"The Blood-Hued Sun sets slowly this eve, painting the Louisiana Bayous in tones of ominous crimson. On the shore, men and women already prepare for the midnight ritual to come. Wood is gathered, a bonfire ignited! Now, the moon rises... and it begins!

Drums pound out strange sensual rhythms, recalling the pulsation of hearts that once beat in primordial Africa. Clothes are discarded... and naked bodies jerk and writhe, spasmodically, held fast in the throes of ancient passions.

Then, she appears... the Voodoo Queen, her supple, subtly muscular form bending and swaying in serpentine splendor! Held above her head, its silver shape gleaming in the moonlight... the ceremonial blade!

Eyes lifted to the heavens, the voodoo woman takes seven slow, measured steps to the stone slab where you lie! And... you are afraid! For you... You!... Are the central figure in this baleful rite! You... Simon Garth... the Human Sacrifice!! You, whose panic-stricken stare lances upward at that woman... that flesh-rending blade, poised maddening above... The Altar of the Damned!"

And with those beautifully crafted words by the legendary Steve Gerber (co-creator of Howard the Duck), we are reintroduced to the world of Simon Garth... the coffee king of Louisiana... the man who had it all and lost it all... the man who would lose his soul and take us on a journey to reclaim his soul... the man who would become a Zombie!

In my humble opinion, Tales of the Zombie #1 is a forgotten key issue. Not only is it the second published appearance of Simon Garth (who first appeared in a one-shot story written by Stan Lee), but it is an Origin Issue. Steve Gerber craftily weaves a complete landscape for Simon Garth, revealing how he fell into the supernatural predicament which became his curse.

The original Golden Age one-shot written by Stan Lee and handsomely illustrated by Bill Everett (which first appeared in Atlas Comics Menace #5 and has been reprinted in the pages of Tales of the Zombie #1 and in Tales of the Zombie Annual #1), introduced the three main players: Simon Garth, Gyps the Gardener, and Simon Garth's daughter, Donna, but gave readers no indication how Simon Garth became a zombie nor how he fell under the machinations of Gyps (the slimy bearer of the amulet which controls the Zombie). Lee's macabre story offers only vague and murky hints as to such... but it's up to the reader to fill in the blanks. Nonetheless, Stan Lee's mini is a well-crafted and effective horror piece, albeit a quickie. And it may be presumptuous for me to say this, but I sense this 7-page story may have served as a muse for Len Wein, who told a similar tale in nearly equal length, with Alec Olsen's plight (as seen in DC's House of Secrets Volume 1, No. 92: the first appearance of the Swamp Thing).

When Tales of the Zombie #1 first hit the stands in the Spring/Summer of 1973, it was part of cultural torrent which flooded movies and television: Exploitation Cinema (sometime known as Grindhouse Flicks, Cult Films, and another cloth coined by Michael Weldon: Psychotronic Movies). Exploitation is a label derogatorily cast on many low-budget films, both Domestic and International. I see Exploitation as having a vague philosophy akin to an Anti-Dogma, for most exploitation films have broad themes deeply embedded in existentialism, anti-heroes and vigilantism, anti-religion, rebellion, alienation, anti-slavery, civil rights, crime, violence, sex, drugs and the downfall of an oppressive government and/or civilization, where anarchy and chaos is the order of the day even within the confines of society. I see it as a legitimate movement, a sub-culture, perhaps counter-culture, which pulp magazines and comic books inevitably belong to. Just to clarify, I don't subscribe to such a philosophy, for I am a civilized man and prefer the safety and comforts of a lawful society, but from time-to-time, when the banality and the mundane of everyday life sets in, I find myself exploring such bizarre themes which can be readily found in cinema and literature, and that is as far as it goes for me. Horror is exploitation by design... for it is created to exploit our most base emotion: fear, and amplifies it to draw an intended reaction. In the broader scope of things, we are nothing more than Guinea Pigs in the Hands of Our Creators...the World Weavers... and that's true exploitation.

George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), is a cult classic and considered one of the most critical and successful horror films of all time; having broke-ground as the movie to usher in the Zombie-Apocalypse genre. It is also considered an Exploitation Film. On the heels of the success of NOTLD, countless zombie movies, horror and gore-splatter movies, Apocalyptic-themed B-movies bombarded the silver screens across the globe for decades to come. Undoubtedly, Marvel, Steve Gerber and Company capitalized on this make-a-quick-buck movement. They brought back Simon Garth, wrenching him from the pages of his Menace #5 one-shot casket, and I suspect, had Gerber read-up a chock-full of Robert E. Howard horror pulps ("Black Canaan", "Out of the Deep", "Hills of the Dead", "The Black Stone", and "Pigeons from Hell"), Howard Phillips Lovecraft ("Robert West: Re-Animator"), and probably Mary Shelley's The Modern Prometheus to get into the proper mood to write an undead fable.

And with all that, Gerber took Lee and Everett's fantastic little tale, loaded fresh paper into the typewriter, and with a few keystrokes from the master's fingertips, Simon Garth was resurrected. And for nine glorious issues (really ten, but Simon Garth doesn't appear in the last issue save on the cover... go figure), we followed Simon Garth on his odyssey to reclaim his soul and his humanity: a violent and gory journey which culminated in the pages of Tales of the Zombie #9.

But it all started in Tales of the Zombie #1, where we discovered Simon Garth, elitist extraordinaire, the king of a coffee empire, laid supine and helpless, bound and gagged on rotting earth, as he watched in sheer terror as a heathen Voodoo Priestess waved a deadly dagger over his heart. And we watched with equal tremor as Simon Garth made his unlikely escape through the deadly swamps, only to meet his untimely end, as former and disgraced employee, Gyps the Gardener, now sworn enemy, plunged the twin blades of sharpened garden shears into his bloodied chest.

But even in death, the story didn't end there, for Gyps, ever the conniver, forced the Voodoo Priestess to perform the ritual... the taboo ritual that brings a man back from the dead, as a mindless, walking Zombie. And under the power of twin Amulets, one worn by the Zombie, and the other in the hands of the Master, the Zombie is magically compelled to do the bidding of whoever controls one of the twin amulets.

If we peel back the cyanotic skin to Gerber's story, it is replete with several themes commonly found in Exploitation Cinema. First, on a superficial level, the themes of Slavery, Rebellion and Uprising is addressed: Simon Garth, Wealthy Industrialist and the Master of Men, has now become a Slave to a man beneath his station. For in this story, the tables are turned: Gyps, once the disgruntled and disgraced employee, fired for misconduct (Gyps was caught being a Peeping-Tom when he watched Garth's daughter, Donna, skinny dip in the pool from behind the bushes he was shearing), is now in control of one of the twin Amulet's, and thus becomes the Master to Simon Garth, his former Employer and former Master... but

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