Synopsis of "Dead Girls: Girls Just Wanna Get Even" by Beck Kubrick:
In the sleepy town of Clossdale, a serial killer is on the loose.
Five girls have vanished in five weeks. Bodies are turning up in the woods. And everyone has the same suspect in mind: Ash Hargreeves.
There’s just one problem—Ash didn’t do it.
Sure, she’s the daughter of the infamous Clossdale Killer. Sure, these new murders look suspiciously like a copycat spree. And, okay, Ash is a little strange and has exactly two friends to her name. But when the killings hit far too close to home, Ash decides she’s done sitting around waiting to become the next victim.
With her best friends by her side, Ash is going to find the real killer, clear her mother’s name, and make sure no more girls end up dead.
Because if there’s one thing Ash knows, it’s this: when life turns into a slasher movie, you’d better ask yourself--
WWJLCD? What Would Jamie Lee Curtis Do?
Beck Kubrick is a UK-based writer and cartoonist whose work blends comedy, horror, and a healthy obsession with the apocalypse. Their stories often feature terrible girls, questionable decisions, and the end of the world.
In the sleepy town of Clossdale, a serial killer is on the loose.
Five girls have vanished in five weeks. Bodies are turning up in the woods. And everyone has the same suspect in mind: Ash Hargreeves.
There’s just one problem—Ash didn’t do it.
Sure, she’s the daughter of the infamous Clossdale Killer. Sure, these new murders look suspiciously like a copycat spree. And, okay, Ash is a little strange and has exactly two friends to her name. But when the killings hit far too close to home, Ash decides she’s done sitting around waiting to become the next victim.
With her best friends by her side, Ash is going to find the real killer, clear her mother’s name, and make sure no more girls end up dead.
Because if there’s one thing Ash knows, it’s this: when life turns into a slasher movie, you’d better ask yourself--
WWJLCD? What Would Jamie Lee Curtis Do?
Beck Kubrick is a UK-based writer and cartoonist whose work blends comedy, horror, and a healthy obsession with the apocalypse. Their stories often feature terrible girls, questionable decisions, and the end of the world.
1. First off, describe Dead Girls in three words.
Bloody good time.
2. What was the genesis of Dead Girls? Was there a particular slasher movie, character, or idea that made you think, “I want to tell this story”?
Most of my stories start with an initial thought or joke or moment I’ll write down or doodle in my sketchbook. I love horror and I was listening to Penelope Scott’s song Dead Girls (I paid subtle homage with my title) and Lotta’ True Crime. So I started thinking of how horror tropes would interact with the modern world. For Dead Girls it was the idea of debating which pronouns to use for the killer; is a female serial killer a girl boss? Which led to thinking about Scream (1996), since it’s a post-modern, subversive, meta-slasher. But now it’s still thirty years old. It wouldn’t work anymore. No one answers the phone! Then I just thought about how it’d be handled now; therapy speak, Instagram carousels and streamers etc.
Also, the portrayal of death and killing in the media is strange; an action hero can kill ten unnamed henchmen and still be a hero, but he has to let the names villain monologue. In The Walking Dead (2010), my beloved show, after eleven seasons of killing countless baddies, a decade into the apocalypse, they still debate morality- why do we need our characters to overtly say that ‘killing is bad’? I wasn’t really interested in hashing that out again, at least not at length. I’m trusting that the audience ‘get’ it and to sit in the grey with me and my characters.
To be clear, in real life, I still feel immense guilt for killing a fly when I was eight (RIP) and I’m not advocating for violence, but fictional stories aren’t real, we can have a little fun!
3. The book is described as a campy, feminist send-up of classic slasher tropes. What tropes were you most excited to celebrate, and which ones were you determined to turn on their heads?
I love horror so I just selfishly wanted to make a story that I’d enjoy and therefore celebrate the genre. This book is as much a love letter as it is a death threat. We’ve got the small town, uncovering a mystery that reveals things about the past, the not-quite-supernatural slow moving killer, fun masks, the secluded woods and so much more. There’s so many references to the media I love.
