Exclusive Interview: Talking Horror Comics with Sandy King Carpenter
Jerry Smith
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Horror comics are coming back in a major way, thanks to imprints like Joe Hill’s Hill House Comics for DC and this writer’s personal favorite, the Sandy King and John Carpenter (Yes, that John Carpenter)-led Storm King Comics. With titles like the recent Redhead, The Standoff, Asylum and the always enjoyable anthologies Tales for a Halloween Night and Tales of Science Fiction, Storm King has shown how crucial the storytelling aspect is to giving genre fans excellent output and comics that stick with you, long after reading. Storm King CEO Sandy King-Carpenter began her career as script supervisor to filmmaking legends like John Cassavetes and Francis Ford Coppola and has for decades, been a producing force to be reckoned with, having produced films like In the Mouth of Madness, Vampires, and others. King-Carpenter’s knack for putting together creative teams with storytelling being the main focus is unparalleled and being much of the creative force behind Storm King, Sandy was nice enough to chat with Dread Central about the work the company has put out, as well as what’s in store. Read on!
Dread Central: Back in the days of the video store era, there would always be straight top video genre films that had the “Presented By” label above the title, with the names of people like Wes Craven and so on. I’m sure John (Carpenter) was probably asked to do the same, whether it be using his name for movies or even comic books. Was that somewhat of a basis for starting Storm King, to have John’s name above titles he actually helped develop and create, as opposed to just using his name to help sell something?
Sandy King-Carpenter: You’re right! For years and years, John had been approached to put his name on comics and well,…they were shit. They just wanted to put his name on them to sell copies. That wasn’t interesting. What ended up happening was that we had been trying for years to put together a project with Thomas Ian Griffith (Vampires). It was pre-Breaking Bad, so go figure, everyone said, “this is too dark.”The project was set up at a studio and I was sitting through yet another meeting with insufferable development people we had brought a lot of art to show them. They kept countering the story, which was set in Los Angeles, by saying, “well what if it was a sleepy little town,” and I said, “No, we’re not going non-union in North Carolina.” The story wasn’t this small town where something happens, it was very much Los Angeles, and the movie was that the devil comes through as a fuck you to God, in the city of Angels. That was a specific plot point. So, this little development assistant goes, “Ya know, it’s not like there’s a graphic novel that we have to match this to..” and I said, “You know what? Actually, it is.” I realized that the situation was going to be one of those where it’s just a deal to them, it was never going to come to life and I had all of this visual references in my head and it felt like with all of these characters, it seemed like it would be ideal for a graphic novel. That was the moment I was kicked under the table by a six-foot vampire and an agent at the same time (Laughs). We all walked out and they asked, “What was that about?!” And I told them, “We’re going to do a comic book.” I went home and John asked, “How did it go??!” And I told him about the comic book idea and he said, “..seriously? What do we know about comic books?” And I said, “Nothing.” We spent two years researching the art and business of comics. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that just because we knew how to make movies, that we automatically knew how to make comics. I also don’t think that every comic should be a movie and every movie should be a comic, but THIS one just felt like it would be perfect and it wouldn’t be like those other things, with John’s name just to sell someone else’s stuff, we would create and develop it ourselves. That became Asylum, and we ended up winning awards for it, which is a bad thing, because it turns you into a vampire that thinks, “Wow, we need to do more and more of these!” We do it in the same offices that we make TV shows and movies in and like the movies, we put together a great team and John is involved in all of the comics.
DC: One of the things I really love about Storm King Comics is how the stories are always so interesting and they have the ability to immediately pull their readers in. Early in your career, you were the Script Supervisor for films directed by John Cassavetes, Michael Mann, Francis Ford Coppola and some of the greatest storytellers around. Did that help inform how crucial and important the story is to you? I know you serve as the editor for all of the Storm King output as well.
SKC: I write some of them too! Of course it did. I don’t think you can be paired up with the great filmmakers I was lucky enough to work with, without learning about how important that is. I did everything from dramas to comedies to horror films to even documentaries. That background informed what I look for now. What I saw in comics is the chance for us to really shake it up, to bring screenwriters and novelists into the graphic novel storytelling medium. I’m not jeopardizing anyone because it’s our company, what’s the worst that could happen, someone doesn’t like it and wasted four dollars and an hour of their time. It’s a great medium and a disciplined one. A lot of comic writers maybe weren’t given a lot of free reign and I like giving them that. Putting together a comic is a lot like putting a movie together, in that I’m able to create a team and pair up writers and artists who haven’t been able to work together in the past. It’s a lot of fun and you’re right. By getting to work with people like Cassavetes or Coppola or Walter Hill, it did inform what I do now.
DC: Speaking of ones you’ve written yourself, your story “The Storm” from Tales For a Halloween Night Volume 5 is one of my favorite stories Storm King has put out. It has such a meditative tone to it and paired with the art, it really makes for a fun time, reading that one. How did that story in particular come to be?
