Posted in: Comics | Tagged: 2012, comic con, dark horse, panel, san diego, sdcc, steve niles

When Steve Niles Didn't Like Vampires – The Dark Horse Panel

Published Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:00:54 -0500

Keysha Couzens wrote for Bleeding Cool from San Diego Comic Con;

Dark Horse began their horror comics panel with the bold claim that they do the best horror comics in the industry. Well, with the line-up they presented during the hour long panel it would be hard to dispute otherwise as they talked about what's coming up for their many of their ongoing series, a new series by Paul Tobin called Colder, as well as the big Criminal Macabre crossover event with IDW's 30 Days of Night. They presented a fantastic banner just for the panel that celebrated a number of their horror comics characters all hanging out together like they must do in Scott Allie's head all the time. Here's a summary of the panel's announcements for their fall horror offerings

Later this month The Goon is back on a monthly basis for the first time in a while. Powell describes the next big arc as, 'every Johnny Cash song about heartache or revenge and put a lot more violence and murder in it that's pretty much the next two years of The Goon.

Billy the Kidd is coming back and this time out the monster is the Loch Ness Monster with a twist that Powell didn't want to elaborate too much on.

Exsanguine by Tim Seeley is a hard-hitting nasty horror comic that was pitched as 'Buffy and Angel if they were natural born killers'.

Colder by Paul Tobin launches this fall and they said they couldn't show us the cover as it was just too F**ked up to show. Apparently, both Paul and Scott's wives were appalled by it so you know it's probably going to be good. Tobin said he wanted to a horror comic but that he wasn't interested in the 'he's got an ax' stuff. Instead he wanted to do something far more psychological with this book. The title refers to the lead character that because of supernatural reasons has a lower internal body temperature and it keeps going down. It keeps going down more and more and he has to be aware of it or it'll get too low and he'll die. Tobin mentioned liking the ticking clock aspect of doing things that way.

They showed off a couple covers of the five issue Willow series that's coming soon from the Buffy line of comics.

Some artwork was presented for The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

Ragemoor by Richard Corben and Jan Strnad has a hardcover coming out this fall

Corben also is involved on a comic of Edgar Allen Poe's The Conqueror Worm.
Hellboy in Hell is one of the books Dark Horse is super excited about. They made sure to note that Hellboy isn't just going to come back to Earth right away as he is truly dead and may stay in Hell for quite some time.

The big crossover event of two Steve Niles properties, 30 Days of Night and Criminal Macabre closed the presentation. The most intriguing part of this part of the panel was Niles saying that because he and Scott Allie hate it when there are no major consequences from most crossover events there will be with this one. Depending on how the story goes, by the end of the series Steve Niles made a promise that one of the series will end. Either 30 Days of Night or Criminal Macabre will be going away forever. They also snagged Justin Erickson who's done some artwork for the Alamo Drafthouse and works for Rue Morgue magazine to do some fantastic cover art for Final Night.

They also announced a five issue series written by Lance Henriksen who was supposed to be at the panel as well but couldn't make it. It's called To Hell You Ride and it has a take on the Indian burial ground legends.

Q and A Highlights

Niles and Tobin both express their love of the work of Lovecraft. Especially how it doesn't feel the need to 'explain things away'. Niles says that habit of storytellers gets in the way of letting the reader put their own fears into the work when they read it.
Asked about their favorite monsters the answers range from werewolves to Frankenstein's monster. Specifically Frankenstein's creature because he's so sympathetic and every time he tries to do something good it turns out terribly wrong—he's horrified of himself. Tobin named vampires because he sees them as an entirely different race with a variety of personalities in them.
As for a film for The Goon they announced they would do a Kickstarter for an animatic in order to drum up interest in getting it the funding needed for a feature. In response to just doing a Kickstarter for funding the whole film it isn't conceivable to ask for any part of the thirty-five million it's going to take for a feature length film.
Powell is already basically writing for his favorite time period albeit an imaginary version of it. Tobin also states he likes the 30's and '40's. When he mentions he loves that there's no cell phones the entire panel lights up with agreement about how annoying cell phones are to the suspense of a story. They mention that they loathe having to come up with ways that a cell phone couldn't just resolve the situation in their stories. Scott Allie name-checks how in some areas such as rural Oregon (my home state actually) you still have a hard time with cell reception so all is not lost in suspenseful storytelling just because landlines are increasingly rare.
Powell doesn't really care much for vampires as he prefers the more synthetic monsters in his stories. Steve Niles mentions that writing 30 Days of Night was a motivation to write something he too wasn't fond of as he claims he didn't really like vampires either.
As for crossing the line or going too far, Paul Tobin explained that he loves horror but he hates gratuitous pointless gore. He relates a great anecdote about at one time being a night custodian at an experimental biology lab where they worked with cadavers. The longer he was there the more terrified he got. Steve took the torture annoyance further by complaining about the fact that treating your characters like that makes them less than characters—less than people. He illustrated the point by comparing both versions of the film Halloween. In the original you root for Laurie Strode but in the remake you just can't be bothered to care because of how the characters are treated and written.

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