The old chestnut about writing what you know might seem inapplicable to genres featuring zombies or superheroes, but comics creator Tim Seeley has found success by pairing his soaring imagination with a grounded reality. Two of his most acclaimed creations, Revival and Local Man, are fantastical series set in small Wisconsin towns. The 47-year-old writer-artist lives in Portage Park but hails from Ringle, a village of 1,700 in the center of the Dairy State. There he grew up on a diet of Marvel and Archie comics, plus his dad’s VHS collection of B movies. “Anything with boobs, laser guns, and swords, I saw it when I was a kid,” he says.

Both titles mark milestones this fall. Created with Chicagoan Mike Norton, the Wausau-set Revival is a horror-mystery series about a detective who teams up with her undead sister to solve her murder amid a larger resurrection. It ended its well-received four-year run in 2017, but Image Comics will release a compendium of the series ahead of a TV adaptation set to premiere on Syfy next year. Meanwhile, a third collected volume from Seeley’s current Image title — Local Man, created with Tony Fleecs — will soon hit bookstores. That series follows a washed-up superhero’s bumpy return to his hometown.

Seeley’s critical praise — including a nomination for Local Man as best new series at this year’s Eisner Awards, the Pulitzers of comics — comes in part from his ability to imbue an outrageous sci-fi story with keenly observed real-life details. “I grew up in Wisconsin among union Democrats. When jobs disappeared, instead of getting mad at the corporations and politicians, they tended to get mad at city people and immigrants.” That became a through line of Local Man. “Using superhero tropes is just a metaphor to examine who becomes the villains.”

The Revival compendium comes out October 8, and the third volume of Local Man on November 26.