For the newest installment of the Daily Grindhouse comics column, I had the pleasure of speaking with Allison O’Toole, co-editor of the horror anthology SHADES OF FEAR, “a collection of subtle, psychological horror comics with a focus on vibrant, emotive color.” The 11 horror stories in the collection will all focus on how color thrills and terrifies, unsettles and disturbs. Allison and I discussed the vision for the anthology as a way to experiment and explore the comics medium, and she let me in on many of their influences, including anime, giallo, manga, and atmospheric films like CRIMSON PEAK and SUSPIRIA.
The anthology is on Kickstarter right now, with the campaign ending on Friday, October 22, so there’s still time to pledge and let this experimental indie horror book loose in the world! Check out my interview with Allison below, and be sure to visit SHADES OF FEAR’s campaign page.
Daily Grindhouse: I was really excited when I just happened upon a tweet about the anthology. And I am a huge fan of color… color theory, I don’t think it gets talked about enough in comics, especially comics criticism, I think. So can you talk about the genesis of this project and why you wanted to focus specifically on color as it relates to narrative?
Allison O’Toole: So, my collaborator, Ashanti Fortson, who’s editing the book with me, is definitely the color expert. They are an award-winning cartoonist and instructor. And they have a lot of amazing thoughts and opinions about the use of color and narrative. Whereas I’m more the horror guy, that’s my background, that’s what I’ve always been really interested in. So, in a way, it was kind of bringing together two of our passions. But we also looked at a lot of horror that’s out there, specifically within comics. And there are definitely exceptions, but a lot of horror comics tend to focus on either very kind of representational color — just showing us what’s in the scene in a realistic or semi-realistic way — or you get black and white, like the giants of horror manga… And so we wanted to look at the ways that color can be used to express and evoke an emotional response, which can be such a huge part of horror, and see how we can use color as a narrative tool to bring out those responses in our readers the way that a soundtrack might in a film. So we think that it’s a genre that is really rich for strong emotion and strong response, and we want to see how we can play with color to get that.
Daily Grindhouse: I think, especially in modern horror comics, a lot of people do think of black and white with maybe a splash of red every other page or something. And there is so much that you can do with horror that’s not just the darkness, that has that richness of tone… it doesn’t have to be neons like you think of in certain gialli, it can be the pastels, a real softness, which is one thing I love about the art that I’ve seen. The preview art for the anthology, there is so much diversity in terms of style… in the color palettes and the tones that the artists achieve. And, you know, there’s also a lot of demographic diversity with your creators, too. Can you talk about choosing the contributors in the context of the anthology’s theme and focusing on underrepresented artists?
Allison O’Toole: So that was something that was not intentional, necessarily, the demographic side of things. That’s just sort of how it shook out for us. We were looking for a mix of cartoonists who we all knew had a very strong grasp on color. So we had seen their sequential works before. We knew that they would use color in that narrative way, very effectively. And we were also looking for people who we thought would be interested in the kind of experimental side of this. We want to give our creators a lot of freedom to play with things and try things and do things that aren’t necessarily what’s expected within the horror genre in comics. So that was sort of the group of people, the pool of cartoonists we were trying to draw from. And then within that, we wanted to have a mix of cartoonists who are familiar with an experience of horror. Joy San is a great example. She’s got a ton of incredible horror comics. Olivia Stephens just released a werewolf book, that’s not entirely horror, but it’s got horror elements to it with monsters. But we also wanted to bring in people who maybe hadn’t published a lot of horror before, so that we could kind of get a good mix and a good diversity of styles, as you’re saying. So someone like Mar Julia or Tess Eneli Reid, whose works are often fantastical or more grounded and don’t necessarily dive into the spooky and the scary, we want to see what they would bring to this as well, because it’s going to have a really different perspective. So we did want stylistic diversity. And, as I say, the demographic diversity was a nice quality, I guess. It wasn’t something that we thought about consciously. We were just looking for people we wanted to work with, and this is the team we ended up with.
Daily Grindhouse: The campaign talks about how this is specifically a collection of psychological horror stories, which ties in with what you were talking about, about an emotional journey resonating in terms of mood. Can you talk about how you decided on specifically psychological horror, and how you see color playing a role in either reflecting or influencing that psychological state?
