Broken Frontier

Writer Joe Harris unveils a conspiracy of nuclear proportions in the new mini-series Ghost Projekt from Oni Press.

A serial killer wears a Ronald Reagan mask and butchers some stoners in a music festival. A man returns to his hometown after disturbing visions of an innocent woman murdered there in the 1850s. These two worlds are the product of writer Joe Harris; the former in the film The Tripper co-written and directed by David Arquette and the latter in Darkness Falls, starring Buffy’s Emma Caulfield and developed from Harris’ short film, Tooth Fairy. Harris’ success in Hollywood has seen some cross over with the world of comics in the last few years.

In the 1990s Harris was the scribe for Marvel series such as the Spider-Man spin-off, Slingers and Bishop: The Last X-Man. More recently Harris has also chronicled tales featuring Man-Bat and Scarecrow for DC, and has now unleashed Ghost Projekt with artist Steve Rolston from Oni Press.

The 5 issue mini-series follows weapons inspector Will Haley upon his visit to an old and empty facility in Siberia. He soon meets Russian detective Anya Romanova, and the pair discover a labyrinthine plot of stolen weapons, multiple murders and the weaponization of ghosts.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Growing up in the ‘80s must’ve cemented your love for horror films. Are there any particularly great (or even bad) films that stick in your mind to this day?

JOE HARRIS: No question.  We were the first house on the block to have a VCR, so I had access to the most amazing things, both good and so bad they're good.  My dad actually owned Paramount's newly released Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th Part Two on video.  We had Phantasm and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Romero's Night Of the Living Dead. What we didn't own, there was no shortage of at the video store and movies like Q and I Spit On Your Grave somehow got into my underage hands. 

Of that era, I'd have to say those Friday the 13th films stand out, along with A Nightmare On Elm Street.  Stuff like Michael Mann's adaptation of The Keep and, obviously, the bulk of John Carpenter's movies are favorites of mine too.  I still look back fondly on high concept, supernatural chillers like The Sentinel and I could go on and on...

BF: Was your desire to be a film-maker and writer starting to grow back then, watching these old films on VHS?

JH: Definitely.  I would imagine potential sequels and the further adventures of both slashers and heroines.  I distinctly remember watching John Carpenter's remake of The Thing and realizing, in a clumsy kid way, that movies like these were metaphors.  That there was something being said about the people and society underneath the main story about alien invasion and trying to stay alive.

BF: Would you have liked to stay on with Marvel for a little longer, or was the itch to make short films becoming too big to ignore?

JH: Well, I've always wanted to make movies and that was my intention before I ever wrote for Marvel.  The company actually first hired me after some of the editors came to a screening of my student film and told me they thought I should be working for them.  I would have loved to stick around, back when I first starting moving on, but I guess it wasn't meant to be at the time.  The company was in transition.  I broke in over there while the company was still sort of wading through the swamp of bankruptcy and everything had a certain pall over it. 

By the time I set out to make another short film, Tooth Fairy, I had no idea what would happen and happen so fast.  Revolution Studios ended up buying the thing from me and I was hired to write the feature film version that would eventually be released as Darkness Falls.  The movie opened number one in the country and I ended up fielding lots of offers to do lots of other things.  But I really did miss comics and I felt like I had unfinished business with this medium, an itch I'm only beginning to scratch with books like Ghost Projekt.

BF: The Tripper and Darkness Falls were very entertaining films, I must say.Will you go back to making more films in the future?

JH: Yeah.  That is the plan.  But I began getting restless with the pace of things as they stood, Hollywood-wise.  I was either "attached" as the writer of a whole slew of different projects, or pitching or pursuing so many different horror movie sequels, direct-to-video projects and remakes that my head was spinning.  It takes a lot of energy and fortitude to make things work.  I actually made two feature films, which is rare and awesome and I'm lucky and I mean to make no slight of this at all... but I felt like I started to get lost a bit. 

