Author: Gabriel Nibb
In a joint effort between publishers DSTLRY and Dark Horse, many of today’s best horror writers and artists gathered at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 for a panel discussion on “The Future of Horror Comics.”
organizer Bryce Gold DSTLRY Team Member tule lotay (sleep), Becky Cloonan (sleep), James Tynion IV (spectrometer), Scott Snyder (book of evil), and David Dastmazian (Earl Crawley) The entire afternoon was spent discussing their project with a very enthusiastic audience.
Gold first congratulated Lotay and Cloonan on their Eisner win for their joint DSTLRY series sleep Winner of the Dark Horse Anthology Award for Best New Drama and Cloonan’s “Squawk” Four people gathered together on Christmas Eve Winner of the Best Short Story Award.
Gold then announced a new one-off horror anthology for DSTLRY come to mecurated by Cloonan, features “all her favorite artists,” including EM Carroll, Molly Mendoza, Celine Lupuand hamlet machine.
Gold asked Cloonan to discuss some elements sleep. Cloonan said she conducted extensive research into writings from the 1700s and created the story around them. She also detailed her working relationship with Lotay while creating the series: Cloonan drew the “real world” sequences, while Lotay drew the dream sequences.
The group then turned to Dastmalchian’s Earl Crawley, published by Dark Horse Comics. The main character is based on an idea Dastmalchian came up with while watching a horror show when he was 12 years old cremation death Airing on TV41 in Kansas City. He liked the idea of TV horror hosts fighting real monsters and kept thinking about the idea…until he saw the 1985 movie horror nightwhich deals with similar ideas.
Dathmazian put his story on hold. (Thinking about it now, I wonder if the world Earl Crawley exists in the following characters Spend the night with the devil, a Dasmalchian vehicle that recently debuted on Shudder). He revived the idea a few years ago and has been working with artists Lucas Kertner (“this Bernie Wrightson of our time”) has been following this series since then.
The next highlighted item is DSTLRY’s book of evil from Scott Snyder and athlete About a world full of psychopaths and sociopaths. Snyder came up with the idea while trying to escape the horror, only to find that “psychopaths kept creeping into everything.” Many stories and created worlds ask the question: “Is empathy a vestigial limb?”
Schneider focuses the story on a group of children who have yet to be identified as “normal” or psycho/antisocial, describing the story as having a feeling stand beside me But exist in a world that celebrates bad behavior.
Snyder also wrote DSTLRY white shipby drawing Francisco Francavilla, about the “crazy elite” deciding the future of artificially evolved mankind. He described his inspiration as coming from HG Wells island of dr moreau With a strong Lovecraftian feel.
In November, Schneider and Jock will join forces again to launch the new DSTLRY series you won’t feel anything. Snyder describes it as an autobiographical psychological killer. It tells the story of a man who investigates a murderer years before the onset of dementia praecox. He is now in a nursing home. However, the first murder he investigated reappears in his life, and he realizes the killer may have never disappeared.
Snyder describes the autobiographical nature as having to do with the demands of writing, which kept him busy and away from his family, and the resulting internal conflicts he was dealing with.
Last but not least, the panellist turned out to be Tynion, who was eager to discuss his series spectrometer (Art by Christian Ward and letters Aditya Bidhikar). This “Ghost House” story is about a man who spends his life trying to prove that ghosts exist…and once he discovers that ghosts don’t exist, he tries to find a way to make them exist. The show focuses on a real estate agent trying to sell a property quickly and everything that comes with it.
After each group member finished talking about their work, Gold began asking questions. The first question is how much of the human element the creators think they should focus on. Tynion said he started on a human level to create the necessary tension for the scene.
The next question is about the “line” between thematic interest and the weirdness of a horror story. Cloonan said she found it best to leave things to the reader’s imagination.
Another question is about recent movies that may have influenced the creators. Dasmalchian said he was impressed by several films, e.g. when evil lurks and connectingtogether with works Jordan Peele and Ali aster. Tynion said it was difficult to pinpoint anything, but he appreciated “overnight horrors” such as M3GAN and the latest Abigail.
Lotay added that she is happy about the presence of more female directors in horror films, e.g. remains, Saint Maudand (her favorite from the UK) review. Tynion threw out his last option: I saw the TV glow.
The final question is about early horror comics that may have inspired some of the works discussed in the panel. Dathmazian immediately jumped in werewolf night and Tomb of Dracula. Cloonan recommended comics blood stains on railroad tracks go through Oshima Shuzo (In her words, “It’s so fucked up”). Finally, on a superior level of circular reasoning, Lotay was influenced by a dream-centered approach. Home go through Otomo Katsuhiro.
Stay tuned for more coverage from SDCC ’24 beat.
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