Interview | JSB

During C2E2, Kara and Matt sat down with (stood up, wrangled, it’s all the same) with some great COMIXOLOGY SUBMIT creators to talk about their books, their process, and what they read themselves. Since these interviews were done on the fly and in the heat of the con, we also transcribed these interviews. Some parts of the interview have been abridged for maximum hilarity. Enjoy our interview with IT LOOKS BACK’S JSB!

Matt:  You have a book on Submit that is frightening. It Looks Back frightened me.

JSB:  Frightening is what I go for.

Matt:  Mission accomplished. This book takes place in 1927, and you follow a P.I. Someone thinks a guy didn’t commit suicide. There was a weird logo, a cult symbol left, and he wants this P.I. to investigate, so this guy looks into it.

Your dynamic in this book is so dark. There’s never any light and it’s frightening. It’s literally scary, the imaging at the end. What puts you in that mode for “this is the book I wanted to make,” and what set you off in that direction?

JSB:  I was a goth kid growing up, so horror’s always been a big part of my life, I guess. For this particular book, since I was 12 years old, I’ve wanted to do an occult, detective, or horror story with that almost over dramatic narration. I’ve always wanted to play with that.

Matt:  It’s almost like a novel narration.

JSB:  Yeah. I was doing that, and I’ve also read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft. If I take hard boiled detective noir and Eldritch horror and mash them together and see what happens? This book was me having fun.

Matt:  You did everything on the book.

JSB:  Yeah, I write, draw. It’s what I do, instead of sleep.

Matt:  More power to you, I wouldn’t be able to do it. What process went in for these characters? What made you pick this specific era and this specific character leading into some deep shit that he gets himself into?

JSB:  I was trying to doing this like in the hardboiled detective trope. I put way more thought into the backstory of Sully, that I don’t even know if it really showed into the book. I just wanted to create a character they liked, felt very…I knew more about him than I think showed through to the book.

Matt:  Yeah, because it feels like he’s got some dark back story himself, that hasn’t really been revealed yet. Were those books that you grew up reading, were like those characters and those stories of stumbling into some shady occult business? Did they draw you in when you were younger?

JSB:  Oh, yeah, I’ve been reading ghost stories and old urban legends, and folklore tales my entire life, and then a lot of Sam Spade, stuff like that. All that made it happen.

Kara:  I’ve got to tell you, the first look that I saw of this story was, I caught a glimpse of it over Matt’s shoulder. The first thing I see is this thing that looks like a man, but his face is split down the middle and there’re spiders falling out everywhere. That was my first impression of this book.

As we got into it, we saw that there was more stuff going on, maybe some old-god things happening. What kind of research did you do in pulling on and creating the lore for this story?

JSB:  A lot of the horror stuff was…I do a lot of horror, so that played into it. I love Lovecraftian horror. His idea that there’s larger stuff out there..but I didn’t want to do Lovecraftian tropes like tentacles and Cthulhu’s and all that. I actually researched a lot of stuff about World War I. I don’t want to spoil much, but one of the characters is from Russia. I was like, “Let’s go with what was going on in that era? What drove her fear?”

Kara:  It makes sense. It was set in the 1920s, so that would have been part of the character experience.

JSB:  I was never a really big history buff, so I knew nothing about what would go into it, but I did way more research, and I think that all boiled down to single line of dialogue. It was fun to do the research, but I don’t know how much of it shows through.

Kara:  That got you into that headspace of where you needed to be to know what these characters would have experienced.

JSB:  Yeah. I didn’t want it to be like, “I’m a bad guy because I’m the bad guy.” I was trying to create a believable reason for them to start doing what they’re doing. It’s hard to talk about it without spoiling it.

Kara:  Was there, or is there, a character that gives you a lot of trouble, maybe with their voice or in just trying to get them right?

JSB:  I think not a specific one, but the dialogue was very difficult. I had to look up a lot of 1920s slang. I would write lines of dialogue, and like, “No. Wait. I don’t think anyone said that back then. That’s what we say now.” That whole era was about 50 years before I was born or something like that.

Matt:  It’s a four part limited, correct? What’s coming next from you? Do you always want to stick to that era? Do you want to explore the occult in different decades?

JSB:  The next book I’m doing is called “Nowhere.” I think the first issue might be on Submit. Basically, all my books have different flavors of horror. “Nowhere” takes place in the modern time. I want to do something that fits in the realm of “Alice in Wonderland” or “Wizard of Oz,” without just retelling “Alice in Wonderland” again.

