Broken Frontier

Welcome back to this Broken Frontier Inter-Review with horror maestro, Bob Heske!

In PART ONE , we discussed the impending February release for his new mini, The  Night Projectionist.  Now, we turn quivering antennae to his first foray into comics, the self-published horror anthology, Cold Blooded Chillers.  The first two issues were released in 2008, with a third aimed for January 2009.

Issues #1 and #2 can be purchased at www.coldbloodedchillers.com, alongside a cavalcade of super-sweet merch (including a clock I dearly want to own and likely will before the month is out)!  You can preview the first few pages of Issue #1 or Issue #2 by clicking either of those links.

Okay, let’s get back to it!

Broken Frontier Review: Heske’s Night Projectionist reads like 30 Days of Night in concept, but enhanced by a denser, more Stephen King-esque concentration of character and event.  Oddly (and outstandingly), Heske works up a completely different platform for his independently-published horror anthology, Cold Blooded Chillers. In Chillers, the stories are lock, stock, and bleeding-hole barrel concept-driven, short and sweet and throttled to twisted endpoints.  Heske’s shorts could perhaps stand a more epic, lengthier treatment, each wrapped about an idea that could, admittedly, be given an in-depth approach and made fuller-fledged features.  But that isn’t what CBC is meant to be: this is Tales From the Crypt if TFtC were condensed down to flash-in-the-pan 5-minute shorts.  It’s Twilight Zone if TZ stories could run no longer than 10 pages of script.

The crux of Chillers is that this is suburban horror, which is, surprisingly (when one dwells upon it), a thing that should have had more exposure before now.  Most horror remains glued to small towns, isolated and/or forsaken settings, or the big city for a taste of wholesale urbanity.  But suburbia?  All but ignored, even though horror writers and most horror readers tend to have had all their horrific thoughts culled and whipped into delectable puff pastries from a solid upbringing within just such a setting.  CBC delivers stories that strike to the core of real-world horror: serial killers, kidnapping, crimes of passion, small and pathetic evils converging upon grotesque and supernatural ones.

Each issue composes 3-4 yarns, the page count clocking in at 36-40 pages, making these puppies literally double-sized by mainstream standards (24 page mainstream floppies, minus ads, are 18-20 pages of total story).  At only $3.00 USD a pop, that’s a worthwhile purchase (and in fact a deal!) by any measure.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Welcome back, Bob, baby (do I sound Hollywood?  I’m trying for Hollywood, talking to a movie writer and all, want you to feel at home…).  What had you diving into self-publishing water, and why a horror anthology focusing on suburban shorts?

BOB HESKE: I had written several dark short film scripts that had done really well in contests – winner, finalist, semi-finalist – but never got produced. Finally, one did get produced. It was called Waiting (adapted from my script The Waiting Room which appears in CBC #1 and is illustrated by Preston Asevedo) starring Richard Schiff, Izabella Miko and Earl Brown. The director and co-writer was Lisa Demaine. The final version of Waiting was very good, won a few film festival awards, etc. – but about only 55-60% of it was my original story. So, since I had already gotten some great comic book experience working on The Night Projectionist, I thought why not blow the dust off some of my other stories, wrap them in a dark genre, and see what happens? The result is Cold Blooded Chillers: Tales of surburban murder and malice. These are disturbing dark chocolates where you don’t know what you’re gonna get once you sink your teeth into it. I chose surburbia for all the reasons you just mentioned. This sub-genre of horror has been surprisingly under-served. I’ve received great reviews so far and even had a review run in USA Today. And I’ve been able to produce a 3-issue anthology and a “best of” book what it would cost me to produce a low budget short (under $10K).

BF: Do you feel suburbia is horror’s great undiscovered country?  Does it outdo cities and small towns for horror potential?

BH: Definitely. Suburbia is the dark underbelly of this country. Where you’ll find strip bars next to churches. Pyschopaths next door to Christians.   

BF: Here’s an important question - was the clock your idea?  I love that clock.  Both of them, but especially the one with the hand reaching up and the girl screaming.  What a great clock.

