I, Tyrant Volume 1

To escape deportation, an Iranian playwright makes a dark bargain—reviving a 1,500-year-old tyrant eager to rule again, this time in America.There’s never been a right to return for a tyrant like Zahhak—only wander, madness, rot… But for a fleeting chance in fifteen centuries, amid the doom and decrees… the unburied and deformed ex-tyrant who once led the armies of Persepolis and slew the grandson of Xerxes has found an exodus. His name is Hafez Bashee—a rookie Iranian college playwright who earned a fatwa on his head for bringing Zahhak to the stage in Tehran. The fatwa made Hafez an asylee in the United States. But good things are short-lived—now he’s on ICE’s removal docket. If he is deported, he’s dead. Standing between ICE and Iran’s noose, a non-zero pact is whispered. The tyrant gets his resurrection—a shot to walk among America’s comic-book gods—and Hafez gets the devil’s protection. It’ll be the beginning of the end for things Hafez holds dear, and the start of Zahhak’s American reign. Collects I, TYRANT #1-5