On the flip side, horror has a complex relationship with identity and especially girls/ women and characters with disabilities. Horror has simultaneously been groundbreaking but certain tropes and ‘boxes’ for female characters remain. This ties into the trope of who ‘should’ die or ‘deserves’ die, TV Tropes has an article called ‘The Sorting Algorithm of Morality’, which lays out characteristics such as age, race, sexual orientation etc. and how likely a character that fits that description is to die. I didn’t want to subscribe to those tropes.
4. The title Dead Girls immediately evokes a long history of women and girls being victims in horror. What does the title mean to you, and were you consciously engaging with that history?
In the show Deadloch (2022), a police officer tells her supervisor a naked body has washed up on the beach, the supervisor then asks if she’s attractive and is disappointed to find out the victim is a man. We expect that girl equals victim and victim equals girl (unless you’re a final girl).
My title is a little tongue in cheek; ‘Dead’ is so blunt and final, whilst ‘girls’ are traditionally thought to be passive, innocent, sweet. So there’s a fun juxtaposition to it. It is also a little confronting, they are literal girls, children, dealing with life and death, it’s a horrifying reality. But we’re so used to it and we see it outside of fiction too. True crime often involves a male killer, who is mythologized and becomes infamous, and a female victim, who at best is mostly forgotten, and at worst is scrutinized for not being the ‘right’ kind of victim.
5. Ash is described as a bit of a weirdo with only two friends. What did you want readers to understand about her beneath that exterior?
She’s been told who she is; she’s been told she’s an outcast so she is one. She’s told she’s dangerous, violent, like her mum, so she is…the same world that wants to punish her, made her strong enough to fight back.
However, Ash isn’t a total victim. She does have a little of the classic tough-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside trope, but regardless of how soft her life was, Ash would always be a little prickly, she’s wired that way. Ash is a cornered dog, she will bite back…and she’ll enjoy it.
6. How did Ash develop as a character during the writing and drawing process? Did she surprise you at all?
I thought Ash was going to be so angry and explosive all the time and have more vitriol for her foster sister, Cassie, but when I was writing to her it just didn’t feel right. Not to call her a dog again, but she has the vibe of a rescue dog who looks mean and isn’t ready to totally let her guard down, but will let you pet her…most of the time. I think in the spirit of her not having to be confined to a box or trope, she sort of oscillates; she cracks jokes, she can be dry, she can be quick to anger etc.
Like many of us are, or were, she’s a depressed teen, she feels trapped in her life but she’s not totally given up; there’s a little spark in her that is trying. Then she’s in this insane heightened, life-or-death situation, originally I thought she’d still just be apathetic to it all, but then it was more like: finally there’s an outlet for all these feelings she has, reality matches what’s inside her. It’s the first time in her life that her anger, her desire to fight and her temper have been useful. It’s a little self destructive but it’s also destructive to the bad guys, so it’s a win!
7. The story plays with the familiar idea of the “final girl.” What does the concept of the final girl mean to you, and how did you want to reinvent it through Ash?
The idea of a final girl was progressive to a point but it’s ultimately another box to put girls into. Final girls are exceptions, they’re ‘not like other girls’ and that’s why they survive. They’re pretty-in-a-girl-next-door-way (assuming you live in a majority white, wealthy, American suburb) and innocent and virginal. The hero can’t be a man, according to Carol J. Clover, who coined the term ‘final girl’, as audiences expect a man to fight back. But how do you get an audience to sympathise with a woman? You make her the perfect kind of woman: a girl. Then you make her suffer so much that the audience ‘is forced’ (1987) to sympathise with her.
Ash is messy and weird and she’s not the way a girl ‘should’ be, she’s me and my friends and characters I love. Traditional final girls survive for upholding and representing polite society and the status quo, they often get saved by male police officers as if to say ‘the system works!’. Meanwhile the ‘other girls’ are sexualised, brutally murdered and the audience is often invited to celebrate their deaths.
