Exclusive: Nicholas Swift Talks Modern Horrors
Did you play Horror Top Trumps as a kid? The card game captured the hearts and minds of horror fans all over the world, and even gave some players their very first taste of the genre.
Nicholas Swift loves Horror Top Trumps so much that he created a homage in the form of a new card game called Modern Horrors. I talked to him about this beautiful looking new game which I can’t wait to play with my friends (if I had any).
Learn more about Modern Horrors on its official website and on Twitter and Facebook.
Dread Central: So this is a love-letter to the original Top Trumps Horror sets?
Nicholas Swift: The original horror Top Trumps are burned in my memory – like any kid of the 80s I played with them and just remember finding the artwork incredibly vivid and gruesome. I can’t remember if I actually owned a set or played with a friend’s, but I remember finding the graphics morbidly fascinating – dripping axes, bloody fangs, heads being chopped off – that kind of thing! Seems incredible now that they would be sold to children, since most of them are reconfigured portraits of monsters from what would then have been XXX films, but there we go!
Of course looking at them with grown up eyes I can see that most of the images are dashed off caricatures of Universal and Hammer Horror monsters – you’ve got Christopher Lee as Dracula in there, Lou Cheney, and so on. I had to laugh that the artist, whoever they were, took two monsters from 1970’s Doctor Who (a Sea Devil and a Daemon, Jon Pertwee fans) and reconfigured them onto the cards as something else! Copyright and intellectual property obviously not a concern in those days! But I kept returning to these cards, and along with picture books like the Usborne Book of Ghosts and Hamlyn Book of Horror – they fired up my imagination!
I have a taste for the horror stuff of the 1970s and 1980s – particularly the campy, gothic stuff. There was always a sense of humour behind it I think – plus lots of fruity English characters chewing scenery and heaving vampire lady bosoms. So yeah, the Horror Top Trumps and Hammer Horror were a bit contraband when I was a kid, which is probably why I responded to it!
Funnily enough though the whole thing started because my son was making some Top Trump cards as part of a project from school. I joined in, thought about the old horror cards – and then the concept of updating them with “Modern” Horrors… So you see an innocent school project got twisted….!
DC: The most interesting thing about Modern Horrors is that the cards are based on modern troupes of how people are represented in the media (Nanny State, Internet Troll, Smartphone Zombie, Chattering Asses etc). Why did you decide to go in the direction of this particular angle?
NS: Well, my background is a weird fusion of comedy writing and advertising. I was a performer in sketch shows on the Edinburgh and London circuits, and I’ve written for Radio 4 and small smatterings of TV. But then I moved into marketing, where people blurt on about demographics and trends and the ideal consumer – and I have to confess that a lot of the time it just makes me roll my eyes – as if everyone can be reduced down to a “type.” But then on the other hand my comedy brain tells me that’s exactly what they can be – comedy tropes and stereotypes and so on.
I also unhealthily spend most of my day on the internet which exposes you to the full unpleasant tumult of human behavior. I mean, the internet is an incredible communication tool – but it also brings out the worst in people. So I think Modern Horrors catches some of that – hopefully in an amusing way.
DC: Did you also want to address the fact that the media has a tendency to define people by said troupes?
NS: Not just the media – we all have a tendency to do it don’t we? See the way a person looks and make a judgement about them… A lot of modern media magnifies that by addressing our worst impulses to make sales and confirm our own prejudices. Modern Horrors is a satire and therefore political – but hopefully its coming at things from a variety of different angles… One of the things I’m heartened by is that people who have the cards have said to me which Modern Horror they “secretly” think they are like…
DC: My personal favorite card was the one pictured below, which was clearly intended to be a parody of a certain right-wing news organization. Does it bother you that millions of people actually listen to the poisonous nonsense spread by Fox News?
NS: Well it does. Trump is entirely a creation of Fox News and the modern media – making boring politics entertainment to keep people interested… But then I’m afraid I get equally irritated by the pompous, high horse tone of a lot of left media – The Guardian can be just as clickbaity as The Daily Mail. I have a “Tory Whip” card in the printed deck, but I’m tormented about balance so created one taking the mickey out of Corbyn and Momentum and put it online – Modern Horrors needs to be an equal opportunity offender! But I think the style of the cartoons soften the satire a little – I don’t want to be so hard-edged people need a strong stomach for it – it’s more about making things look ridiculous, rather than foaming at the mouth angry!! The only way to stay sane in the modern world is to laugh, and so on…
DC: Did you create the illustrations?
NS: Yes – I’ve always been a keen cartoonist. So I come up with the characters, illustrate them and write the gags.
DC: Are you looking into the possibility of mass producing Modern Horrors card sets?
NS: The first run of 1000 cards were made possible by Kickstarter (you can still see the amusing video here) and I’m selling them at comic cons, and on Amazon through the website. They are also available at independent retailers like Gosh Comics in London. We’ll see how things go before I create a second deck – I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback so I’m definitely encouraged to do more (and have loads of ideas for more characters.) Whether that means another deck of cards at this point I don’t know, the game is a fun play, but my real interest is in the characters, the illustration and the satire – so I’ll be looking to create a book from the “Modern Horrors” concept next. Watch this space.
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