Donny Cates is making a big statement in the last few months. Following up on his recent successes like “Paybacks” and “Interceptor”, he debuted “God Country” with artist Geoff Shaw at Image earlier this year. The book sold well and was loved by critics. Now, he’s back at Image/Skybound with his first ongoing, “Redneck” with artist Lisandro Estherren. The book follows a family of vampires in rural Texas as they try to be something other than what their blood makes them.
At ECCC, Donny and I sat down to chat about the book ahead of its release. Read on as we chat about “Redneck”, whether Texas is actually the South, cycles of violence, vampires rules, family history, and much, much more. “Redneck” is out this Wednesday and I definitely suggest you pick up a copy.
“Redneck” is your new book from Skybound. What can you tell us about it?
Donny Cates: “Redneck” is my first ongoing at Image/Skybound. “God Country” is over in June. “Redneck” is a book that is maybe the most personal thing I’ve ever written. I think you and I have had plenty of interviews in the past where I’ve extolled my all but obsessive love for vampires to you. Every vampire story worth paying attention to is not about vampires. It’s using vampires as a stand in for a marginalized group or something of that nature, and “Redneck” is no different.
When the book opens, we’re focusing on the Bowman family. The Bowman’s have been in Texas since before Texas was even Texas. They’ve been there forever. We kinda get the sense in the first issue that they’ve had some really, really rough times. JV, at a certain point, says “I won’t let my family be hunted like that again.” We also get this sense that vampires aren’t the common anymore. They’ve managed to find a life that is sustainable, but it’s really no kind of life. They don’t feed on people, they don’t hurt people, they raise cattle, they live off the blood of the cows, and the humans who work for them collect the meat and run a barbeque place in town. So it’s very sustainable, but after all the stuff they’ve been through and all the adventures they’ve been on, it’s like arrrgh. Now they’re stuck on this thing. They’re living there, immortally, but what are they actually doing? Then, you know, some shit pops off. Real, real, real, real hard.
The magic trick that “Redneck” plays that I really like is that you’re introduced to the Bowman family as a family first, vampires second. You’re introduced to their family dynamics, their struggles, everything, and you get to love them, you get to know them, you get to feel for them. But then, when their family is threatened, you are brutally reminded that they are a family of lions. That they are actual monsters. The fallout of what could kindly be called the inciting incident of the first issue is horrific. It’s the most brutal thing I’ve ever written.
That’s what it’s about. Where is comes from is my family. I’m from Texas and I think anyone who read my books should at least get that note by now.
That’s one of the things I like about “God Country” and Redneck. As someone from the South, it’s rare to see Southern towns played as anything more than a stereotype. It’s nice to see the reality of it – yeah, they’re not great, but no small Southern towns are. They’re all kind of dirty, a little run down, they’re not great.
DC: That’s the thing about Texas especially. And to be clear, I don’t consider Texas to be the South, and that’s gonna be a point of contention that we’ll have to disagree on.
I can understand that. Texas is Texas.
DC: You ought to have to have a passport to get in and out.
But, the thing is, when you get outside of Central Texas, outside of Dallas or Houston or Austin or Fort Worth, you get about an hour outside of any of those places, and things get country and wild as fuck real quick. “God Country” is west Texas, which is really peaceful. It’s so serene and it’s so virtually untouched. I feel like you travel back in time to dinosaur times and it’d look just like that. East Texas, on the other hand… I described the differences between West Texas and East Texas to someone one time. West Texas is old like an ancient and beautiful temple or pyramid. East Texas is old like an old, dying dog. West Texas is mysterious like a trunk full of treasure, whereas East Texas is mysterious like a hole full of snakes. East Texas is not a progressive, awesome place.
Continued belowI’ve always wanted to write about it. I’ve always wanted to talk about that. When “Redneck” started to come together, this idea of the Bowman’s trying to separate themselves from the blood inside them that led to the downfall of their kind and JV trying to lead his family in a way that goes with that. Like, “No, just because we’re this thing, we’re not going to hurt people anymore. We’re not going to let sins of the past dictate who we are now.”
I think that’s a big theme in Southern literature, to go beyond the sins of your father.
DC: The interesting thing about “Redneck”, though, is that idea of the sins of the father. You’re right that a lot of Southern Gothic stories, your Hatfields and your McCoys, it’s this feud that the two dudes who are fighting it now have no earthly idea how it even started. The Landry’s and the Bowman’s have been at each other’s throats and it’s been hundreds of Landry’s, but it’s always been the same Bowman’s. In the book, we get to go back and see through flashbacks and stuff and see these same people that you’re following right now and doing those things that led them to the present. So you get to jump around and see them through time. See their hero arcs of learning and growing and going on challenges. You see them go through that over hundreds and hundreds of years of them trying to fix what’s wrong with their blood.
