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THE HORRORS OF IT ALL: Interview with Matthew Maxwell
Over at the Horrors of It All, Karswell finishes off the dual (duel?) interview between him and myself, the first part of which ran last week over here. I'm pretty sure I don't try and shill my own work, either (as he does a nice enough job of it.)
How did you get tangled up in horror, as opposed to more traditional
comics fare? Was it a childhood thing or something you came back to?
Definitely a childhood thing. My earliest comics as a budding collector were the pre-code Atlas reprints from silver age era Marvel: Crypt of Shadows, Vault of Evil, that sort of stuff. I remember first finding coverless issues in a box at an antique store while spending the summer with my grandmother, sometime early 70’s. I was 5 or 6 and like most kids of that time had already been enjoying the fruits of Night Gallery and the late late horror show on television. I definitely knew I preferred the scary stuff over all else, so finding these creepy comics was a revelation, mostly because up till then all I knew about illustrated comic adventures was Sunday funnies and stuff from Disney or Harvey. I mean, to see a screaming girl get pulled into a grave by a zombie, or a vicious werewolf attacking in four color was just mind blowing… and suddenly around the same time I remember noticing Ghost Rider, Son of Satan, Tomb of Dracula, all of the great silver age supernatural stuff from that era Marvel, (let’s not forget Famous Monsters magazine) it was just a cool time to be a kid. Even the cartoons on TV were going for more horror oriented themes.
To answer the second part of your question, I’ve never given up on horror or had to “come back to it”, it’s just something I was immediately attracted to and have always embraced. And there’s still so much quality stuff out there to discover, especially in this modern age of dull, uninspired rip-off horror I find the terrors that speak to me most came from the eras before mine, from the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s (though I do love a lot of 70’s horror and some 80s too.)
I am actually still very much entangled in traditional comics, if in “traditional” you mean the more mainstream Marvel / DC hero stuff, I just don’t post about them at The Horrors of it All.
First horror-related memory?
Discovering The Creature from the Black Lagoon on television one afternoon in ‘74. I remember my mother was folding clothes and watching one of her soaps when the phone rang. She got up to answer it and as she left the room I (as usual) got up to change the channel to cartoons. But I remember hitting Channel 11 and instead of Popeye I got a face full of Gillman swimming towards me. There are foggy vaults in my memory from that time, kindergarten for example is very blurry, but there are other moments that are crystal clear and so sharply in focus in my head they could have happened yesterday. My father’s death when I was five is one, and seeing The Creature swimming under Julie Adams in the lagoon is another… that stuff is just etched in my mind forever, and it’s still my favorite film of all time. When my uncle realized I was getting into monsters he gave me some fully assembled and painted Aurora model kits, Dracula and the Creature… that really sealed it for me too. I actually have a photo of me and my sister on Halloween ’74; I’m dressed as some weird Ben Cooper rip-off called The Creature People or something. I completely remember that I couldn’t get enough of The Creech. Still can’t.
Are horror comics scary or engaging in a way that’s different from movies or books? I always found that the reader’s ability to control time in comics made them a totally different experience, and often not as immersive or frightening as horror movies at their best.
Yeah, horror movies require a bit more work than comics for me, particularly these days if I’m trying to wrestle the TV away from my son for just an hour or two to watch something that I want to watch, ha. But actually horror comics in their own way have always been a bit more engaging for me than books (maybe not so much with movies.) I guess because still to this day I can’t go to sleep at night unless I’m laying in bed and reading a comic. Something about the freedom and quality of “alone time” when you’re a kid, late at night, the whole “under the covers with a flashlight” escape. I very rarely felt that with a book, even when reading Robert E. Howard or Lovecraft. Possibly kids feel that more nowadays with something like Harry Potter, I don’t know. I mean, I can fall asleep watching a movie or reading a book but it’s not the same. But I’d say that horror movies are more like comics as everything is already created and there for you, you’re possibly using less of your own imagination as you would with a text heavy book of fiction, but still, many of those really great comic artists from the 50’s like Matt Fox, Basil Wolverton, Jack Kirby, and especially Bill Everett could paint horrors that not even your wildest imagination could conjure up. I do remember being absolutely terrified by some stories as a kid, some I would read once and have to put away in a drawer, or just hide some place in my room far enough away from my bed so the evil wouldn’t seep out and get me in my sleep. It’s a fun feeling though, no matter how nightmare inducing. The thrill ride, alt-sense of danger and adventure.
