In 2010, in the wake of the publication of GHOSTBUSTERS: CON-VOLUTION, artist Kurt Belcher contacted me and Jim Beard to ask if we'd be interested in collaborating with him on a creator-owned comic book project.  Kurt has an intriguingly distinctive art style that seems tailor-made (to me at least) for a horror comic book, so we agreed. I forget which one of us first pitched a Zombie comic book, but what we ultimately conceived is something similar to Stephen King's CELL... 

MORTEM AMERICANA.

Here's our synopsis:
"In an instant, the majority of the world population has its brains fried. The Terachip—the most advanced telecommunication and entertainment microchip—has caused the near downfall of humanity. Only those few without the subcutaneously inserted Terachip retain their higher brain functions. They must find a way to survive amidst the cannibalistic primitives that now ravage the American landscape. However, another threat comes their way from overseas—an Al Qaeda splinter group that seeks to make an opportunistic strike while the nation is at its most vulnerable. It falls to the President of the United States to rally his people against two distinct menaces and rebuild the nation."

Yes, the President of the United States was going to be our main protagonist, but NO, he was not intended to resemble any current or former President.  (To be honest, I was more interested in the twin girl characters, Katey and Janet, who I modeled after my own daughters.)

Anyway, the three of us put together a seven page sample (which you can read here) and pitched it to a few publishers. Alas, none of them accepted our submission, but I had fun conceiving and writing it.

MORTEM AMERICANA (C) Jim Beard, Kurt Belcher, and Keith Dallas