SKC: Thank you! That one came about because of these guys from England, who call me periodically for interviews. Out of the blue, on the phone, they asked me to tell them a ghost story. I was like, “Oh…ok.” I grew up on a ranch in Colorado, on Storm King mountain, which we named the company after. I used to take my horse and some of the animals and go along Mitchell Creek, to places I wasn’t supposed to. My dad would always tell me stories about spirits there, so when I was asked to tell a ghost story, I made up a story that was half based on my childhood. When we were putting together stories for the book (Tales For a Halloween Night, Vol. 5), I thought Trevor Denham, who was really good at drawing horses and war reenactments, would be great to do the artwork for it.
DC: That story really illustrates what I love about the work you do. When you get a Storm King book, especially the anthologies, you know that you’re going to get a group of stories that feel VERY different from the one before it. It’s a horror and/or comic lover’s dream, to have people like John, David J. Schow, Steve Niles and so on, all under one book, working towards the same goal. Was that important to you, giving readers something big and united and unexpected?
SKC: Absolutely. I felt that that’s something that was missing from a lot of horror comics, they felt formulaic. There are so many unique voices found within the genre and I thought having an anthology series was like having a box of horror chocolates at night. You could sit down and experience what you experience with anthologies novels, but do it in the graphic medium. I made sure that we had a ghost story, a haunted house, a cursed ring, basically have all of these different types of horror, all within one book. I love having someone like Amanda Deibert, who I think is the ultimate women’s horror writer or a newer writer like Sara Richard, who does such creepy work. It’s a lot of fun having people like them, or David J. Schow, doing comics! It took an act of God to get David to do one and now he’s hooked. He’s turned into an insatiable vampire for horror comics. Sometimes I’ll give them a challenge and say, “Here’s a painting, can you write a story around it,” and it’s just me fucking with them (laughs).
DREAD: I have to ask about Redhead by Duane Swierczynski, which isn’t just one of my favorite comics you’ve put out but one of my favorite comics in general. That story feels like the type of event thriller films that used to hit theaters and were so much fun to watch but don’t get made these days. It’s huge and just leaps off the page.
SKC: That’s Duane. He can write anything, as he’s proven. Duane can write fiction, non-fiction, novels, comics…it’s just insane. I feel lucky to have met him. He has a great story about how he came up with the story of Redhead and he came to me with it and I told him to just fly with it, which he did. He created a truly epic, cinematic story with that one. He wrote it under very tragic circumstances, his little girl got leukemia and had to go through bone marrow transplants and everything else, but didn’t make it. Duane wanted to turn it around, turn around the affliction that happened to her and get vengeance, so he wrote her fight into that story. If you want to feel even more for the main character in that story, that’s the story behind it.
DREAD: It’s a story that almost SCREAMS to be made into a movie or some kind of viewing experience.
SKC: That one I could see doing well as a limited series kind of thing. I also think that teaming Duane up with Jason Felix was great, because Jason’s art for that one is magic, he made that story LIVE. There’s always some truth found in anything Duane does and I think that Redhead really shows that.
DREAD: You’ve also recently launched Storm Kids Comics, which is awesome. I can finally sit my kids down and have them just as excited about horror comics as I am.
SKC: Oh, there’s one that’s coming that is going to rock you. I have two words for you: Booger Troll!
DREAD: Sold. My kids thank you in advance. What made you want to do a new imprint, geared more towards kid-friendly horror this time around?
SKC: There were two things that led to that. The first one was that at conventions, a lot of times, guys would come up with their kids and we do adult horror. Not in a porn-sense, but in that we do adult stories that are more existentially about what scares us adults. Kids have a need to address THEIR fears, feeling loss or death for the first time. Important stuff, but they need to deal with it on their own level, not ours. I wasn’t seeing a lot of things geared towards kids that were also well written, but still on their level and appropriate for them. Everything has been sanitized today, so that roller coaster ride that scares the hell out of you but that you walk off safely from afterwards, isn’t there anymore. So on one hand, I didn’t think there was a lot of great horror or sci-fi to offer them…and I didn’t have anything to hand THEM when they were standing there at our booth with their parents. So, I did a test run of one of the Tales For a Halloween Night stories, where kids go to a house that’s haunted by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe and Cole Porter and those guys. So that test issue was one that was handed out during Halloween time by the comic shops. The kid dug it, so I got (Steve) Niles to do Monica Bleue, a werewolf story…
DREAD: I love that one.
SKC: We have a lot of coming out, the first couple Storm Kids comics are for the 12-18 range, but we have books coming out that are down to 8 years old and so on, so there’s a lot.
DREAD: I know the Tales For a Halloween Night series was set up at SYFY but that didn’t work out, so it’s now at Paramount, am I right?
SKC: Yep. I can’t say much more than that.
DREAD: I can only imagine how much fun it is to have to keep that stuff quiet.
SKC: We have a good amount of stuff going on, with trade paperbacks and we have about twelve books going on right now, so it’s a lot. We also have stuff set up and going on at Universal, Paramount, Netflix, I’m in the middle of executive producing a movie for Amazon, which should be out in October. There’s a whole lot of product that will be out soon, but it’s to the point where you can’t say anything until THEY say something. So apparently, I’m REALLY busy doing nothing at the moment (laughs).
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