There’s been a rise of ‘good for her’ and ‘coming of rage’ films, it shouldn’t be transgressive for a girl, or anyone, to fight back when it’s kill or be killed. I’m more interested in a girl who’s looking for a fight; a final girl who isn’t waiting to be the final girl. Can we love multiple final girls? Girls who aren’t willing to be tortured for most of the story? What if they have other choices and are choosing to fight? What if they’re good at fighting? What if they’re good at killing? What if they…like it? I don’t want to play into gender stereotypes and binaries, I don’t want Ash to be ‘acting like a male character’ as if that’s interesting for anyone; I just wanted to write a character who felt more real.
Having multiple girls working together also totally negated the ‘not like other girls’ trope. I didn’t want to negate every trope as that would probably be quite boring and also negating a thing still gives it power; Ash isn’t super feminine, she has an androgynous name, she has a history that links her to the killings etc. but she’s not trapped in this idea, she’s me and my friends, she’s not a typical hero. But then her foster sister, Cassie, and bestie, Jamie, fulfill and don’t fulfill different tropes, they have their own relationship with girlhood, femininity and identity…and they’re also fighting.
8. Ash has to contend not only with an actual killer but with the assumptions people make about her because of her mother. Were you interested in exploring the ways girls get judged by their families, reputations, or identities?
Absolutely. I’ve said it a few times talking about this book…and maybe I’m a little biased, but we never forgive teenage girls (and therefore women) for growing up. Teenagers find themselves in this strange purgatory; they're both child and adult. When an authority figure wants to look down on them and patronise them, they’re an innocent child. But when the same authority figure wants something from them or to punish them or, worse, to sexualise them, they demand maturity and suddenly that child is a ‘young woman’. Shout out to my old co-worker who called me a ‘stupid little girl’ for reporting our creepy team leader for hitting on me.
Girlhood and femininity can be wonderful things, but they’re sticky; they stick to you no matter what you do. People will have expectations, make assumptions and judgements on you based on them and sometimes it feels like a curse. If a girl isn’t the way she ‘should’ be, she’s a failure, she’s punished. The story of Ash’s mum sticks to her too, the sins of the mother and all that. Ash is born into a story that she didn’t write for herself. They’ve told her who she is and then punished her for being it, she can’t win. And it’s not a game worth playing.
Whilst this story does focus on Ash, and therefore the experience of a girl, I think everyone is forever contending with who they are and who others expect them to be in some way from society, family etc.
9. If Ash could watch only three horror movies before going out to hunt the copycat killer, what would you make her watch?
I think Ash needs to watch Bluey (2018) more than she needs to watch any horror films since she’s living one. She’s not very clued up on the tropes of horror films and her friends have to keep educating her, so I think watching Scream (1996) would give her a crash course. Then Becky (2020), which is so fun- Ash and Becky would be best friends. Then You’re Next (2011) for good measure.
10. The book sounds like it’s having fun with horror’s conventions rather than simply criticizing them. How important was it to you that the book remain fun and entertaining while engaging with feminist ideas?
I love horror, I also love overthinking, with enough time left alone with my thoughts I could think of a way to criticize and celebrate just about anything. I don’t think engaging with feminist ideas and having fun are mutually exclusive, I also didn’t really set out to write a ‘feminist’ book. I didn’t intentionally read or research feminist theory or plan how I was going to trojan horse my agenda into the story. I wrote a fiction story, not a manifesto!
I just wrote a story that I’d like to read, I wrote characters that feel like me and my friends (or my enemies). I wrote from the perspective that women and girls are people and should be written with the same complexity afforded to any other character. Slasher films traditionally have girls as protagonists and I love stories about terrible girls, doing terrible things so it just made sense.
11. If Dead Girls would be adapted into a film or TV series, what scene are you looking forward to seeing on the screen?
I keep bringing up the unicorn scene but…the unicorn scene. I think it’d be so fun for the style to change and especially if it was live action, to bring in some animation and star wipe transitions and some nintendocore music or J-Pop. In fact, just get Alien by Maximum the Hormone (I think that’s the English title), the switch up in that song and the music video are perfect.
12. What are some of your favorite slasher movies or horror films, and did any particular films directly influence Dead Girls?
I love horror, I grew up watching The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror specials so I learnt the tropes and language of horror from parody before I knew the originals. When I graduated to ‘real’ horror (when I was a little too young), I was drawn to comedy-horror like Cabin in the Woods (2011) and Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010). Also the film You’re Next (2011), which isn’t a comedy but subverts everything by revealing the protagonist was actually raised by a survivalist who has basically trained her for this exact scenario.