I’ve often thought of superhero comics as literature of the imagination, where anything goes, no matter how big or crazy it gets. The more I look at pre-code horror, the more I get that feeling is at work there as well. No monster was too out there, too crazy not to be put to work. Is that part of the appeal of the pre-code stuff?
Definitely. If heroes were the squeaky clean mainstream pop stars of the golden age, then pre-code horror was the scruffy devil punker kid from across the tracks that your parents loathed. There’s such a weird contrasting sense of repression in those comics from the 50’s which comes off even more startling when you read one with a particularly gory decapitation or eye injury panel. The sick and twisted eclipsing the average 50’s Joe because suddenly he's dismembering his Harriet Nelson-esque wife with a meat cleaver. These kitschy “normal” visions of an era steeped in “gee willickers pops” meets bodies half dissolved in a disintegration booth, supper time aprons and white picket fences with bloody severed heads on the gate posts, gorgeous gals with headlights on high… it’s what’s so appealing about it all, sort of like Leatherface suddenly showing up on a My Three Sons episode and letting it rip. And then of course there’s the whole infamous history with Wertham’s overblown knee jerk SOTI witch hunts, town square comic burnings, blacklisting, religious protests, all of this combined to accidently make something much more important than it ever set out to unintentionally be in the first place. Make it controversial, it helps sales and secures its notoriety and historic value.
Is there any modern stuff that captures your imagination as well? Or do the different sensibilities call for completely different responses?
There is very little modern horror that I find “capturing my imagination” these days, because for the most part the imagination part of modern horror seems to be completely removed, replaced instead by uninspired, derivative, throw-away crap. This doesn’t mean I ignore modern horror either, I still buy the new issue of Previews every month and keep up with movies via IMDb every week etc… there are of course excellent modern comic exceptions like Eric Powell’s The Goon series, or Steve Niles Cal McDonald... I’m not really sure what else to add without this sounding like the old fart down the street proclaiming “Movies/comics in my day were REAL movies/comics…” blah blah, sounds lame but the truth is there’s still so much great stuff from 60 or 70 years ago that I’m still discovering that I just prefer to really focus on that, since that’s the art style era (or filmmaking styles) that I like best. I do have 40 years of trial and error experience to back up this statement, ha.
What’s more important to the kinds of stories you feature, good art or good writing?
With THOIA both. But occasionally you find a well illustrated story that falls short in the story, and vice versa, of course a story that features both good writing and good story is probably already on my blog somewhere or will be as soon as I get my claws on it. Mostly if it gives me the willies then it’s a potential post candidate. I do tend to favor particular artists or publishers of course too which I won't hesitate to spotlight with multi-posts. THOIA is a fun diversion mostly because I work from home so I can take a break at some point during the day and work on a post. It keeps my days interesting and also keeps me digging around my long boxes and taking inventory of my collection. One year later and THOIA is almost like an online checklist now, for not only me but also my daily visitors.
Neave Television ...telly without context
Even if it's only a simulacra of flipping the UHF and VHF very late at night or very early in the morning.
As memed previously:
Seven songs for spring, 2008. I don't get out a lot, so don't expect to hear current music on this list.
It needs no explanation, no apology for being on this list.
Ah....Eno.
Too pure, too much, just right.
Warm spring to summer evening and the roll of the salt waves but the air above the sea is still.
City hot, asphalt going soft in the sun.
Springtime isn't always fun.
And there's no videos from Ulaan Kohl (aka Steven R. Smith), but here's a bit of a track, but not the standout from the eponymous album. Pity, as that desert soundscape has ruled my world for the last month, and will likely mark the entire year. Not for everyone, though. You've been warned.
Bonus track -
Not the right version, but it'll have to do.
Well, really "more review", but that doesn't sound quite right.
