy Publishing & Image Comics is slated to be on sale Jan. 17, 2024!

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