Allison O’Toole: So, “psychological” we’re using as kind of an easy shorthand, because I think it’s a word like — psychological horror is a concept that people are familiar with. But a lot of the language that Ashanti and I were using early on was “decadent”… I love gothic horror, for example, and we were looking at a lot of really ornate horror anime, like your VAMPIRE HUNTER D kind of stuff. And we kind of want to go after something that’s vibes-driven, if that makes sense. We want to capture a feeling, an uneasiness, more than we’re interested in, say, a jump scare or something like that. And so I’ve been using the word “eerie” a lot as well, because I think we’re after something that’s a lot more about that emotion. And so in some cases, some of the stories are going to be very emotionally charged, and you’re following a character’s experiences and their reactions to things around them. But we also have some that are very just unsettling situations that will hopefully put the reader in an uncomfortable mindset. And again, you can use, for example, really strong contrasts in color. So if you’re using a particular palette throughout the story, and you rapidly and suddenly change it, that can be really jarring, whether you’re going, you know — traditionally, we would think of something that’s more muted into your red, like you were talking about, but you could go from really bold colors into pastels or the reverse. And there are all kinds of color treatments that way that can elicit that kind of response. But using that sense of building also with color where there’s a slower change, rather than a more rapid change, can also change the psychological mindset of both the characters and the reader. So there are a number of different ways that we’re approaching it… the color is being used in a way that, for the most part, will be profiling a character’s journey in some way or the events of the story to show how things change and often build. You can reflect that in the color palette and the art approach.
Daily Grindhouse: It is, as you mentioned, kind of a vibe and it’s one that I love. I really love horror where it seeps in slowly, the dread seeps in, and you kind of get a slow burn…I am curious about any difficulty you’ve had, perhaps, in marketing or approaching people, because it is such a visual thing and it’s something that’s hard to put into words.
Allison O’Toole: To be honest, what I have done is I’ve just been sending out the art, because I think that the art really speaks for itself. I mean, Maya McKibbin’s cover alone, I think, does a lot of talking for this book. So as I say, we throw around the word “psychological” and things because it’s kind of an easy shorthand. And we mention that color is involved in some way, usually, but I think showing people the artwork, even though they’re just covers and they’re not sequential pages yet, I really believe in the strength of our contributors’ work. And so my approach has been largely to let the work do the talking.
We want to delve more into the psychological horror side of things. One of the things that we find consistently in the stories is there’s a lot of breadth, I would say, but there’s a lot of exploration of family relationships and the ways that interacting with other people can be a sort of everyday horror… the horror of everyday relationships writ large, that I think is, again, something that you don’t necessarily see in comics as much. It’s something I think about — like Shirley Jackson, for example, is very fond of — so I think that people who are interested in horror in other mediums, maybe they aren’t as familiar with comics, might find that these horror comics speak to them more than others that they’ve come across. Because I think that we’re really trying to draw from a lot of spaces and sources that are outside of comics to create what we’re working on…Folks are submitting to us, along with their work, they’re going to be giving us an image of something that inspired them that we’ll be showcasing on Ashanti’s Instagram. And so, we have people who are inspired by other horror but also by other places and other experiences and other things in the world. So I think that that’s going to bring a lot of really interesting and rich imagery and ideas here that maybe will be unique to horror comics.
Daily Grindhouse: That’s another thing that kind of appealed to me, is that it does feel like it’s filling a void in horror comics, as you mentioned, not just stylistically, but also…it seems to be approaching it from a different vantage point. Was that how you broached it with your contributors? Like, “this is the vibe we want, this is the area of horror that we’re interested in”?
Allison O’Toole: Yeah, absolutely. Because as we’ve discussed, it’s a little bit difficult to describe. We put together a mood board, where we had imagery to suggest what we were looking for. And so we had some Emily Carroll pages, and as I say, some images from anime and manga. But there weren’t a ton of Western horror comics that we could point to, to be like, “Yeah, this.” There are some, like Linnea Sterte’s STAGES OF ROT, for example, is something that’s kind of horror-adjacent, but is the sort of space that we’re drawing from rather than horror comics specifically. And so yeah, we were sending film references and that kind of thing, because we were having trouble finding something other than, of course, Emily Carroll, who can do everything perfectly. (laughs) We were having trouble finding something that was exactly what we were looking for. So yeah, hopefully it will fill a bit of a niche and be a little bit different.
