Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: Donny Cates, Flood, image comics, Megan Hutchison-Cates, substack

Donny Cates Talks Flood Plans With Megan Hutchison-Cates

Published Mon, 06 Sep 2021 11:27:11 -0500

As part of his Substack, Donny Cates has been talking to wife-and-fellow-comics-creator Megan Hutchison-Cates about their new project, Flood. as well as a look at the Substack exclusive variant cover for Flood #1.

Donny Cates: FLOOD began life as a thought experiment for me. I wanted to write about the things I was afraid of. My thoughts immediately went to the intangible idea of being alone. Having no one in the entire world. And then….my very real and tangible fear of the ocean, and the chthonic nightmares that very surely live within its inky and unexplored nethers. In a very literal answer to the question I just asked myself: Flood tells the story of the end of the world. Something has happened to the surface world. Something bad. And it's forced the surviving human race down underwater to live in a hostile and barren world. Imagine a kind of…. underwater Mad Max meets The Man With No Name. It's a post-apocalyptic, Lovecraftian western. And I haven't even mentioned the part with all the dead…. well… I should stop talking before I spoil everything.

Megan Hutchison-Cates: I was intrigued by the story. I grew up near the Pacific Ocean and myself and my family are big-time divers, so I love all that sea-life shit. I also know the other-worldliness of being deep underwater [I mean, the deepest I've been is 120 ft. but you get the idea]. Donny pitched it to me as Cormac McCarthy in the ocean and I was sold. I'm into all that moody, nihilistic shit too… Originally the lead character was a guy, but when we started talking about the project I asked if we could make the lead an older female. Making her a mother and a wife really opened up the story in a lot of interesting ways. Again, I don't want to go into too many details because I don't want to spoil the story but being a mother at the end of the world, faced with nothing but death and darkness is pretty powerful.

Donny Cates: I think the first draft of this book was so mired in the stoic gunslinger model, that it ended up lacking a lot of personality and depth.

Megan Hutchison-Cates: As for her actual design, we wanted the tech to be practical but also futuristic, so everything is based on real diver tech and just elevated to that sci-fi level. Since so much of the book takes place in the dark, I designed the light panels on her suit be a recognizable profile. We also wanted her to look like a gunslinger, so her suit design and equipment is based on old western heroes. She has a little floating robot named MAKO which is really based off of old sketches I used to do years ago when I was [and let's be honest, still am] obsessed with floating eyeballs.