13. Were there scenes that changed significantly once you began drawing them?
I find figuring out stories on the page so much easier than writing an outline or a really detailed plan (generally you do need some kind of plan though) so there were small changes for the sake of making something more visually interesting or lots of little character moments that emerged.
The scene with the unicorn has a totally different art style, partially just for fun but it was also sort of a workaround. I knew I wanted each fight scene to have a distinct feel and inspiration, there’s not many western comics that have violence and gore like this that are directed at teens so we were figuring out where the line was and I just thought ‘what if I make it really cute?’. There’s still blood…but there’s also lots of rainbows and confetti and sparkles so it’s okay, right?
14. Was there a particular scene or sequence in Dead Girls that was especially challenging—or especially fun—to draw?
I tried to have as much fun drawing the book as possible so that hopefully that would imbue the story with fun. So any time I changed up the style it was really fun and the novelty of breaking out oil paint or watercolor or colored pencils was so fun. I also really liked drawing action-y scenes which I wasn’t expecting but now I want to draw more action. I grew up watching a lot of Kung-Fu films so I’d love to draw some of that.
15. You’ve worked with Cartoon Network, Mad Cave Studios, Oni Press, and others. How have those experiences shaped your approach to creating comics?
I subscribe to David Lynch’s theory of the unconscious, which is basically that everything is sort of percolating in the background all the time and everything we think, feel and experience is back there and if we’re lucky, it turns into an idea. So I’m sure those experiences have shaped my approach, but I’m not super sure how. Once I signed an NDA that had Pikachu on it, which was pretty cool.
16. If one was to visit the United Kingdom, which three places do you think that person should pay a visit and why?
I don’t think anyone should visit the UK, but if they must; Brighton is a lovely, weird little seaside town in England, then maybe Eryri National Park in Wales and Edinburgh in Scotland?
17. Is there anything about the Manchester comics or creative scene that you think people outside the UK might not know about?
Manchester is well known for its music and its football and those things are truly inescapable here. I don’t follow football but I know when a match is on because everyone is wearing red or blue. Then I’ll hear the chants of football fans heading to the stadium and it sounds like the end of the world.
For music there’s a million venues and murals and we get special regional ads that include song lyrics and puns. There’s still a cool underground scene, we’re lucky to have lots of indie spaces, like Affleck’s Palace, around.
18. Last question: If the killer were coming for you tonight, what would Jamie Lee Curtis do—and would you actually listen?
My hubris is that I totally think I could talk my way out of it, I’d be like ‘Hey buddy, I get it…’ and we’d become best friends.
But that is (probably) not what Jamie Lee Curtis would do, I like to think she’d set up a series of Home Alone-esque (1990) traps and have a cigarette and wait…and she’d win. So, I guess I’d do that, because I trust the fictionalized version of her that exists in my mind. I’m pretty sure Jamie Lee Curtis quit smoking and I don’t smoke, but smoking a cigarette in those circumstances just feels right.
Bloody good time.
2. What was the genesis of Dead Girls? Was there a particular slasher movie, character, or idea that made you think, “I want to tell this story”?
Most of my stories start with an initial thought or joke or moment I’ll write down or doodle in my sketchbook. I love horror and I was listening to Penelope Scott’s song Dead Girls (I paid subtle homage with my title) and Lotta’ True Crime. So I started thinking of how horror tropes would interact with the modern world. For Dead Girls it was the idea of debating which pronouns to use for the killer; is a female serial killer a girl boss? Which led to thinking about Scream (1996), since it’s a post-modern, subversive, meta-slasher. But now it’s still thirty years old. It wouldn’t work anymore. No one answers the phone! Then I just thought about how it’d be handled now; therapy speak, Instagram carousels and streamers etc.