BH:  LOL! Yeah, I thought the clock was cool too. The site is cafepress.com and I have a page on it where I sell merchandise for Cold Blooded Chillers. With my marketing background, I’d be remiss not to put the link here. For our Yankee Swap at work I wrapped up a Cold Blooded Chillers kitchen apron with the cover image of issue #1 featuring the severed head inside the refrigerator. That gift got passed around a lot! But the best ones are the infant “onsies” and toddler t-shirts – horror never looked so cute as when its worn by my two little girls, Carly and Emily.

BF Review: CBC #1 puts together four stories, beginning with the one I thought to be the weakest (at least initially).  This one’s with art by Scott Austin, and follows a teen girl and her baby sister into the most iconic of suburban settings: the indoor mall.  The younger girl soon goes missing and the teenage sister panics, bringing in mall security and leading to an ending that isn’t quite a surprise.  That said, this one actually stuck with me more than any other.   While I at first felt that Austin’s art was a touch rough (it is, but it suits, and here’s why…) and additionally the story not terribly horrific, after sitting on the tale for a few hours I realized it was the most realistic, and in this way, the most unsettling.  While a comic and peppered with comic-book trimmings, executed with a dash of pulp shock that any Tales From the Crypt yarn ever wielded, Heske and Austin put together a story that feels raw, and that held just enough honest menace to click.

Second up is a short-short with artist Eliseu “ZEU” Gouveia (of the beautiful-looking Infiniteens mini from Moonstone and the Cloudburst one-shot form Image a while back).  This one details the closing notes of a rather tension-charged first date, the couple flirting heavily, albeit strangely, the episode culminating in…well…but that would be telling, and while it’s generally a standard twist, Heske takes it one step further than most and makes of it something pretty damn clever.  ZEU’s art is thick and smooth and polished to an edible shine.  His superhero and sci-fi roots are obvious, and makes for a striking contrast following the more figurative art of Austin.

Then comes the longest tale, a story captivatingly illustrated by one Preston Asevado.  A man finds himself wandering through a bizarre car repair station with demon dogs and crazed mechanics.  Asevedo’s pages contain a certain manwha flourish—short, stumpish figures, all angles and oversized features.  Like Mahfood mixed with Brian Crossland, on the one hand it isn’t the most visceral of aesthetics, and on the other, it’s an effortless crowd-pleaser.

Wrapping up, is a two-page quickie with artist Neil Morrissey, whose bio is perhaps the most apt of all the contributors—he was once an assistant Crime Scene Investigator!  And I quote: he “forensically investigated volume crime”.  So he of course gets to illustrate the most outrageously, simply criminal of the tales.  As it’s only two pages in length, there’s not much I want to say about it, but Morrissey’s art is phenomenal, heavily detailed a la Crumb or Howard Cruse.

BF: So many artists!  How did you come to work with them all?  Okay, one at a time: Austinand “Lost and Found”.  What made you pair him with this tale?

BH: Issue one was my first foray into finding artists and finding out what I should pay them. My budget was low so I started with a few talented artists I found who were illustrators that loved comics and wanted to develop a comic book portfolio. That, in a nutshell, is how I came across Scott Austin. He responded to an ad I posted on ifreelance.com. But most of the artists I used for this series were discovered on comicspace.com where I could check out their art galleries. Comicspace has been a gold mine for me to find talent and to “befriend” artists. On this project, Scott was very agreeable to work with – although he tends to “underdraw” some of the scenes and is light on the inks, he does a nice job of drawing the characters and does a very good storyboard to boot.

BF: ZEU with “False Pretenses”?

BH:  A total professional. Can’t say enough good things about him. Zeu draws fast and only requires minor edits. He totally has a grasp of every story he does (he drew art for both False Pretenses in issue 1 and Dead Dog in issue 2). I found him on Comicspace and was thrilled when he agreed to do the stories. Zeu normally draws action heroes so he was glad to explore his dark side with CBC. And man, did he ever deliver! (Lettering for False Pretenses and Dead Dog was by Alain Norte.)

BF: Asevedo with “The Waiting Room”?

