Hello, and welcome back to Artist Alley! As you may have noticed from his insightful interview with Matteo Scalera in the previous column, I shall be alternating on this feature with David Harper. For my turn here, I shall be returning to “Drumhellar” with a further discussion with series artist and co-plotter Riley Rossmo, this time focusing on issue #2, released this week. Due to the nature of the column, with its detailed page analysis, I have to warn that SPOILERS are inevitable. And this edition also features some extreme imagery… so tread carefully!
I just want to start by saying that “Drumhellar” #2 was an excellent read. The first issue was of course great too, packed with detail and rich imagery, but this second chapter built on that groundwork to really open up Drum’s world, introducing us to more interesting characters, and gave us a comic packed with incident and forward momentum. A really rich, rewarding read, congratulations!
Now, onto the pages…
PAGE 6
Okay, I wasn’t going to include this page originally. I thought I had the pages I was going to focus on all worked out, and was just breezing through my third reading of the issue when I noticed there’s a FREAKING BRONTOSAURUS standing in the background of panel 4! Given that this dinosaur is not purple, and Drum isn’t even looking at it when it appears, are we to assume this isn’t one of these visions, and is actually a brontosaurus grazing in the park?
RILEY ROSSMO: We try to make it clear when Drum is hallucinating or tripping. There’s always a trigger – usually a drug, but sometimes an experience such as being struck by lightning. So that dinosaur can be relied upon to really be there. It’s a statue, though. You find them throughout this part of North America, where there’s a massive number of fossil deposits. It’s just a common feature of the landscape.
Oops, now I feel dumb! This is part of the downfall of not being American and knowing this kind of stuff. However, there’s at least one other dinosaur hidden in the background later in this issue: I don’t want to give it away, we’ll see if readers can spot it themselves! Are there going to be further dinosaur-related Easter eggs to look out for in future issues? And is there some narrative reason for this or just you having fun with us?
RR: There is a lot of dinosaur-related stuff in the first arc, starting next issue.
I recently watched Room 237, that documentary about The Shining, and one memorable quote from it is when a commentator remarks that just about every scene of the film has an impossibility in it, something that by all rational logic shouldn’t exist, to subconsciously put the viewer on edge. The example they show in the film to illustrate the point is the scene with the family all watching TV, but there’s no plug or power source to explain how the TV can be working. For me, I got that in the first panel of this page, with the guy mowing his lawn. Something about it just felt “off” to me when I first noticed it, but I dismissed it. But when I saw the brontosaurus, I went back and looked more closely. And I realised he’s not mowing the lawn. The guy is standing still, holding his lawnmower. I’m reasonably confident this isn’t a case of you not correctly drawing a figure in motion, given that the foreground of the panel features Drum convincingly engaged in naturalistic forward motion across the page. Furthermore, looking at the grass all around the guy, it’s all quite visibly overgrown, with no possible trail for the lawnmower to have cut into it. It looks like the grass has grown around the lawnmower and the man, standing still. Really weird. Was this a deliberate little background detail, or am I really reading too much into this?
RR: It’s also consistent with the overall sensibility of the story. Sure, we encounter paranormal creatures, but it’s never really clear what’s weirder, when you really take a close look at it: shambling bog men, or everyday life in suburban America. We take the edge off our paranormal elements so that they’re more familiar than they ought to be. At the same time, we introduce quirks to the more familiar aspects of the lives of our characters to bring out the sense that, for all their familiarity, a lot of everyday life is truly weird, mysterious, or even absurd.
Continued below
PAGE 8
This is the first time we see Bubbles, and it’s an interesting way you bring her into the story. Following on from our conversation last time about going against the typical visual language of comics storytelling, instead of the usual approach of maybe having this figure appear suddenly in a page-turn reveal, with Bubble’s first appearance you clearly establish her on the page, but in a long shot casting her far into the distance, then have the “camera” slowly draw in on her with each subsequent panel, finally bringing her into focus at the bottom of the page. What was the rationale behind this approach? Were you drawing influence from other famous character entrances?
RR: This kind of understated intro is just consistent with being in a mall, which turns everything inside it, no matter how strange, somehow ordinary. Also, it gives you a sense of their relationship which, while antagonistic, has an element of familiarity.
Earlier in the story, it’s suggested that Bubbles used to be a man, but has changed gender, presumably through magical means. Did the fact that Bubbles is of fluid gender factor into how you designed her appearance?
RR: Mostly the colors of Bubbles clothing and hair are important.
PAGE 12/13
Of course I was going to talk about this double-page splash! One of the most memorably horrifying comic images of the year, to be sure. Am I right in assuming that the “face” of that… thing dominating the left side of the page is a giant, dribbling asshole?
RR: It certainly is!
This is one of those tableaus so absolutely packed with gruesome detail that it’s a bit overwhelming trying to pick out the various macabre elements that make up the whole. In addition to our giant, swollen colon, I see a tower of eyes, a heap of brains, a sausage man, a pile of tongues creeping out from behind the bar, a pile of meat cuts behind the bar, a puddle of what appears to be fat on one table, a network of nerves without a body slumped on another, amidst some others I’m missing for sure. Were there any of these you particularly enjoyed drawing?
RR: Giant asshole was my favorite, hands down, not to be weird. I really enjoy drawing intestines. There are a few pages in “Green Wake”, and in “Rebel Blood” too, that show disembowelling. I like the textures of intestines and they’re really fun to color. I know it’s kind of weird but some things are just fun to draw. I feel the same about drawing cellulite: it’s just fun to develop a mass of texture on the page.
