Monique Motil, costumer designer/artist
Sympathetic
Monsters
conversations with writers, artists, and musicians about
horror
By Sam Costello
The interviews in this collection originally appeared online at www.darkbutshining.com (now defunct), with the exception of the Monique Motil interview, which has not before been published in this form.
The interviews are © 2003, 2006, 2007 Sam Costello
Cover photo © istockphoto.com/123render
Sympathetic Monsters
Copyright Sam Costello 2011
Smashwords Edition
From 2005 to 2007,
nearly the entirety of its lifespan, I wrote for one of the early
group horror blogs, Dark But Shining (once located at
www.darkbutshining.com, but long since passed on to the happy
hunting grounds). In that time, about nine regular bloggers—and
numerous guests—produced nearly 1,000 posts. Included among them
were these six interviews, interviews with some of the most
interesting writers, thinkers, artists, and musicians working in
horror then and now.
While some of the works that they mention are no longer current, their thoughts on fear—that oldest and strongest emotion of mankind, according to Lovecraft—still resonate for anyone interested in the darker side of art.
—Sam Costello
Bernie Wrightson is one of the world’s greatest living horror comics artists, and almost unquestionably the greatest living horror artist in Western comics. Despite a career built on beautifully detailed depictions of monsters, madmen, and terror, he is also friendly and, well, just a really nice guy.
Wrightson, who is perhaps best known by many comics fans for his work with Len Wein on Swamp Thing or his stints working on shorts for the Warren Publishing titles Creepy and Eerie, took an extended break from comics work, spending his time on commercial and movie work.
He returned to comics in 2007, though, drawing the series City of Others, written by reigning horror champ Steve Niles and published by Dark Horse Comics. Since then he’s also drawn Dead, She Said (also written by Niles, but published by IDW) and announced plans to return to Frankenstein’s monster with Frankenstein Alive, Alive (again teaming with Niles and IDW).
This interview took place after the first issue of City of Others—about the world’s most perfect killer and his stumbling onto a much darker, more monster-filled world than he imagined existed— had been released, but before the second.
I called Wrightson at his studio in California.
Costello: How did working with Steve Niles come about?
Wrightson: Working with Steve Niles is an absolute dream. I have never had a creative partner like him before. This is just wonderful. We get together and talk about stories and plotting issues and things. It’s really like we’re sharing a brain.
The inversion of the man with two brains! What’s so different about this relationship? Is it that you guys are on the same wavelength, or is it something different about how you’re collaborating?
Steve has absolutely no ego. There’s no problem with him about letting me write, which I’ve never really had before. It’s always been a case of, I’m the artist, the writer is the writer, and we never crossed the line. With Steve it’s just total give and take. I’m having a hell of a time. It’s terrific.
How much writing are you doing on this series?
I don’t know if you could really quantify it. We’ll talk about an issue and Steve will make a lot of notes. Then he gives me a script. Then I thumbnail the script; I just do a lot of rewriting and maybe changing, maybe adding some things or taking some things out, and I give it back to Steve and then he rewrites that. Then I get that back and I rewrite it again. It just goes back and forth until we’re both happy with it.
I saw a video on YouTube that seemed to indicate that you and Niles co-created City of Others, or at least the story. Is that process unusual for you in working with other writers?
Yeah. Usually I’ve been approached by someone else. Someone sends me a script or a synopsis or something like that. I’ll take something on if it’s something I really want to do. There’s never been that kind of creative crossover before. I have written a few things myself. In terms of working with a writer, I’ve never had it this good before.
You haven’t done a lot of comics work in recent years. Why not?
I kind of put comics on the backburner for a few years and got into commercial work and movie work and a little of this and a little of that. I can’t really keep track of it anymore. It all kind of runs together, just jumping from one job to the next. I just kind of forgot about comics for a while, and then I met Steve. We share a love of horror movies and horror comics and monsters and all that great stuff.
And it was that shared love that got the comic juices flowing again?
Absolutely, yeah.
Given that you’ve been away from comics, did you have to stretch some creative muscles that you haven’t used in a while to do this project?
For sure, yeah. You know, the first issue of City of Others, I’m very proud of it. I just finished the third issue and am getting started on the fourth and it’s getting better and better and better. It’s like a piece of rusty machinery that’s getting oil poured on it. It’s chugging along so much more smoothly now. It’s going to start looking a lot better starting with issue 2.