Also, the portrayal of death and killing in the media is strange; an action hero can kill ten unnamed henchmen and still be a hero, but he has to let the names villain monologue. In The Walking Dead (2010), my beloved show, after eleven seasons of killing countless baddies, a decade into the apocalypse, they still debate morality- why do we need our characters to overtly say that ‘killing is bad’? I wasn’t really interested in hashing that out again, at least not at length. I’m trusting that the audience ‘get’ it and to sit in the grey with me and my characters.
To be clear, in real life, I still feel immense guilt for killing a fly when I was eight (RIP) and I’m not advocating for violence, but fictional stories aren’t real, we can have a little fun!
3. The book is described as a campy, feminist send-up of classic slasher tropes. What tropes were you most excited to celebrate, and which ones were you determined to turn on their heads?
I love horror so I just selfishly wanted to make a story that I’d enjoy and therefore celebrate the genre. This book is as much a love letter as it is a death threat. We’ve got the small town, uncovering a mystery that reveals things about the past, the not-quite-supernatural slow moving killer, fun masks, the secluded woods and so much more. There’s so many references to the media I love.
On the flip side, horror has a complex relationship with identity and especially girls/ women and characters with disabilities. Horror has simultaneously been groundbreaking but certain tropes and ‘boxes’ for female characters remain. This ties into the trope of who ‘should’ die or ‘deserves’ die, TV Tropes has an article called ‘The Sorting Algorithm of Morality’, which lays out characteristics such as age, race, sexual orientation etc. and how likely a character that fits that description is to die. I didn’t want to subscribe to those tropes.
4. The title Dead Girls immediately evokes a long history of women and girls being victims in horror. What does the title mean to you, and were you consciously engaging with that history?
In the show Deadloch (2022), a police officer tells her supervisor a naked body has washed up on the beach, the supervisor then asks if she’s attractive and is disappointed to find out the victim is a man. We expect that girl equals victim and victim equals girl (unless you’re a final girl).
My title is a little tongue in cheek; ‘Dead’ is so blunt and final, whilst ‘girls’ are traditionally thought to be passive, innocent, sweet. So there’s a fun juxtaposition to it. It is also a little confronting, they are literal girls, children, dealing with life and death, it’s a horrifying reality. But we’re so used to it and we see it outside of fiction too. True crime often involves a male killer, who is mythologized and becomes infamous, and a female victim, who at best is mostly forgotten, and at worst is scrutinized for not being the ‘right’ kind of victim.
5. Ash is described as a bit of a weirdo with only two friends. What did you want readers to understand about her beneath that exterior?
She’s been told who she is; she’s been told she’s an outcast so she is one. She’s told she’s dangerous, violent, like her mum, so she is…the same world that wants to punish her, made her strong enough to fight back.
However, Ash isn’t a total victim. She does have a little of the classic tough-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside trope, but regardless of how soft her life was, Ash would always be a little prickly, she’s wired that way. Ash is a cornered dog, she will bite back…and she’ll enjoy it.
6. How did Ash develop as a character during the writing and drawing process? Did she surprise you at all?
I thought Ash was going to be so angry and explosive all the time and have more vitriol for her foster sister, Cassie, but when I was writing to her it just didn’t feel right. Not to call her a dog again, but she has the vibe of a rescue dog who looks mean and isn’t ready to totally let her guard down, but will let you pet her…most of the time. I think in the spirit of her not having to be confined to a box or trope, she sort of oscillates; she cracks jokes, she can be dry, she can be quick to anger etc.
Like many of us are, or were, she’s a depressed teen, she feels trapped in her life but she’s not totally given up; there’s a little spark in her that is trying. Then she’s in this insane heightened, life-or-death situation, originally I thought she’d still just be apathetic to it all, but then it was more like: finally there’s an outlet for all these feelings she has, reality matches what’s inside her. It’s the first time in her life that her anger, her desire to fight and her temper have been useful. It’s a little self destructive but it’s also destructive to the bad guys, so it’s a win!
7. The story plays with the familiar idea of the “final girl.” What does the concept of the final girl mean to you, and how did you want to reinvent it through Ash?
