First of all thank you for your time. Outcast is great, personally I appreciate the comic book more than the tv show.
Yeah, me too. We tried to make the comic book and the tv show different, keeping them in the same field and telling the same story but in a different way, so it’s normal that people like best one or another. But I think the tv show is also great.
Well, it doesn’t have the same ryhthm as the first series of The Walking Dead, for example. It has a great first episode, but then it becomes really slow.
Well, it’s a different type of story. Even in the comic book it’s much more about atmosphere, it brings creepiness on the reader, for example. You have to take your time with it, while something like The Walking Dead has a faster pace, more action oriented. It’s just different, depends on what you like to watch.
The Walking Dead is now a thing, especially after the tv show. Was it hard to make another story with Kirkman, did you feel the pressure of creating another big hit?
The Walking Dead was a great phenomenon that kind of took over the world, you can’t recreate something like that. Doesn’t matter the quality of the book, it’s something you can’t plan and you can’t recreate, because it’s just something that happens at the right time in the right place. So I never tried to do something that big, I just tried to make our book the best way possible, something that people enjoy, but I never wanted to compare it to The Walking Dead. It’s like comparing something to Batman or Spider-Man, they’re just too big.
Why did you decide to create a story about exorcists and demons?
Kirkman approached me with the idea and it sounded great, plus it’s nice working with him. It was something creepy, atmospheric, something slow paced, it was a real horror book, and it got me excited because I love horror since I was a kid.
Since you’re a fan, I have to ask: what is your top 3 horror movie?
It’s really hard for me to say, but I’d pick the first Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Rec.
Zombie stories are usually gruesome and full of blood, but Outcast is creepy in a different way, so as an author of horror comics, which way do you prefer?
I prefer Outcast, as I said it’s what it got me excited about. In fact, for example, one of my favouite mangas is Uzumaki from Junji Ito, which is exactly that kind of horror.
Since you mentioned Ito, have you ever played Forbidden Siren?
No, I’m not much of a gamer. I enjoy them, but I really don’t have the time, because I get too involved and I couldn’t work otherwise.
So where do you find the inspiration for your works?
A lot of them come from horror movies. I liked the new version of IT, they made a really good job. Me and my wife are huge Stephen King’s fans, he’s the king of horror for a reason, and The Shining is another masterpiece.
If you didn’t write horror comic books, what would you like to do?
Well I love different genres, from romance to scifi, comedy, action, I really love it all, but I think I’d pick sci-fi. Something with technology, aliens, something like that. I also really like all family adventures, like Studio Ghibli’s works.
If I may give you a suggestion, I’d love to read a western story written by you. Do you see it possible?
I actually have one. I love westerns also, so I have something planned, it’s going to be a very personal story, and I think it will be my next work after the sci-fi story.
It seems we live in the golden age of horror, which is a genre really popular on TV shows, comic books, movies, videogames, and so on. Why do you think people need to watch horror stories?
I actually think about this a lot. First of all, whenever someone watch TV shows, or movies, or reads a book, any kind of art, it wants to evoke an emotion out of you, it wants to make you feel something. And fear is one of the strongest feelings of them all. So I think this is the answer, you need to feel a rush, and feeling it without actually being in danger is pretty good. That’s why people do bungee jumping, or jumps out of planes, to feel those strong emotions.
So your goal is to make people feel those emotions. Do you think you’re succeeding in this?
I try to do so, yes. I can’t tell you if I’m succeding, because I’m the author, but I try to do it, to create suspense and all, and people seem to enjoy it, that’s important.
Back to Outcast, comic books and tv shows are going on at the same time, but in separate ways. In which way do you think the tv show influences your work on the comic books?
Actually it doesn’t. The tv show is behind, so what they’re doing is adapting the comic books, and I’m still creating it, so it doesn’t really affect what I do. Also because I don’t let it happen. I want them to be different, so people can enjoy them both and not think that one of them is just a copy of the other one. That’s also why I don’t really watch the TV show. I’ve seen something, I’ve watched some episodes, I watched them filming, but I don’t really watch the TV show, because I don’t want it to influence the comic books. When I’m done with the comic books I will watch everything.
In the past, horror movies were gruesome and violent , but they usually had a good ending. Not a happy one, but good: the demon was defeated, somebody survived, and so on. Now they teach us that not always a good story ends up with a good ending. What kind of ending would you like for your story?
First of all I know the ending, so putting that completely aside and with no spoilers, I would like a good ending, because I think the kind of story we are doing with Outcast deserves it. I’m getting attached to the characters, and I really like them, so I would feel really bad if they all just die. But one of my favourite horror movie, as I said, is John Carpenter’s The Thing, and one of the reasons I love it is that it doesn’t really end well. So that can happen too, it could also be an ending that doesn’t answer all the questions, which won’t necessarily be a bad thing. We’ll see.
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