You may have saw that last week “The Empty Man” #1, the newest series from Cullen Bunn and Vanesa Del Rey at BOOM! Studios, was our Pick Of The Week review. You also may have saw that I enjoyed it very much, as I have much of this resurgent wave of horror comics, and saw in it the potential to break some very new ground for horror in comic books.
If you didn’t catch that, however, let me get you up to speed: The Empty Man is a virus plaguing the world of the series that seems to cause the violent death of those who contract the virus. With a little bit of The Crazies, a touch of Cabin Fever and a sprinkling of Contagion, “The Empty Man” is a hypochondriac’s worst nightmare buoyed by great writing from Cullen Bunn and the nightmarish renderings of Vanesa Del Rey. That’s a compliment, by the way. I saw pages of this book in my nightmares.
I got to have a word with Cullen Bunn to talk a little bit about the formation of the series, his collaboration with artist Vanesa Del Rey and where “The Empty Man” might be going in the coming issues. Check it out below and, if you haven’t already, I highly recommend checking out “The Empty Man” #1. Just not if you’re, y’know, prone to staying up at night worrying just what that itch is.
With publishers continually pushing the boundaries of what creator owned comics can portray in terms of story content, it seems like there has been a new rise and place in the comics industry for horror comics. What was it about horror that drew you to writing “The Empty Man”?
Cullen Bunn: I’ve pretty much always been a horror guy. If you look at my prose, it’s almost all horror. If you look at any of the other comic book work, there’s almost always some element of darkness and horror to it. That’s where I feel most comfortable working. “The Empty Man” was born years ago, while driving down a lonely stretch of highway. I’m pretty sure I was driving to a convention and, now that I think about it, it might have been Horrorfind Weekend in Baltimore. That drive was long, and I made it on very little sleep. Driving along, my mind playing tricks on me, seeing these strangely tattered plastic sheets on barbed wire fences, a creepy phrase popped into my head.
“The Empty Man made me do it.”
From there, over the course of a couple of years, the rest of the story took shape, fueled by healthy doses of nightmarish J-Horror and real world horrors like pandemics and senseless violence.
Another thing that’s always frightened me is fringe religion—blind faith dedicated to the strangest of things. With this story, I was able to explore that a little, looking at cults and sects that rise up to worship the disease like a god.
The horror of the story seems to stem from the largely real world setting and the virus that plagues it, which is something I don’t think we’ve seen too much of in comics. Can you tell us a little bit about the virus and how it became the basis of the horror?
CB: I’ve been a hypochondriac since I was a kid. If I saw a news report about some deadly illness, I was sure I’d contracted it. In a lot of ways, this idea stems from that. What if the illness was coming after you? What if it was stalking prey? Over the years, I’ve lost friends and family to illnesses I didn’t understand, diseases that destroyed their bodies and minds. It was easy for me to vilify these sicknesses as malevolent forces. The Empty Man virus is just a hybridization of all the things that scare me most about various diseases. It’s a contagious insanity that destroys its victims’ bodies and minds. It comes on fast, seemingly out of nowhere. It’s not known how someone catches it. And there is no cure.
Vanesa Del Rey’s art really brings to the forefront the horrific reality of the virus and what it does to the people it infects as well as bringing a noir-tinged reality to the book. How much did that contribute to the focus on a real world setting in your writing or was that there from the beginning?
CB:The noir styling is definitely something Vanesa brought to the book. Like I said, I have had this idea in my head for years, but I never really pictured it looking like this. That’s one of the amazing things about collaborating with a new artist. Even being familiar with Vanesa’s work, I had no way of knowing how the book would look. And I think it’s worked beautifully. She brings such a unique, borderline surreal mood to the book. It just works so well with the story.
In the first issue we see that the American government has already taken steps towards fighting back against the Empty Man virus. In the coming stories, will we get a look at how far it has spread or will we be getting a more contained look?
CB: Initially, we’re telling a small glimpse at what is going on in the world. Our first story focuses on Langford and Jensen trying to find a pair of missing children. As they’re doing this, though, some interesting things are starting to happen with the Empty Man disease as a whole. It is starting to change and mutate. We can assume these kind of events are going on all over the world. We get glimpses of the history of the disease and how it is impacting others, but we’re sticking with these characters and their stories for now.
Hopefully, readers will want more after the first story. There’s an entire world to explore, and I’d love to tell those tales.
While reading the first issue, I got a feel for George A. Romero’s The Crazies. Were there any real stand out horror inspirations you had going in to this book?
CB: A lot of J-Horror like “The Ring” and “The Grudge.” A lot of the manga work of Jungi Ito. The works of H.P. Lovecraft. Movies where reality seems to be collapsing around us, like “In the Mouth of Madness” and (quite specifically) “Jacob’s Ladder” (which still terrifies me).
And, finally, without spoiling anything, is there anything you can tell us about the horrors to come in the book and what we have in store for us?
CB: The Empty Man is changing. Even though we’re focused on Langford and Jensen, we’ll start to see how the changing and growing disease might impact the world in a much bigger way. While the government has been working to figure out the Empty Man, we’ll soon learn that they understand it even less than they thought. And we’ll also see that both Langford and Jensen have an even deeper connection to the disease.
