Stephen Graham Jones, a bestselling horror author who has written incredible novels like The Only Good Indians and My Heart Is a Chainsaw, is back, and this time he’s part of something new. True Believers is Jones’ first comic, and he co-wrote it alongside Joshua Viola. The artist, Ben Matsuya, is known for his colorful, high-energy drawings, and recently published Midnight Massacre alongside his brother John.
Introducing People to Horror Films/Books | Stephen Graham Jones Interview
Jones and io9 were able to get on the phone to talk about True Believers, now in its final days of crowdfunding on Kickstarter.
Linda Codega, io9: What was the co-writing process like?
Stephen Graham Jones: It was really good. Josh came to me and he said, “Would you do a slasher comic for this convention?” I said, “Sure.” And he kind of gave me free rein. So I sent in a rough outline–I never really outline very well, but I was like, somebody appears, they kill a lot of people, and then there’s a big fight at the end.
io9: What was it like working alongside a visual artist to have that additional storytelling impact?
Jones: It was great. I mean, number one, it was Ben Matsuya, who is an amazing one-stop artist. He does pencils, ink colors, lettering, he does everything. And scripting for him was really fun too. I’m used to writing comic scripts panel by panel, but Ben works really well if you just tell him page by page what needs to happen, who needs to say what and what the captions are, and he makes it all fit with these dynamic layouts that just slide your eyes and your heart across the page. It’s really wonderful.
One of the essential things was designing the killer, “KILLR.” And that was, I would say, mostly Josh and Ben working together. But Josh has a really good visual sense. And of course, Ben does. Me not so much; they would send me stuff for approval and I’d say, “Wow, that’s cool, that’s cool. This is all very cool.”
io9: Matsuya has a very dynamic, neon-drenched visual style. Did you do anything to write in a way that would specifically support that style?
Jones: Once we had the KILLR look down I could kind of tell how the story was going to radiate out from KILLR. You know, KILLR is not in any sense a denizen of a cyberpunk world. Yet they do kind of have that look; the tall boots, tight clothes, cloak, goggles, mask, all that stuff. They look like someone who could have jumped out of your floppy drive disk on your desk and cut your throat. I probably wasn’t writing specifically for that neon-saturated world, but I was trying to write towards a sensibility that had produced that look of KILLR.
Image: Hex Publishers | Ben Matsuya
io9: This is a book that has a very meta bent. Can you tell me how True Believers specifically relates to the Colorado Horror Festival?
Jones: The comic was initially going to be a festival exclusive. What we’re handing out at the Colorado Festival of Horror is a sample of what the final product is going to be, but it’s not complete. We have not finished the back half of the comic book yet. Josh has taken the reins in the back half of the comic book, which is really cool. It makes it an actual co-writing project. He was the editor for my writing in the first part and then on the back half, I feel like I’m playing editor and he’s more of a writer. And it’s a good gear shift, a good change, I think.
As for how it is specific to the Colorado Festival of Horror, I was working off a lot of videos and photos of this specific hotel the convention happens in. So I knew what spaces I could use and how you could get from here to there. We’re already working on a sequel, so that’s been helping with the sequel, though, as well. And as for any other meta aspects, I feel like we live in a meta world, you know? Like, if I see a dead person walking down the street, I’m not going to say, “What is that?”, I’m going to say “That’s a zombie,” because I’ve been watching zombie movies for 30 years. So when people are doing meta horror, they’re situating horror in the real world. And that’s how you make horror scary, by placing it in the world in which people live. We live in a world in which we know all the references.
It’s kind of like the reader falls off a seven-story building and they fall through awning after awning, which is each meta-level of the story. It’s like a chaotic, nested reality kind of story. And then when you fall through that final awning and smash out onto the concrete, I’m not sure that concrete is the real world either, you know?
io9: Like the nested realities of horror is that we just keep trying to make all these connections to the horror references we know.
Jones: Yeah. And Ben was able to do some of that as well. It’s not all in the script, and some of the crowd scenes Ben will draw in a hockey mask or a Freddy hat, that kind of stuff.
Image: Hex Publishers | Ben Matsuya
io9: Do you have a favorite movie reference you like to wink at in your work?
Jones: Scream is my go-to slasher that I’m always referencing. It’s my favorite. And on the final page of True Believers there’s the same kind of unmasking/reveal as in Scream, where I hope that readers go “I should have seen this all along,” and “I’m super surprised.” That’s what I’m always going for.
io9: There’s something really fascinating about horror because everyday people are typically encouraged to be the hero and detective.
Jones: Not just encouraged. If they don’t, then they become part of the victim pool. They have no choice but to try to solve this mystery. And it’s all built on the back of Agatha Christie’s closed door mysteries. I think the parlor mysteries where we get 10 people and one dead body, a whodunit, and then we have to figure out who did it before everyone gets killed and dies—it’s basically a slasher.
io9: Do you have a favorite panel or page where you think everything—art, story, dialog—just works perfectly?
Jones: Ben accepts a lot of detail and direction in stride. There’s a couple of crowd scenes where there’s a slow chase through a mass of people in the lobby or the merch floor of this convention. And Ben is able to not only slip in a hockey mask, but he’s able to capture the character of the convention crowd in a way that makes people who aren’t there recognize it all the same. Because we’ve all been in conventions. We know we know how it works. We know who’s there. He’s got a real eye for that.
Probably my favorite little panel actually feels kind of self-serving or narcissistic to admit, but Josh and I get drawn beside each other at a table in here, and that was kind of neat to be there.
io9: What convention would be best equipped to survive a slasher film if there was a slasher like KILLR on the loose?
Jones: Oh, that’s a good question. I’ve never been there, but I see pictures and I hear reports and I would say Texas Frightmare. I feel like that crowd is going to be ready if a serial killer was on the run. Like, those guys are fine. Don’t worry about it, they’re ready.
True Believers is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter.
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