lots of tentacles coming out of it. If I had enough time. You have tattoos, right? I have three. I got one in Paris, which is a nice Templar cross, since my family are allegedly Templars. Then, my logo as a publicity stunt at a store signing in Arizona. We got tattoos at our signing. Me and Ben McCool. And on my shoulder… it’s the beginning of a tapestry, which is the story of the Battle of Hastings done in comic form. The tapestry is 200 feet long. I’ve got a bit of it on my arm.
FM. My first one was Morgan Le Fey. From Arthurian legend. BT. Dude, I know Arthurian legend. I watch EXCALIBUR like, once every three months.
FM. Never seen it. BT. Are you serious? Watch it! It’s John Vorman. The guy did ZARDOS, come on! Have you seen Zardos? Another classic. It’s the one with Sean Connery with a big ponytail, a goatee, and like a mankini. A bright read mankini and a shotgun. It’s an 80s thing. Really bad, but really good. Post-apocalyptic. But Excalibur is a classic! You should watch that. Do you have any monster tattoos?
FM. I don’t! BT. Fail.
FM. You said you watched monster movies as a kid. What movies did you watch? BT. The one that defined my very existence was John Carpenter’s THE THING. That is a proper monster. That is one that is not hokey. It’s serious. But the new movie is probably going to suck. And it’s hilarious because they asked me to do some art, back in the day… it was still being written by a Hollywood agent, who wanted me to pitch a comic and sell it as a prequel. So I could have been involved in the prequel, but I wasn’t. I turned that down. Because you can’t make a prequel to an awesome film. But apparently, they’ve just remade the original film and called it a prequel. I don’t know. I’ll watch it, but. The Thing should not be tampered with. The Thing is a classic. I grew up with The Thing. And ALIEN.
FM. I grew up with POLTERGEIST, myself. It’s not a monster movie, but I saw it when I was eight and it scarred me for life. BT. See, I grew up on dark science fiction. I mean, honestly, horror in science fiction and science fiction is much more scary and realistic in the sense that science fiction is about the future. The way things could be. When you do things in a fantasy setting, you know it’s fake. Whereas science fiction could exist. It’s based in reality. It’s based on science, usually. It’s not fantasy fiction. We know one day there’ll be spaceships, and potentially other life. And that is real. It’s a proper theory. The Thing, Alien and Aliens… EVENT HORIZON was pretty good! Most people hated it, but I loved it. Also a film called DARK CITY by Alex Proyas. That’s one of my favorite ones. That’s where I got the idea for the little girl vampire in 30 DAYS OF NIGHT. Because they have a little boy creature guy, whatever the alien is, and I was like—little kids are creepy when you do them with teeth! So I’m gonna make a little girl vampire! And then she finally made the film—right down to the little pattern on her dress—it was hand-drawn from my drawing. There was some attention to detail on that film, thanks to the director, David Slade. No comment on the actual film. I don’t have a right to diss it. I mean, how many people get a film made of
8 THE GRAVEYARD EXAMINER • NOV 29 - DEC 5, 2011
their books? Seriously. Am I going to slag it off? No. It was great, by the way.
FM. I thought it was unique in that it’s very… dark. There is no comic relief, there is no stupidity, there is no farcical stuff. It’s very intense the entire time. It’s a real horror film. It’s not a horror comedy. BT. I mean, it didn’t win any Academy awards, so I’m disappointed!
FM. My old roommate used to have a vampire cat. If you were sitting down it would climb up your chest and bite your neck. BT. So you had a bad cat experience.
FM. Any final comments? BT. Um. I love aliens. I’m a fan of dark science fiction, with the aliens and creatures like that. I do love mythology, and dark creatures from that.
FM. But that’s cool, because Forry was like that too. When he first started FM, he was skeptical, because he didn’t like horror. His thing was science fiction. BT. There are no definitive monsters in a lot of science fiction, though. THE THING works. But how do you draw the Thing? It can be anything. I’m about redefining things. I mean, classic monsters become a fetish, and it becomes a weird convention. But if it’s called horror, you should be horrified! At least I think so. You want serious stuff, not hokey old school. I mean, even the vampires I did weren’t traditional vampires… and I hate werewolves.
FM. Why do you hate werewolves? Werewolves are awesome! If they’re done correctly. BT. They’re never really done correctly. That’s why I did WELCOME TO HOXFORD. I wanted to change them up a bit, make them look nasty. I made mine look like… you know THE DARK CRYSTAL? You know the Skexxus? I made them look like that. Not vulturey, but... they’ve got big potbellies, and really long snouts… skeletal, with skin running off them, rancid stuff.
FM. Skanky, then. BT. Skankwolves!
FM. Can we coin that? Skankwolves. I like it.
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