It’s getting to be that time of year again…October has arrived, fall is in th air, and that means…CHRISTMAS SEASON!
Naw, just foolin’. Although if you spend any time at big dumb department stores, you probably think it’s about December 24, what with all the holiday crap already flooding the aisles.
Let us not forget that there’s a little something called HALLOWEEN coming before Santa even thinks about hopping on a sleigh. A night for ghouls, goblins, and things that go bump, then stab you through your eye socket repeatedly.
Studio 407 is a new publisher with a slate of horror-tinged books coming out throughout the fall. Night & Fog is just one of them, and we’ll be featuring them all over the next couple months. Here, editor Chad Jones and co-writers Alex Leung and Matt Bradford fill us in on their “monster mash-up.”
In 50 words or less, what’s the gist of your project? Linked to a terrible secret from the past, an accident in a government lab turns a nearby village’s inhabitants into creatures that seem impossible to kill. A small group of survivors must hold out for the night until a special rescue team can arrive and save them from these unstoppable monsters that have not only been made real, but also made to perfection.
Who’s your lead character, and what’s his/her take on the world? Lt. Christopher is the lead character, who is a man with a singular mind and driven with “getting the job done” at all costs. He is not the kind of person that subscribes to ideas such as “fate,” and believes people should take responsibility for their actions and the consequences that result from them. Christopher is a single father loyal to two masters: the US military and his children. He’s determined not only to uphold his sworn military duty to protect the base’s deadly secret, but also to save his children, who are stuck in the heart of the spreading terror.
How did this concept develop? What was the original germ of the idea? This developed from wanting to do a story like Aliens that mixed horror and hard core action. The germ of the idea was doing a modern take on the four classic/gothic horror stories: Dracula, Frankenstien, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Invisibile Man, and doing a monster mash but with only one monster.
More of a “monster mash-up!” Four-in-one. Just as the heroes figure out how to deal with one breed of monster (through some sort of scientific means that reflects the classic means of slaying that creature), their enemy mutates into the next.
What are your major creative influences, both within comics and otherwise? From Alex Leung, co-writer: I have a lot of influnces both comics wise and literary, so it really depends on the particular story or genre I’m working in. For Night and Fog, without a doubt it was the classic Eerie and Creepy comics of the 70’s, Stephen King, Hammer horror films and without a doubt the classic John Carpenter films of the 70’s and 80’s.
From Matt Bradford, co-writer: My biggest influences on Night & Fog were the 60s and 70s Hammer movie incarnations of the classic monsters we’re reinventing. I listened to James Bernard Hammer soundtracks constantly while writing. I loved the idea of blending them into an Aliens brand of modern sci-fi action, but there’s a lot of Jurassic Park in there too. The book is a classic, and the movie stands up so well fifteen years later! That was a big influence both on the tone of the story and on the somewhat believable, pseudo-scientific explanations we came up with for these creatures.
From a visual perspective, what can readers expect from this project? This has a slightly retro-horror look to it, like the classic Bernie Wrigtson horror books, which is why we chose Roberto Castro to work with us. We also specifically went for a 70’s horror feel that you saw in a lot of the classic Marvel horror of the 70’s and the Eerie and Creepy books. Put it together with the JM “the prince of darkness” Ringuet’s atmospheric digital painting, and I think you have a look that successfully blends both past and present styles and fits the story perfectly.
Wrap this up with your most hardcore, intense, precise pitch. Why should we buy your comic??? If you love classic monsters, and want to be terrified anew by them, this is the book for you. The action is intense, the bodycount is high, and horror doesn’t let up. Just as the characters think they know how to slay one breed of creature, it evolves into another more terrifying one. Utter dread sets in as they realize there may be no way to defeat these things…
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Interesting.
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