BH: Preston is a very talented artist who had done a series called Rockabilly Roadtrip with Jesse James Wroblewski (who did lettering on The Waiting Room for me). I wasn’t sure at first if his style would resonate with this story which is very Jacobs-Ladder-esque in tone (e.g., distorted sense of reality). But when I saw the first panel, I knew he was more than capable to do the job. I think you’ll see more from Preston Asevedo in the comics arena with other publishers in the year ahead.

BF: And how about that Morrissey?

BH: A great guy who, like Scott Austin, was tring to break into the comic realm. He went above and beyond – even did a 2^nd version of the story with a different twist ending that we both collaborated on. I hope he gets more work based on what he did for Cold Blooded Chillers. I should mention the artists are from all over the globe. Scott Austin is from Finland, Zeu is from the Philippines, Preston Asevedo is from Louisianna, US, and Neil Morrissey is from the UK. Also, cover and inside art on both issues 1 and 2 was by Mark Chilcott, another talented Brit.

BF Review: Issue #2 collects three more horror mini-gems, starting with an encore by artist ZEU, in my personal favorite from Heske thus far: a story about a man who finds a dead dog in his driveway and the chaos that slowly yet steadily unfolds.  Definitely the deftest of Heske’s twist endings, the biggest in payoff while also being the most subtle in its set-up, the events play out masterfully.  I’ll take a moment here to note that Heske’s stories, by and large, are awkward, because the specifics are never known until the end.  The reader lumps along, unsure why the dialogue and moments seem so off-kilter (is it the writer?  Is he just plain ol’ vanilla bad?) but every time there’s a resolution wherein the oddities come into perspective. And no other works this method as well as “Dead Dog”.  ZEU is in as pro a form as ever, though here he’s given more to do, and the reader is all the happier for it.

Second is Alain Norte and Heske’s “Misnomer”, wherein a group of cute ‘n cuddly (read: stupid) young kids get in over their heads with the abandoned house of a supposed pedophile.  Though as the title of the tale suggests, the house may have belonged to someone of a different (if equally disturbing) nature.  Norte is a unique choice for the  anthology, as his art leans more toward the light-hearted; however, “Misnomer” is penned as though a bit of a punchline.  Still, his kids are perfectly cartoon-like and helpless, peppered with idiocy, reminding me of a Mike Judge horror short.

Concluding the current run of CBC tales is the weirdest, and arguably the weakest, called “Her First Day Alone”.  This one has some very atmospheric art by Monty Borror, and he does a commendable job with illustrating the most straight-up horrific of the CBC stories to date (whenever blood is involved, Borror’s work comes to life—the mark of a true horror artist!).  But for all its creepiness, the story itself suffers from a lack of space, of time for the concept to stand on its own two feet.  Still, it’s as weird and intriguing as anything penned by Heske, though it’s the one and only I felt didn’t entirely “gel” when the final page was turned.  Hint: it’s about the slow breakdown of a character, but with no real final raison d’etre for the episode as a whole.  It just kind of…is.

BF: As “Dead Dog” is my favorite, do please tell us its origins.  I love the story, and absolutely wonder how you came up with it!  (Try not to give it away, though! No pressure.)

BH:  Short and sweet: One day at about noon a guy walking a dog knocked at my front door and said, “Did you know there’s a dead dog in your driveway?” Since I have two dogs, I asked, “What color?” That’s the genesis of the story. Whatever happens after this point is not in any way related to my real life whatsoever!

BF: Norte does “Cute” very well.  His site showcases pin-up after pin-up of either cute girls doing cute things or…well, no, that’s about it.  What made you select him for CBC?

BH:  Alain did the lettering for the two Zeu stories – False Pretenses and Dead Dog – and also was trying to expand his comic book portfolio as a young artist. Based on his professional lettering work, and after glimpsing his portfolio, I thought he might be a good fit for the uber-short Misnomer. All in all, I thought he did a very good job. His artwork was a bit understated but it got the point of the story across. And while his character drawings were a bit more cartoon than horror-realistic, I thought it worked out well to play off the story’s “tongue in cheek” ending.

BF: Defend yourself!  That last story of issue #2, what was the intent?  Do you think it works?  Why?  And didn’t Monty make it look pretty, though?