Why shoot from pencils [the pencil art in City of Others wasn’t finished with ink, as is traditional in comics]? What was behind that decision?
That’s more of a practical consideration than anything else. Inking just takes too long. If I were doing this the standard way, we might be putting out like two issues a year. It takes too long to do it that way. I think it looks really good being done from the pencils.
Do you have a preference working in color or black and white in comics?
(In the art process) there’s penciling, then there’s inking, then there’s color. By the time I get to color, I’ve been living with that job for so long, I don’t even want to think about it anymore. And I would just rather do it all in black and white and make it as good as I can in black and white and then turn it over to a good colorist and just not even talk to him. Just let him go crazy creatively with what I’ve done. That’s how it’s going with Jose [Villarrubia] on this book. And God, I just couldn’t be happier—the guy is amazing!
Do you see a strength or weakness in having color in horror comics as opposed to doing just black and white?
I grew up on EC comics and they were full color. Then I fell in love with Creepy and Eerie and they were black and white. To me there was really no difference. It’s two different approaches to telling a story.
What do you make of the development of graphic novels? That’s certainly a big change in the industry from when you broke in.
I don’t really have an opinion about that. My days are usually so full that I don’t really have time to read any comics. Since I started working professionally, I’m not much of a comics reader anymore anyway. I’m too busy doing them to follow them. In recent years, with the graphic novels and the collections, I usually won’t see a miniseries until it’s all done and has been collected in bound volumes. I didn’t even know about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen until I saw the big two volume set!
Does the process of being in the industry, going from reader and fan to pro, take any of the magic of comics away? You know how it’s put together now, so it’s not as exciting somehow?
Not really, no. My feeling has always been—and it certainly is about City of Others—I’m drawing the kind of comic that I would like to read. I don’t think I’m really any different than any other comic book reader. I kind of feel that if it’s a comic book I’d like to read, there will be lots of other people who want to read it, too.
Do you envision doing more comics work after City of Others wraps up?
I don’t really know. I don’t really like looking that far ahead. As far as we’re concerned with City of Others, we’re going to do this as an ongoing thing. There’s really no end in sight. I think word’s gotten out that it’s a 4-issue or 6-issue miniseries or something. I don’t know where that started. That’s not really the case. We’re just going to keep going with this until we run dry or don’t want to do it anymore.
I was under the impression that it was a limited series as well, but that’s great to hear.
We’re going to try to keep tying up loose ends as we go. Steve and I, neither one of us wants to keep stringing the reader along indefinitely. We are very conscious of where the story is going and what we want to do with it.
You did some work on Land of the Dead with George Romero?
Yeah, I did some zombie designs.
What was that like?
You know, I didn’t really work directly with George. I did that with [special effects legends] KNB. I worked very closely with Greg Nicotero. He’s a good friend of mine and no matter how busy I am I will almost always drop everything for the opportunity to work with him.
To wrap up, have you seen any great horror movies or read any great horror novels recently that people might want to check out?
I just finished Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. It’s one of the best ghost stories I’ve ever read. I really enjoyed that. I was more than halfway through it before the news broke that he was Stephen King’s son. Not that that makes any difference. He’s a hell of a writer on his own. I’m about 3/4 of the way through World War Z by Max Brooks. That’s another terrific book. I recommend it.
Unless you were a true die-hard horror comics fan, willing to scrounge for any slim pickings throughout the horror-deprived 1990s, you can probably thank Steve Niles for the American horror comics you’re reading today. It was Niles, along with his artistic collaborator, Ben Templesmith, who started the current, decade-plus North American boom in horror comics with their vampires-in-the-Arctic (where’s it’s night for a full month, of course) story 30 Days of Night.
From that sleeper hit came a torrent of horror titles like Remains, the Cal McDonald series, Freaks of the Heartland, and many more, from publishers like IDW and Dark Horse. Niles has even gotten to try his hand at more established, less overtly horrific characters like Batman, in Gotham County Line.
I interviewed Niles via email on his thoughts on modern horror, his favorite horror comics, and what scared him as a child.
Costello: I think it’s fair to credit you as the guy, along with Ben Templesmith, who really kicked off the current boom in horror comics with 30 Days of Night. When that book was coming to the market in 2000/2001, did you see this boom coming? Did you feel that horror comics were about to come back in a big way?