The idea of a final girl was progressive to a point but it’s ultimately another box to put girls into. Final girls are exceptions, they’re ‘not like other girls’ and that’s why they survive. They’re pretty-in-a-girl-next-door-way (assuming you live in a majority white, wealthy, American suburb) and innocent and virginal. The hero can’t be a man, according to Carol J. Clover, who coined the term ‘final girl’, as audiences expect a man to fight back. But how do you get an audience to sympathise with a woman? You make her the perfect kind of woman: a girl. Then you make her suffer so much that the audience ‘is forced’ (1987) to sympathise with her.
Ash is messy and weird and she’s not the way a girl ‘should’ be, she’s me and my friends and characters I love. Traditional final girls survive for upholding and representing polite society and the status quo, they often get saved by male police officers as if to say ‘the system works!’. Meanwhile the ‘other girls’ are sexualised, brutally murdered and the audience is often invited to celebrate their deaths.
There’s been a rise of ‘good for her’ and ‘coming of rage’ films, it shouldn’t be transgressive for a girl, or anyone, to fight back when it’s kill or be killed. I’m more interested in a girl who’s looking for a fight; a final girl who isn’t waiting to be the final girl. Can we love multiple final girls? Girls who aren’t willing to be tortured for most of the story? What if they have other choices and are choosing to fight? What if they’re good at fighting? What if they’re good at killing? What if they…like it? I don’t want to play into gender stereotypes and binaries, I don’t want Ash to be ‘acting like a male character’ as if that’s interesting for anyone; I just wanted to write a character who felt more real.
Having multiple girls working together also totally negated the ‘not like other girls’ trope. I didn’t want to negate every trope as that would probably be quite boring and also negating a thing still gives it power; Ash isn’t super feminine, she has an androgynous name, she has a history that links her to the killings etc. but she’s not trapped in this idea, she’s me and my friends, she’s not a typical hero. But then her foster sister, Cassie, and bestie, Jamie, fulfill and don’t fulfill different tropes, they have their own relationship with girlhood, femininity and identity…and they’re also fighting.
8. Ash has to contend not only with an actual killer but with the assumptions people make about her because of her mother. Were you interested in exploring the ways girls get judged by their families, reputations, or identities?
Absolutely. I’ve said it a few times talking about this book…and maybe I’m a little biased, but we never forgive teenage girls (and therefore women) for growing up. Teenagers find themselves in this strange purgatory; they're both child and adult. When an authority figure wants to look down on them and patronise them, they’re an innocent child. But when the same authority figure wants something from them or to punish them or, worse, to sexualise them, they demand maturity and suddenly that child is a ‘young woman’. Shout out to my old co-worker who called me a ‘stupid little girl’ for reporting our creepy team leader for hitting on me.
Girlhood and femininity can be wonderful things, but they’re sticky; they stick to you no matter what you do. People will have expectations, make assumptions and judgements on you based on them and sometimes it feels like a curse. If a girl isn’t the way she ‘should’ be, she’s a failure, she’s punished. The story of Ash’s mum sticks to her too, the sins of the mother and all that. Ash is born into a story that she didn’t write for herself. They’ve told her who she is and then punished her for being it, she can’t win. And it’s not a game worth playing.
Whilst this story does focus on Ash, and therefore the experience of a girl, I think everyone is forever contending with who they are and who others expect them to be in some way from society, family etc.
9. If Ash could watch only three horror movies before going out to hunt the copycat killer, what would you make her watch?
I think Ash needs to watch Bluey (2018) more than she needs to watch any horror films since she’s living one. She’s not very clued up on the tropes of horror films and her friends have to keep educating her, so I think watching Scream (1996) would give her a crash course. Then Becky (2020), which is so fun- Ash and Becky would be best friends. Then You’re Next (2011) for good measure.
10. The book sounds like it’s having fun with horror’s conventions rather than simply criticizing them. How important was it to you that the book remain fun and entertaining while engaging with feminist ideas?
I love horror, I also love overthinking, with enough time left alone with my thoughts I could think of a way to criticize and celebrate just about anything. I don’t think engaging with feminist ideas and having fun are mutually exclusive, I also didn’t really set out to write a ‘feminist’ book. I didn’t intentionally read or research feminist theory or plan how I was going to trojan horse my agenda into the story. I wrote a fiction story, not a manifesto!
