Rob Sacchetto’s professional life is a “dream come true.”
“When I was a kid, I wanted to draw monsters when I was older, and that’s what I do now,” he said. “It’s literally a dream come true for me.”
Sudbury.com caught up with Sacchetto during the local artist’s book-signing event on Saturday at The Gory Hole, a horror-themed retail store in downtown Sudbury.
During the event, he signed copies of the second print run of his 150-page graphic novel, Cape Fear: Power Struggle, which features a character he’s been toying with different incarnations of since the ’80s. The initial print run of 5,000 copies he self-published a decade ago has sold out, prompting him to run off another 3,000 copies recently, which he’s now selling alongside a shorter prequel comic book featuring other self-contained stories.
“It’s The Lord of the Rings meets The X-Files and Batman – that’s what this is,” he said, offering his elevator pitch for the comic book.
The story features a god who inhabits a human being’s body on Earth, and follows both the lives of the god and his inhabited form.
Everything has been drawn using physical tools such as paper and ink, and Sacchetto is quick to point out that he doesn’t use electronic devices such as drawing pads to create his art.
“I come from the old-old school,” he said. “When I was a kid, my mom would buy me Frank Frazetta art books, and that stuff would blow my mind.”
Cape Fear (not to be mistaken for the 1962 movie or its Martin Scorcese-directed 1991 remake), has been compared to the character Spawn, created for Image Comics in the 1990s by artist/writer Todd McFarlane.
“It’s got the same stylistic points,” Sacchetto said of his book, adding with a smirk that his character’s creation predates the release of Spawn No. 1 in 1992. “I’m not put off by it or anything.”
Although he was at The Gory Hole to promote his graphic novel and comic book, Sacchetto’s bread and butter is Zombie Portraits, a service he runs through zombieportraits.com in which he has drawn more than 10,000 zombie versions of people and pets. Using existing photos, he draws original zombie portraits, with a popular request being couples’ wedding photos.
He also draws a daily zombie for his Patron website, which is supported by fans, and uploads images to his Instagram page.
Though more people offer the service now, Sacchetto is a pioneer in the field of zombie portraits, and has been offering the service since 2006.
A couple of his more notable clients have been the showrunners for The Walking Dead and Talking Dead, who enlisted his artistic skills to zombie-ify some of the people who run these television shows, including Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick for a Christmas present.
Based on a comic book, The Walking Dead is the most popular zombie-themed television program of all time, and Talking Dead is a talk show companion program that accompanied new episodes as they aired on the television channel AMC.
Zombie portraits are a niche market, but Sacchetto has been able to tap into it online, attracting customers from throughout the world, though primarily in Australia/Tasmania, the United States and Canada, with some clients residing in Europe.
While Sacchetto has managed to earn a living through zombie portraits, his comic book has been a passion project he devoted the full breadth of his talents to.
“This is the best work I can do,” he said of the comic books, adding that although he has another two graphic novels written featuring Cape Fear, the first of which he has roughed out, he has been reluctant to take the next step and begin drawing them.
“I’m just afraid to put in the work,” he said, adding that he has placed a great deal of pressure on himself to make these deeply personal expressions of art as good as they can possibly be.
“It’s a staggering amount of work,” he said. “It’s kind of a vanity project, I guess. It’s a really personal thing. It’s complex, but it’s easily digestible. It’s fun, it’s not so complicated that people aren’t going to get it.”
Sacchetto’s Cape Fear - Power Struggle graphic novel and its companion piece comic book (which both include self-contained stories) are available at The Gory Hole and Bay Used Books.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