Horror Comics Review: Strangeways
MURDER MOON reviewed at Horror Comics Review. And hey, they liked it!
Five years. And it hasn’t gone out yet. But maybe it ought to. You’d think after five years of being driven absolutely nuts by The Way Things Are, I’d have gotten sick of pointing out what’s really as plain as the nose on Ben Grimm’s face.
You might be right.
It’s a long time to be doing anything for basically nothing other than the joy of seeing your name in print. Not that I should be making a dime off of this. I’m undisciplined and lazy when it comes to my critique. You, after all, are getting what you paid for, are you not? Dance, blogger, dance! Well, here I am doing the softshoe with my tin cup in hand, bellhop cap on my head.
I didn’t quite know where things were going to end up once I signed on to start Full Bleed back at Broken Frontier those years ago (blaeme Graeme if you must point a finger at anyone: he got me to write a fill-in column for him there after striking up an acquaintance by way of Millarworld.) Truth be told, I’m still not so very sure of where this is all going to end up. Back then, I had written a draft of a thing called Strangeways (that bears little resemblance to the book you read today, partially thanks to the original artist, partially thanks to Robert McKee, but that’s a long story.) I figured a column might be a good way to get my name out there.
Maybe it was. You have to understand, the comics blogosphere back then was, well, a different thing. No Heidi, no Tom, though Dirk was busting his butt on a daily basis when he wasn’t being Managing Editor of THE COMICS JOURNAL. There was a Blog-o-Tron 3000 that you could use to see updates on all, what, fifty blogs? If even that. There’s probably fifty blogs (including this one) that are being updated this very minute. Trying to figure out how many of them are worth a damn reading is an exercise best left to the reader. I’ve been winnowing lately. Must be the weather.
Those days were seeing the end of the Jemas era at Marvel, and like I suspected, all those guys who were whining about how terrible it was then all were in an uproar six months after saying “gee, wasn’t it great when Bill and Joe were in charge?” You remember the Epic revival? I sure do. Made my pitch even, though I never received a flat-out rejection, which I’ve been told by people who’d know, was a good thing. Yes, this and three dollars will get me a cup of coffee. Room for cream, please.
Hell, there wasn’t even an Identity Crisis then, just an oblique reference to an upcoming “Crisis” from Luthor in BATMAN/SUPERMAN (of which the first story arc is crammed with insane goodness that only superhero comics dare to deliver.) We knew what was coming, just not how crazed it would ultimately become (and hasn’t even ended yet, nor will it, no matter the protestations to the contrary.) I wonder how many dollars it would take to get The Whole Story if you rolled it all the way back to 1983 and Crisis on Infinite Earths, anyways?
How much has actually changed for me? Comics wise? I finally got my book done, my way, Sinatra-style and all. But that was a near thing. It’s like when you’re waiting for your child to speak and finally hearing “dada” and being overjoyed. The time between that and “when the hell are ya gonna shut up?” is pretty short. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
What that has changed is more subtle than you’d think. Not that all doors are opened for me now, being an anointed author and all that. But things are different now. They simply are. I’ve said what I needed to say. Perhaps more than once, since it feels like I’m repeating myself every time it comes to say something about comics. And I have. Let’s be honest now.
There’s other things to say.
To be sure, the jellied gasoline in my heart is still there, though I worked hard to keep it under wraps. Maybe too hard.
Not to worry. I’m not going anywhere. Well, I am. Just not away.
As it is, though, I've got some comics to make. Not earthshattering, not the best comics ever, not topping the charts, surely in need of an editor, but they're mine to make. Nobody else is going to.
And before my editor FREAKS THE HELL OUT, no Marc, I'm not quitting. You'll get something by Monday next.
Maybe.
Blog: Fringe Benefits: Strangeways
Michael May gives a nice review to STRANGEWAYS: MURDER MOON. Give it a read over at their new and revamped site, why don't you?
Wherein I travel to Los Angeles and do battle with Book Expo America. And have sushi with a secret cabal of bloggers who will use their influence to direct discussion of the blogosphere and make SEAGUY 2 the breakout hit of whatever year it gets published in.