So that’s what “Redneck” is about.
I think, too, Southern vampires inhabit a weird space in pop culture with stuff like “True Blood”.
DC: Never heard of it.
[laughs] Obviously, this is a very different story. What are you hoping to prove with this and set it apart?
DC: Well, here’s the thing. There’s this thing that vampires do all the damn time where you and me are just average guys, but apparently vampire fiction would have us believe that as soon as we get bit, we become deep and dark poets with gorgeous, long hair and beautiful clothing and stuff. I had a feeling that if I got bit by a vampire, I’d just be this same dude for the rest of my life. True Blood, while set in the South I guess, they were still these gorgeous people, interconnected with the Vampire Council and blah blah blah. With “Redneck”, the thing is they don’t even know about all that. The Bowman’s are a family themselves of just normal people. Maybe Granpa, the crazy dude who lives in the attic, he might know some stuff, but who knows.
There’s a scene where someone asks Bartlett, who’s our main character, about the rules. “So, is the cross thing true, or the stake thing is true? Or being invited into houses?” And Bartlett is like, “Oh, shit. Being invited in… I think so, yeah. The cross thing… Yeah, I think so. I don’t know about the stake.” “How do you not know if stakes kill vampires?” “I ain’t never been staked.” He makes the comparison of when you were a human, did you know every little thing about how human biology works? Well, no. Why would he know everything about vampires? He’s not a doctor. He’ll find out when he gets staked.
I love stuff like that. There’s been a few times where Skybound has asked, out of curiosity, if I have a list of rules for this. And yeah, to a certain extent I do. There’s never going to be a point in time in which, because the plot dictates, this one dude can fly or control rats or anything. But they’re also all a little bit different.
Yeah, like the youngest one. She can read minds.
DC: Perry! Perry is my favorite character to write. Perry is my favorite person in the world. She’s a little girl, but she’s like forty. You got to think though, even though she’s forty, she’s still the little girl of the family. She’s just a stone cold weirdo. She can read minds. That’s fun to play with. She’s creepy because she’s getting into your headspace as a reader. When you’re reading a comic, thought captions are for you. It’s a private place for you. But Perry can read those and Perry will be responding to people’s thought captions. She’s so fun, but she’s so creepy. She has this power that the others don’t. If you were to ask any of them, to the best of Bartlett’s knowledge… well, Sarah has dark hair. This guy over here has freckles. He doesn’t know. But it’s not really about the rules and everything. It’s about their ongoing struggle to eke out a life and not just survive, but have a life.
Continued belowThat’s kind of what the opening statement is in the first issue. Like, if you get rid of the whole aging and dying thing, you can get a whole lot done. You can do this and you can do that, you can start a family and all this stuff. Then, Bartlett, at the beginning of the book, just like, “Me, I’m just getting drunk on this fucking porch.” That’s kinda what the book is about. What does life mean when you live forever? If the answer is you just keep getting into the same fights and keep on spilling the same kind of bad blood, then what the fuck is the point to keep on doing it?
I have to ask, how proud are you of the title? You know, because they’re rednecks, but also the red on a neck when a vampire draws blood.
DC: I got to tell you about that. The craziest thing about “Redneck”, amongst all the other things, I came up with that idea out of nowhere. I was thinking about my family and I love vampires and then this title hit. I just thought to myself, “Goddamn. That’s a good vampire pun. Holy shit.” I sat down in front of my computer and I wrote the pitch out and it ended up being like a five page document outlining the first three arcs and my mission statement and everything. Then, I did another day’s worth of research going through copyrights and everything to see if someone had used “Redneck” in a vampire thing yet. And no one had!
Skybound reached out to me and asked if I had anything. I was like, “I do, but it’s a vampire thing… I don’t know how you guys feel about vampires.” And they basically said that they’d been wanting to do a vampire thing, but it had to be right. I guess it ended up being the right thing. Their question back to me, of course, was like, “Redneck? Is that cool?” And we’re in the clear. The other thing is the beer they drink in the book – Bloodweiser. I now am the official, legal copyright holder of Bloodweiser.
You copyrighted that?!
DC: You’re damn right I did! Man, you couldn’t ask for a better title.
As soon as I saw the announcement, I couldn’t help but think how damn proud you probably were of yourself.
DC: [laughs] That and “Baby Teeth”, my Aftershock book that’s coming out. Man, just crushing it.
