In May, a new ongoing series kicks off, Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook’s “Harrow County.” Below, I talked to the creators about the book. It’s an amazing series, and already a favorite of mine. And later today we’ll be running an art piece looking at Tyler Crook’s work on the series.
Witches play a big part in Harrow County, so it came as no surprise, Cullen, when I discovered that witches are your favorite monsters.
Cullen Bunn: Thanks for the kind words! I’m really glad you liked it! This is definitely a project I’m very excited about. It’s a story that means a lot to me, and as I’ve seen Tyler’s artwork coming in for the first few issues, I’ve gotten more and more excited about the story. Even though this is a tale that I’ve wanted to tell for a long time, Tyler’s beautiful painted pages are helping me to see it in a new light.
And, yes, witches play a big part in the story. Legends of hags and witchcraft were a big part of the folklore I grew up hearing from friends and family. Let’s face it–witches scared the hell out of me when I was a kid, and they have stuck with me all this time.
Tyler Crook: Witches are cool, but the thing that really attracted me to Harrow County was that so much of it takes place in the forest. I really like drawing trees and animals and stuff so this seemed like an opportunity to do a lot of that.
So how did Harrow County come about? Was it a story kicking around in Cullen’s brain, waiting for the right artist, or something that the pair of you developed from scratch?
CB: I actually started working on this story years ago. My first foray into this world was while writing a serialized novel I published online. It was titled “Countless Haints”. I wrote ten or so short chapters before I retired the project. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the story. I simply got too busy working on comic books. The story stuck with me for all those years, and when Tyler and I started to talk about doing a book for Dark Horse, I ran the high concept of the story by him. After a few tweaks to the story, we decided to work on bringing this new version of the tale to life.
The look on this book is very distinctive and a perfect match for your script. Was there much back and forth when the pair of you were trying to figure out how this world should look?
CB: We definitely discussed it, but I don’t know if there was a lot of back and forth. As I recall, Tyler suggested that he might want to do the entire series in his watercolor style. Being familiar with the awesomeness Tyler had in mind, I needed no convincing.
TC: Yeah, there wasn’t a ton of back and forth about the look of the book. The last two projects that I worked on involved either full watercolor pages or ink wash. It’s a way of working that I really enjoy so the materials and technique come mostly from me wanting to have as much fun as possible. Choosing to set the book in the 1930s was probably the most important choice we made. And that was pretty much me asking if it could be set in the 30s and Cullen saying he guessed that would be OK.
TC: I think Cullen writes really good scripts. His panel descriptions are always really simple and clear and he’s never too specific about camera angles and staging. That’s nice because it gives me a lot of room to make choices and bring my own sense of story telling to the page.
CB: Horror can be dangerous territory because, as you mention, it relies so heavily on mood, but I knew Tyler was the perfect partner for this. He knows how to elevate the emotion in even a seemingly innocuous panel. In my scripts, I try to write enough to give the artist an idea of the mood I’m envisioning and the story we’re trying to tell, and I love seeing Tyler’s pages roll in.
Tyler, you’ve been posting a few glimpses of layouts and inks on Twitter, which I really love to see. But you went the extra mile with this one. You went as far as to make a soundtrack for Harrow County.
TC: Yeah! I’ve been making music ever since I was a kid. As I was getting started on Harrow County, I thought it’d be fun to see if I could write a soundtrack for it. In the end I came up with 8 songs they are all instrumental, film score kinds of songs. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. You can check it out for free here.
CB: My original title for this story was “Countless Haints” and I think we live up to that promise. There are many “things that go bump in the night” living in and around Harrow County. Ghosts, goblins, and more terrible creatures. We’ve given most of them names that wouldn’t spoil too much, so I’ll tell you that you’ll also be meeting the Gravestone Children and the Abandoned in pretty short order in the first few issues.
The first issue has a back-up story, “Tales of Harrow County: Batism,” with art by Owen Gieni. Going forward, I believe there’s going to be more Tales of Harrow County and even some illustrated prose stories as well.
TC: Comics can be a tough business and a lot of folks like to ‘wait for the trade’. But if the individual issues don’t sell, sometimes there won’t be a trade. So we are trying to fill up each issue with fun stuff to make each issue as appealing as possible. A lot of the back matter won’t be in the trade so you gotta get it while the getting’s good.
And Owen Gieni is killing it! His pages look so damn good.
CB: We really want Harrow County to be an experience for the reader. We want them to get the absolute most from each and every issue. That’s where those prose pieces came from. We wanted to share the kind of stories that inspired this comic. The back-up comics illustrated by Owen Gieni are tales of other happenings in Harrow County. There are so many ghost stories circling around the place that we had to share a few more! It was a nice challenge to create a one-page horror story that delivered chills.
Cullen, on your Tumblr you mentioned you’re already at work on the second arc. As I understand it, these first two arcs are being written as a complete story, but ideally this is an ongoing series.
CB: That’s correct. The hope is that folks will love this series and these characters as much as we do and that we’ll be able to continue for a long while to come. These are so many stories to tell! But every arc delivers a pretty solid story, with plenty of meat on the bones to keep you coming back!
Harrow County #1 comes out May 13. Final order cut-off is April 20, so you’ll want to order it soon. And check out the Harrow County tumblr for further updates.