Of course, there’s another, perhaps more obvious concern: Hellraiser


is a horror comic – it needs to be scary. “Everyone wants this to be the most elegant, stylish, scary thing it can be,” Barker says. “It’s im- perative that we make this scary. That was one of the first things I said to BOOM!.” To that end, Barker, a lifelong comics fan, is taking cues from Walk-


ing Dead scribe Robert Kirkman. “He was doing an interview about making comics scary,” Barker recalls. “He said it’s a very, very difficult thing to do. He gave some pieces of advice, which I’ve been following carefully, because I think he’s absolutely right. Comics don’t have an easy rhythm to them where frights are concerned. You can’t control people’s reading habits the way you can their viewing habits when


they’re locked in the cinema. Part of the essence of being scared is losing control. In the theatre, you’re obliged to watch the monster come whether you want to or not. Even with a DVD, you still have to find the pause button if you suddenly find yourself overwhelmed. Reading is a much more leisurely pursuit. You can put the book down. So, yes, I feel it’s important to include as much of the scary stuff as possible. When people put this comic down, I want it to be for the right reasons.”


According to Monfette, BOOM! has yet to place any


Pinhead’s Penance: Another page from the new Hellraiser comic series, and (inset) the cover from Hellraiser #2.


of extreme sado-masochism was a dangerous, bloody animal in the ’80s, but does it still have teeth in today’s world? Now that the edges of the genre’s charted ter- ritory are marked by movies such as The Human Centipede and A Serbian Film, Pin- head and his colleagues might seem tame in comparison. “[When I wrote The Hellbound Heart] there was a sense that I was referencing


what I knew of the very early stages of a nascent community,” says Barker. “These people that enjoy pain and often times fetishize themselves, it was something that was fresh to me. … Now, though, I think we’ve got to push it a lot farther. So much of that stuff is ‘been there, worn it, pierced that.’ You know, that imagery has come in and out of fashion so many times that we have to push a lot harder to use that imagery in a fresh kind of way. It’s definitely going to be a challenge, but then, horror has always been a challenge.” Hellraiser’s initial timeliness was a major point of discussion for Barker and Mon-


fette when they began mapping out the new series. “It came out at a time when Clive wanted to write about this fetishistic lifestyle that many people at the time were averse to,” says Monfette. “He found a way to translate that into horror and turn it into an iconography. Almost 30 years later, to keep wailing on the theme of S&M is far less subversive than exploring some other themes [that are timely today]. The theme of these eight issues is less about a metaphor for any particular subculture, and more about making Pinhead and Kirsty into characters and taking the series se- riously in a way that it hasn’t been taken seriously in a very long time. BOOM! is letting us do an incredibly violent and horrific character piece, which you just don’t see anymore.”


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restrictions on what he and Barker can write, or what artist Leonardo Manco (Hellblazer) may illustrate. “They haven’t asked me to pull back, and I’m asking Leonardo to draw, and BOOM! to publish, some fairly strange and shocking violent images. I am very fortunate, as a writer, to have an incredible amount of freedom. ... Clive’s in- clination is always, let’s go further, let’s do more. And BOOM! has been right there with us.” In addition to the new Hellraiser material, BOOM! is


also re-releasing previous Pinhead stories under the title Hellraiser: Masterworks. The first volume, which is out now, collects stories originally published by Marvel and contains work by the likes of Neil Gaiman (Sandman),


Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Kevin O’Neill (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Alex Ross (Kingdom Come). While the arrival of more new Cenobite stories will ultimately depend on the success


of the first eight issues of Hellraiser, both Barker and Monfette have ambitious plans for future story arcs. “It’s very difficult to say anything about the direction except to say it’s a richer,


more interesting story than anything we’ve been able to do with the movies,” Barker says. “And if the comic runs the distance, which I hope it does, I anticipate a diversi- fication of storylines, which will allow me to have my own private corner in the uni- verse where I can do something that is wholly my twisted own. That would be a lot of fun.”


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