Now, who’s the sick puppy that deserves the bulk of the blame for this sequence? Was this a case of Alex Link writing out Bubbles’ horrid description in the script and you drawing to match the words, or you drawing these nightmarish images and Alex then trying to describe what was making his eyes bleed in written form? Or was there a bit of back and forth with you both adding elements?
RR: Alex and I really went back and forth on this. Initially Alex was thinking more along the idea of what 30 people would look like if you separated all of their organs and tissues into piles, so: 30 brains in a pile, 30 hearts, 60 eyes, etc. I started there and ended up with anthropomorphized organs. I’m really interested, generally, in the disconnect you get between what you experience people as being – important, emotionally intense, significant, loved, and so on – and what they are, physically, “ugly bags of mostly water,” to borrow from Star Trek: TNG. One of the questions dogging Drum and Bubbles, too, is whether there really is much more to people than meat and dreams.
PAGE 14
One thing I noticed is that, when we cut from Drum’s stomach-churning fantasy sequence to the real world, it’s Padma who is the real-life equivalent of Asshole-Face. Which of course adds a whole new dimension to her line, “I don’t know what you see when you look at me” at the end of the issue. As we do know what he sees, or at least what he saw. Why did Padma turn into the most hideous apparition of all? Does this say something about Drum’s subconscious opinion of her, or was it more how Bubbles wanted him to see her?
Continued belowRR: Well, there’s a bunch of things going on here. First, the whole first arc of “Drumhellar” is really interested in who sees what when, and that includes this issue. Second, there’s a lot of tension between Padma and Drum, and you know what they say about love and hate. It’s also possibly Bubbles’ idea of a joke.
Another thing I brought up last time, but it comes up again here, is this unusual framing of the “scare” moment. Here, you frame one of the most convincing monster arrivals I’ve ever seen, where there’s that beat where the people in the cafe seem more confused than anything else, before they realise what they’re seeing and start to panic. I think this moment works as both a scare, in that I didn’t immediately notice the bogmen had slipped into the shot and got a little jolt once I noticed them, and as a gag, in terms of the reactions of the bystanders. Did you see this scene as more of a horror or a comedy moment?
RR: Again, it’s that kind of in-between. It’s horror, but horror with an absurd edge. How can Bog People attacking food court mall patrons not be absurd? Even Bubbles sees it as ironic – the undead coming to consume a bunch of consumers eating lunch. Is it crazy, or is it just a crazy visualization of the kinds of things that happen every day? “Rebel Blood” did the same thing, that way.
PAGE 22
This was quite an odd choice for a final page for me. Page 21 has it all: it’s a nice dramatic splash featuring the three main characters, it sets up the next storyline going into issue #3, and it ends on a darkly comic punch-line. It seems like a natural end-point. But then we get this other, silent page, and the sunny, relatively upbeat aesthetic of the previous page is replaced with a darker, more ominous vibe presented here. Were you aware of this being an unusual beat to conclude your issue on?
RR: Our final pages in each issue are simply teasers for what’s coming next.
Ah, I see. The first panel of this last page introduces us to what I believe is a new character. We haven’t seen this lady before, right? At first I thought it was the girl who got attacked by Bogdan in the cafe, but it seems like it’s actually someone different.
RR: The first panel is the birth/intro to Lily, from the food court, and yes, the purple is there. Lily visually starts her transformation from the young woman in the mall who hangs out with friends into someone who’s had an extranormal transformative experience that has affected her profoundly. She’s the only person in the mall that doesn’t remember the event as a gas leak, bomb threat, etc. She is drawing Harold and the Bog people in this panel: she saw it all. Also Lily has head phones before the Bog people arrive, and afterward they’re a symbol that she’s always hearing things or attuned to something. After seeing the bog people she has her head phones on a lot more. To be fair too I usually think about a character for a bit but it usually takes me an issue or two before they settle into a look, especially with characters that aren’t bizarre. Harold was pretty easy but Drum’s nose, for example, took ‘til issue 3 to get really locked in.
Oops! I think it was the slightly different hair color that threw me off, but that could be down to the lighting in the room. And yes, I thought that was Harold that she was drawing! That, along with the purple light she’s bathed in – we talked about the significance of purple last time! – suggests to me that she has some kind of connection to the magical forces Drum taps into and that Harold seems to be bonded with. I take it this person will be a significant player in issues to come?
RR: Yup, she’s important. She matters. She’s someone who was able to see everything that happened as it really did. That’s a skill she has, after all – when we first meet her she shows us that she knows exactly what her friends are doing just by choosing where to sit.
Continued belowOh, I didn’t catch the significance of that interaction, another reread is in order! One aside: with her silver-white hair and her dress sense, this lady reminded me quite a bit of one of my favourite female characters in comics: Abigail Arcane. Was there a deliberate visual homage going on here, or just coincidence?
RR: I love Swamp Thing! And I love Abigail Arcane, so yes.
Finally, we have a shot of a pensive Drum looking at that little green heart. The same heart Bubbles was earlier taunting him about. Any teasers on when we’ll find out more about its significance?
RR: The heart’s a big deal, as Drum is gradually realizing he doesn’t remember a whole lot of his own past. He knows this object is important to him, so how could he be drawing a blank when he looks at it? He doesn’t know, and it’s got him worried.
On that teasing note for things to come, we bring our latest conversation with Riley to an end. Thanks once again to Riley Rossmo for taking the time to answer some in-depth questions, and thanks to all of you for reading: I hope you found it interesting. You can pick up “Drumhellar” #2 at a comic shop near you, or on ComiXology.
Join us again soon for another edition of Artist Alley, where we’ll be dissecting more panels and picking more artists’ brains!