I wasn't saying what I wanted to say because so much energy went into writing a pitch for this project producers brought to me, or another horror remake I was attached to write which fell apart when the producers didn't have the rights as locked down as I was led to believe.  I got away from, a little, from focusing on my own creations and further developing my own voice.  I needed to get back to comics and refocus myself on creating original properties.  I decided to take whatever, I don't know, credibility, for lack of a better way to say it, I might have built up having written big comics releases, and having actually made movies in Hollywood, and sort of re-invest it all in creator-owned comics. 

Now that I've been successful in setting up these original comics projects and they're starting to come out, I can feel a little momentum building. I feel validated and ambitious and I'm looking forward to sort of re-channeling it all, again, toward making films.

BF: How did you come to bring Ghost Projekt to Oni?

JH: My collaborator, Steve Rolston was a known quantity over there.  He had drawn the Eisner Award-nominated book, Queen & Country for Oni Press as well as some other books and he first brought the project to the attention of James Lucas Jones.  I ended up sitting down with James at the New York Comic Con and pitched him Ghost Projekt, along with another title of mine called, The Hashishian and James loved them both.  Oni quickly made me a deal and it's been the start of what feels like a great collaboration as I've got a bunch of other, new titles in the works there.

BF: Was there a real world event that inspired the story?

JH: Not specifically, though Ghost Projekt is certainly born of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  I recall hearing a lot about the dangers these old, Cold War-era weapons labs and test sites in the former Soviet Republics posed in this scary new reality where weapons materials from pathogens to radiological materials could fetch a hefty price on the black market and that the United States was going to help sort of catalogue and secure some of this dangerous stuff in that very, very vast part of the world. 

I'd also read, over the years, about all sorts of strange test sites and experiments that went on.  Just really twisted experimentation on people and populations.  Enough that my idea that's central to Ghost Projekt, that the Soviets attempted to weaponize ghosts and harness the sort of pain and rage a tortured soul dies with, doesn't seem too far outside the possible.  Honestly, the truth is likely stranger than fiction when it comes to some of these real world programs.

BF: Did you conduct a lot of research as you were writing it?

JH: A lot of what I just got at in the last question.  I read a bunch of Pentagon memos related to "Cooperative Threat Reduction" which set up the parameters for a group like the one we've depicted in Ghost Projekt actually operating behind what used to be enemy lines.

BF: Steve Rolston’s art looks great. There’s a real vibrant feel to his art, but it’s obvious there’s still something of a sinister edge. Did you end up tailoring your script once you saw his initial character sketches and layouts?

JH: Back when we were first discussing this project, Steve did a black and white illustration of this ghostly warrior we introduce in the book called, The Dark Rider that was just perfect.  If you look around online, even at my site, I think you can find the concept art from when we first announced this thing back at the San Diego Comic Con.  It's just grim and grisly and full of rage and the potential for destruction and I knew what Steve was capable of. 

From there, I've just tried to give him cool stuff to draw because I'm excited to see what he does with it. His character designs are all great too.  I really feel like the characters are walking and talking and acting with one another and, honestly, for as cool and visually arresting some of the action sequences we depict really strive to be, I find myself most gratified with the quieter moments and conversation beats because Steve really makes me believe these people.

BF: How did you end up as part of the new Creepy team for Dark Horse?

JH: Dark Horse Editor Shawna Gore asked me for a bunch of pitches and I probably rattled off a half-dozen or so.  But this one particular idea, about a young man who can create his own reality and manipulate what seems and feels real to others, really emerged as the one we wanted to do.  I was flattered when they asked me to imagine it as a multi-part serial spanning the first few issues of the series.  The final chapter of The Curse comes out in Creepy #3 this April and they've asked me to write something new for future Creepy issues.

BF: Are there any upcoming films or comics that you can’t wait to see?

JH: I can't wait to see Chris Nolan's Inception.  Oliver Stone's Wall Street sequel, Iron Man 2... wow, what else?  Ridley Scott's Robin Hood. On the comics front, I'm really looking forward to the end of Ex Machina.

Ghost Projekt #1 from Oni Press is out now. The second issue will be released on April 21.