Acclaimed comic creator and screenwriter Rodney Barnes is not shy to wear his pop culture influences on his storytelling sleeve, but one of the inspirations behind his hit horror comic Killadelphia is surprising: the Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton.

Killadelphia features John Adams and his wife Abigail rising up as vampires to menace modern-day Philadelphia as they seek to reshape America to match their visions for the country. According to Barnes, the two characters' major roles were inspired by Adams being something of a running joke in Lin-Manuel Miranda's enormously successful musical.

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"It started with the play Hamilton! I've seen Hamilton a lot and it struck me every time they made fun of John Adams. If John Adams was in audience, how would Johns Adam feel about being made fun of a couple hundred years later?" Barnes told CBR. "Even though he's a Founding Father, he isn't sort of canonized like the other characters from that period. I won't say he's forgotten, he had his own [HBO] miniseries, but he isn't celebrated the same way George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are."

With Hamilton focused on how the Founding Fathers sought to shape and leave their legacy on the United States, Adams largely cast to the side. With Killadelphia's depiction of the character determined to achieve in unlife what he felt eluded him while he was a mortal man centuries ago, Barnes felt the mix of wounded ego and revolutionary perspective made John Adams the prime candidate to bring back as a vampire for his and Jason Shawn Alexander's Image Comics series.

"He felt like a sort of unique character to place there and finding a human a flaw — of course, I don't know if John really felt this way — but being able to explore [him thinking] 'What if I didn't make the mark I intended to? What if I had the opportunity and perspective to look back, because I'm immortal now, to see how America views me? And if I had the opportunity to make America great again — for lack of a better term — how would I go about doing it?'" Barnes explained. "I wanted someone who had been there at the beginning to be able to speak directly to what was happening right now and be able to give voice to that perspective; John Adams fit!"

Written by Rodney Barnes and illustrated by Jason Shawn Alexander, Killadelphia Vol. 2 comes out on March 31 from Image Comics. A television adaptation of the series is currently in development.

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