I just wrote a story that I’d like to read, I wrote characters that feel like me and my friends (or my enemies). I wrote from the perspective that women and girls are people and should be written with the same complexity afforded to any other character. Slasher films traditionally have girls as protagonists and I love stories about terrible girls, doing terrible things so it just made sense.
11. If Dead Girls would be adapted into a film or TV series, what scene are you looking forward to seeing on the screen?
I keep bringing up the unicorn scene but…the unicorn scene. I think it’d be so fun for the style to change and especially if it was live action, to bring in some animation and star wipe transitions and some nintendocore music or J-Pop. In fact, just get Alien by Maximum the Hormone (I think that’s the English title), the switch up in that song and the music video are perfect.
12. What are some of your favorite slasher movies or horror films, and did any particular films directly influence Dead Girls?
I love horror, I grew up watching The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror specials so I learnt the tropes and language of horror from parody before I knew the originals. When I graduated to ‘real’ horror (when I was a little too young), I was drawn to comedy-horror like Cabin in the Woods (2011) and Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010). Also the film You’re Next (2011), which isn’t a comedy but subverts everything by revealing the protagonist was actually raised by a survivalist who has basically trained her for this exact scenario.
13. Were there scenes that changed significantly once you began drawing them?
I find figuring out stories on the page so much easier than writing an outline or a really detailed plan (generally you do need some kind of plan though) so there were small changes for the sake of making something more visually interesting or lots of little character moments that emerged.
The scene with the unicorn has a totally different art style, partially just for fun but it was also sort of a workaround. I knew I wanted each fight scene to have a distinct feel and inspiration, there’s not many western comics that have violence and gore like this that are directed at teens so we were figuring out where the line was and I just thought ‘what if I make it really cute?’. There’s still blood…but there’s also lots of rainbows and confetti and sparkles so it’s okay, right?
14. Was there a particular scene or sequence in Dead Girls that was especially challenging—or especially fun—to draw?
I tried to have as much fun drawing the book as possible so that hopefully that would imbue the story with fun. So any time I changed up the style it was really fun and the novelty of breaking out oil paint or watercolor or colored pencils was so fun. I also really liked drawing action-y scenes which I wasn’t expecting but now I want to draw more action. I grew up watching a lot of Kung-Fu films so I’d love to draw some of that.
15. You’ve worked with Cartoon Network, Mad Cave Studios, Oni Press, and others. How have those experiences shaped your approach to creating comics?
I subscribe to David Lynch’s theory of the unconscious, which is basically that everything is sort of percolating in the background all the time and everything we think, feel and experience is back there and if we’re lucky, it turns into an idea. So I’m sure those experiences have shaped my approach, but I’m not super sure how. Once I signed an NDA that had Pikachu on it, which was pretty cool.
16. If one was to visit the United Kingdom, which three places do you think that person should pay a visit and why?
I don’t think anyone should visit the UK, but if they must; Brighton is a lovely, weird little seaside town in England, then maybe Eryri National Park in Wales and Edinburgh in Scotland?
17. Is there anything about the Manchester comics or creative scene that you think people outside the UK might not know about?
Manchester is well known for its music and its football and those things are truly inescapable here. I don’t follow football but I know when a match is on because everyone is wearing red or blue. Then I’ll hear the chants of football fans heading to the stadium and it sounds like the end of the world.
For music there’s a million venues and murals and we get special regional ads that include song lyrics and puns. There’s still a cool underground scene, we’re lucky to have lots of indie spaces, like Affleck’s Palace, around.
18. Last question: If the killer were coming for you tonight, what would Jamie Lee Curtis do—and would you actually listen?
My hubris is that I totally think I could talk my way out of it, I’d be like ‘Hey buddy, I get it…’ and we’d become best friends.
But that is (probably) not what Jamie Lee Curtis would do, I like to think she’d set up a series of Home Alone-esque (1990) traps and have a cigarette and wait…and she’d win. So, I guess I’d do that, because I trust the fictionalized version of her that exists in my mind. I’m pretty sure Jamie Lee Curtis quit smoking and I don’t smoke, but smoking a cigarette in those circumstances just feels right.
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