Daily Grindhouse: Do you remember some of the film references that you used?
Allison O’Toole: Oh, yeah. BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, the Francis Ford Coppola version. We had images from THE HANDMAIDEN, but honestly we could have done anything by Park Chan-wook, especially with his DP Chung Chung-hoon…their films are stunning. CRIMSON PEAK, obviously. I would have put PENNY DREADFUL, the TV show, in there. They had a lot of that kind of decadent nonsense. Yeah, as I said, VAMPIRE HUNTER D. I think I had some stuff from ×××HOLiC, a bunch of stuff like that… oh, SUSPIRIA, obviously. Obviously SUSPIRIA… and that artist who did a bunch of the concept work for SLEEPING BEAUTY?
Daily Grindhouse: Eyvind Earle?
Allison O’Toole: Yes. Yeah, Ashanti pulled some amazing references, like creepy trees and stuff. And as I said, STAGES OF ROT as well. But yeah, we were racking our brains trying to think of all of the things that had that vibe. And it was really hard to find in Western comics.
Daily Grindhouse: Also, some backers, they’ll have access to an interview about the relationship between comics and color and horror. Why was it important for you to include that for people?
Allison O’Toole: Color, as you said, is not something that’s always spoken about with as much detail as it maybe should be, given how important it is to comics. And Ashanti, in addition to being a cartoonist, is an instructor. And so I think that they were very interested in sharing a lot of these ideas and thoughts that they have about color and its use from years and years of experience, and giving people the opportunity to learn from them and from Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, the other cartoonist, who is a multi award-winning cartoonist and also has a lot of interesting stuff to say. But I think that, as we say, the craft side of things isn’t necessarily something that gets explored in Kickstarters that much… rewards tend to be focused more on things people can get and improvements to the book. And we love that stuff, too. But this seemed like something that could be a little bit unique, something that’s a little bit instructional, a little bit informational, that ties into what we’re doing with the book but it’s also a little bit different. So yeah, I hope it’ll be something that people can learn from but might also just be a fun read. Because Ashanti and Rosemary are friends, and Ashanti is probably going to do some of it as comics, some of it is text. What that ultimately looks like is going to be, I think, something that’s also kind of unique.
Daily Grindhouse: Yeah, absolutely. I like the multimedia approach. Because, you know, comics are unique as an art form: they’re text, they’ve got cinematic elements, sometimes there are even musical elements, depending on the pacing and the tone of a comic. So I find it really intriguing that you’re kind of taking this holistic multimedia approach.
Allison O’Toole: Yeah, I mean, we’re also just interested in exploring. That’s a big part of this, is exploring. Exploration and experimentation. Part of the reason our goal is so high is that we are trying to give a larger page rate than is feasible in the anthology format, for the most part. And we want to give everyone the support that they need so that they can spend the time experimenting and exploring the comics form. And so again, that extends to KALEIDOSCOPIC NIGHT, the interview. Because we want to — it’s a discussion, but it is also an exploration. And so Ashanti will be able to figure out what the best way will be to convey that information. And that may not be a strict full comic; it will probably integrate other elements. And I think that that freedom is really fun and exciting and is part of what makes comics exciting, that you can have that kind of flexibility.
Daily Grindhouse: Is there anything else you want to share about the Kickstarter campaign?
Allison O’Toole: I’d encourage people to back soon, because no matter when you pledge, you won’t actually get charged until it’s done… I think a lot of people wait to see if they think it’ll be funded before they pledge. And it doesn’t actually make a big difference on your end, but it does make a huge difference on our end as to whether the project actually gets funded. So it would be a huge help if people are unsure about whether we’ll make it or not if they pledge as soon as possible.
Information on the campaign, along with preview art and more information on the individual artists involved in SHADES OF FEAR, is available on the Kickstarter page.
Tags: Allison O’Toole, Anthologies, Ashanti Fortson, Columns, Comic Books, Comics, Emily Carroll, Eyvind Earle, Horror, Joy San, Kickstarter, Linnea Sterte, Mar Julia, Maya McKibbin, Olivia Stephens, Rosemary Valero-O'Connell, Tess Eneli Reid
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