BH: Her First Day Alone is based on a premise that I hadn’t seen done before – the psychosis of a woman literally having a mental breakdown as she suffers the trauma of “losing her little baby” to a first day of day care. Apparently, having a child leave the  mother’s arms and go to day care can cause great mental trauma to some women - #3 on the “freak-me-out” list after death and divorce. My wife and I had recently sent our first child off to day care when I sat down at my keyboard and thought “I wonder what would happen if …?” Because this story is from the woman’s perspective (hence, skewed and, like The Waiting Room, also a bit Jacobs Ladder-esque) it is non-linear and tough to follow. These type of stories are admittedly more of a challenge for the reader to follow.

As for defending it, to me I felt that the story worked and, happily, many other reviewers have responded well to it (although they may have had to do a second read to truly appreciate all the nuances). It was based on a third place contest-winning script. However, as with The Waiting Room, some stories are more suited for the screen than the comic book page. So I knew that it would be a hit or miss with readers – which is fair in an anthology series like this.

As for Monty Borror’s artwork – believe it or not, the inks were good but not exceptional. But when he added the grey midtones in PhotoShop the images went from flat to artful. Monty did a great job on this and, like Preston Asevedo, is an up and comer who will be an artist we will see a lot more from in the year ahead. If you ever check out his website you’ll see that he has a truly Gothic edge. Monty also has a nice little blog out at http://comicoverlord.blogspot.com/ .

BF Review: So that’s two giant-sized jewels of blood-red gory goodness.  Night Projectionist will speak more to the mainstream crowd, but CBC is definitely a solid, hugely entertaining independent offering.  Issue #3 is due out in January and I for one will be ordering it (oh, and don’t forget that clock!).  Bob Heske has even managed to land a few pro short film scripting gigs, earning him the enviable spot of an IMDB profile with more than a single credit (writer of “Waiting” and co-writer of “No Middle Ground”, see Bob’s website for details).  He might not be gearing up to take over the horror comics scene, but Heske is off to an impressive start, and if there’s any justice (read: taste) in the comics world, he may just be the successor to current maestro Steve Niles.

BF: So which is harder, writing for a company, writing for a film, or writing your own shorts?

BH :  Writing for a film is the hardest only because you can do rewrite after rewrite and then…wait and wait and wait for something to happen. Writing for a comic for Studio 407 also takes commitment, but they are an exceptional group to work with (kudos to the dynamic story concept duo of Alex Leung and Chad Jones) – they brainstorm and help you bring the tale to the next level. It’s been a great experience – once I hope to do over and over again.

BF: If you had to choose only one of the above three, which would you spend your life doing?

BH: Seriously? If I could have one day job it would be writing comics. It’s collaborative and you have almost directorial responsibilities in working with the editor and artist to dictate what the “cinematography” of the story should be.

BF: And what can we expect to see in CBC #3?

BH:  It’s at the printers now (Ka-blam and Comixpress) and will be available to order online in mid January. Issue 3 has a supernatural bent – you will love it! The artists are the best lot  yet – Adam Swiecki, Reno Maniquis, and Dirk Shearer. Also, lettering by David Paul on the last tale called Synchronicity.

BF: Well, that’s that.  You are a maniac and a workhorse, Bob.  A maniac workhorse.  We usually put animals like you down, you know.  Just sayin’.  Thanks for being with us!

BH:  Thank you. Although calling me a maniac and DARKhorse is probably more apt. Seriously, this has been great fun. I appreciate your honest critique and candor. Hopefully, you’ll do me the honor of reviewing future issues of The Night Projectionist and Cold Blooded Chillers. And to everyone reading – be sure to check out The Night Projectionist in December Diamond Previews and in bookstores/comic shops everywhere on February 25^th. Have a safe and scary holiday! Yours cruelly – R.M. Heske.

 

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Mr. Heske can be reached at www.bobheske.com, and his self-published work, Cold Blooded Chillers, can be seen at www.coldbloodedchillers.com

The Night Projectionist can be ordered from your local retailer via Diamond December Previews, Page 305, Order # DEC084241.  Alternatively, when the time comes, the book should be available direct from the publisher at www.studio-407.com