Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Blood & Gourd, David Shultis, kickstarter, Olympia WA, Pumpkins, Samhain

Blood And Gourd – The Pumpkins Are Taking Over

Published Sun, 27 Oct 2013 15:00:05 -0500

Jenz Lund writes for Bleeding Cool:

Rats! We'll never get this thing finished. It's a stupid concept anyway. Pumpkins taking over Olympia, WA? Are you 5? You're in your 30s. You're trying to make a name for yourself as a psychotherapist. You're soaked in student loan debt, struggling to pay rent, and this is a priority?

The more we fought it the more we kept coming back to yes. Heck yes! Blood and Gourd is the priority.

These monsters are new. The characters have become real to us. They want to survive the story. We want some of them to die. We want others to live; yet their fates seem out of our hands. The story has taken us over.

We had created something out of our enthusiasm for horror, and the cultural salmon chowder that is Olympia, WA.

We asked ourselves a ton of questions along the way: How would contemporary society really handle a monster attack? How would corporations and governments work to avoid liability? What would the barista do? What about the smarmy hipster and the organic farmer? What would a crew of obnoxious skater punks do if their suburban joy ride turned wild and deadly? What about a team of roller-derby girls, and that right-wing psycho down the road who's dreamed about this happening all of his life? How the hell would they get along? Would they cooperate long enough to stop perpetual Samhain from happening? They probably wouldn't. Blood & Gourd doesn't really care if they do; but it promises the reader will have fun while they try.

Contemporary horror can be great. Unfortunately, most of it reminds us of corporate music videos, soap -operas, and cynical reboots of movies too good to be 'reimagined' by studio hacks. Everything on offer looks stale. The colors are all bleached out. The whole landscape looks pale and common. Of course zombies are popular; we've all been made into them. We've criticized this stuff for so long, yet what have we really done to challenge it? These points had been argued back and forth on Two Headed Podcast, a show Jenz does with a long-time friend, for years now. You think back on Creepshow, the Halloween films, vintage Tales from the Crypt comics, Susperia! These things were so colorful it made your eyes hurt. They were also creepy, weird, and fun! Remember fun?

We dared ourselves to do better than the blandness on offer. Now, we have put ourselves and our work out there on Kickstarter. We wrote an awesome script. We've collaborated with artists and invited them to bring our characters to life. We've stopped criticizing, who has time for that? We want to add to the shelf.

For three years we poured our love for horror movies into this beast, remembering what we loved about The Return of the Living Dead, Gremlins, Frank Miller's Batman, Troma flicks, Night of the Creeps, Reanimator, etc. These are the movies that still get us into excited conversations.

We've crafted our own thriller-chiller that grabs you by the first scene and takes you on a crazy ride. One that we hope sticks with you forever. You're not supposed to read it. We weren't supposed to write it.

We want to put the guilty fun back into horror. We are also trying to capture the essence of classic EC Comics, Steve Ditko's Spiderman, Garbage Pail Kids, and Mars Attacks trading cards. We've made something that any self-respecting 7 year old will want to hide from their mother.

Go on, fund us. See what else we've got. To commemorate the Bleeding Cool community's backing, we're adding a limited funding level: $40 with the reward of a signed copy and a Blood & Gourd logo t-shirt!