Deadman is a supernatural comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 series written by Bruce Jones

Bruce Jones (comics)

Bruce Jones, whose pen names include Philip Roland and Bruce Elliot, is an American comic book writer, novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter whose work included writing Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk from 2001-2005.-Early career:...

 and published by the Vertigo imprint

Imprint

In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...

 of DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

. The series was very loosely based on the DC superhero character Deadman

Deadman

Deadman is a fictional character, a comic book superhero in the DC Comics universe. He first appeared in Strange Adventures #205 , and was created by Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino.-Publication history:...

, although the similarities between the properties are few. The series lasted for 13 issues.

Plot

Airline pilot Brandon Cayce is killed when a plane he is on crashes. However, Cayce utterly refuses to pass on into death, and resurrects to a sort of half-life, but finds himself experiencing visions of what seem to be other realities and timelines. He meets with Sarah, his former lover and also the pregnant widow of his brother Scott, and tells her that they are being pursued by men who wish to gain possession of her unborn child. Brandon discovers that his brother had been possessed by an entity named "Devlin" while the child was being conceived, and Devlin has abducted the fetus and implanted it in the body of another woman, named Eve. Devlin's agents imprison Eve while waiting for her newfound pregnancy to come to term. Eventually, Eve gives birth to a being Devlin claims is the next step in human evolution, which will be the first human with a complete awareness of other dimensions. After giving birth, Eve is killed by her husband, although Sarah shows up and absconds with what had formerly been her baby. Attempting to reacquire the child, Devlin proposes a bargain to Brandon: take the life of the baby, in exchange for the continued lives of Brandon and Sarah. If Brandon refuses this deal, he will die. Nobly, Brandon chooses death to allow Sarah and the child to live free.

Collected editions

Only the first five issues have been released in trade paperback, under the title Deadman: Deadman Walking (ISBN 1-40121-236-0).