It’s a story about a girl whose dream world is becoming real. There’s a lot of weird. Whenever I talk about it, I feel like a rambling madman because there’s a lot of dream logic and, “She’s doing this, but then a giant robot shows up. Then there are some killer teddy bears.” It’s really weird stuff.

Kara:  Were “Wizard of Oz” and “Alice in Wonderland” and those kind of books part of your childhood that influenced you?

JSB:  I wasn’t hardcore into it, but “Alice in Wonderland” is part of everyone’s childhood. I went through this probably about 10 years ago actually earlier than that, but I saw everyone kept redoing “Alice in Wonderland.” There was “American McGee’s Alice.” I saw a whole bunch of, “It’s Alice, but she’s goth.” or “It’s Alice, but she’s sexy.”

I love that genre of the fantastical world, but everyone keeps telling Lewis Carroll’s story over again. I want to do something that fits in that genre, but it isn’t just Alice again.

Matt:  You just talked about you do horror art, but what do you seek out? Do you read other Submit titles? Do you read other monthly or graphic novels? What do you seek out to gain inspiration?

JSB:  Ben Templesmith was a big influence on me. I remember I read “30 Days of Night” when I was younger. That was the first comic that didn’t look like a comic to me. At the time, everything was like very solid colors, clean artwork. That was the first thing I saw with distortion and digital effect. It blew my mind that comics didn’t have look like comics. He’s been a big influence.

I haven’t really been reading a lot of horror right now, recently. Number one on my list has been “Saga"actually.

Kara:  It’s big on my list.

JSB:  It’s literally the number one book on everyone’s list. It’s weird because on paper "Saga” is not…the space fantasy romance, it’s not really a thing that I’m terribly into. On paper, it’s not my favorite, but I love it so much.

Kara:  I feel like with horror you either love it or you don’t get it. What is it about horror that draws you in and makes you really want to commit to it?

JSB:  I don’t know how deep and artsy this is going to sound.

Kara:  Let it out.

JSB:  I feel like horror is the one genre that when it works it can…how to explain it? It can break the line of fiction.

When I was a kid, I loved “Ninja Turtles” and I loved scary stories. During the daytime I knew that they were both like, “This is a cartoon, these are books,” but at night when I would try to go to bed, I’d start hearing things and my imagination would start getting away with me.

Suddenly, even though I knew these ghost stories I read were fake, but at that moment they felt really real. Horror’s the only genre I know that can feel so real at certain moments. I was trying to create that experience for them.

Kara:  If you’re trying to bring someone into the world of horror, where do you tell them to start?

JSB:  Usually Lovecraft is one. I think most people when they think horror now it’s zombies, or werewolves, or chainsaws.

I try to explain to them, horror is a really big genre. It’s like rock music, you have Led Zeppelin and you have Green Day, and they’re both rock bands, but they sound nothing alike.

In horror, you can have Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist,” and you have “Shaun of the Dead.” They’re nothing like each other, but they’re still both technically horror.

I’m trying to explain that horror can be very smart, and very deep, and not just tropes and slasher stuff.

Kara:  Is there something like a film, or a book, or a comic that consistently gave you nightmares, or is it all water off a duck’s back?

JSB:  As a kid, I watched a lot of “Nightmare on Elm Street.” It’s not as scary anymore, now that I’m not five. Honestly, I’ve been reading a lot of Creepypasta, and I don’t know why, but short form…they’re little short form stories. Those still get to me because they’re not told in big story arcs. They’re like, “Hey, here’s something wrong with the world. Go to sleep!”

That’s the stuff that still gets me, as an adult.

Kara:  It keeps you awake at night tossing and turning? Like, “Oh, why did they tell me that?”

JSB:  I’ll read a bunch of stuff, and when I have to go to bed, it’s like, “Oh, man, I have to turn off all the lights. I’ve got to check around every corner.”

Matt:  What about “It”? Do you remember the It TV movie?

JSB:  Yeah.

Matt:  Kara hasn’t seen It yet.

Kara:  I have no intention.

Matt:  She needs to experience it.

JSB:  I wonder if that’s aged well.

Matt:  I feel like it hasn’t, because I saw that when I was eight or nine and it rocked me to my core.

JSB:  When you’re a kid, it’s scary, but now that we’re adults, like, “It’s Tim Curry. It’s Frank-N-Furter, so…”

Matt:  I appreciate you taking the time out. We really dig the book. It’s one of our favorites on Submit. We hope people pick it up if they’re listening or reading this interview, and thanks again.

JSB:  Thank you for having me.

(Source: SoundCloud / comiXology)