A few weeks ago at New York Comic Con, J.M. DeMatteis (“Justice League International,” “X-Factor”) and Corin Howell (“Ghostbusters: Answer the Call,” “Bat-Mite”) announced a new book for Karen Berger’s Dark Horse imprint, Berger Books. “The Girl in the Bay” is a horror tale about dopplegangers, time travel, and more. I spoke with J.M. and Corin just hours after the book was announced, at the Dark Horse booth at NYCC.
“The Girl in The Bay” is a new Berger Books title coming out. We are here in New York where I know the book is partially set, correct?
J.M. DeMatteis: The book starts in Brooklyn, yeah.
Is this an idea you’ve had for a while? Is this a new idea?
JMD: Yeah. This is an idea been I’ve been floating around in my, in the back of my head for about three years now.
What was the initial impetus of the story?
JMD: You know, sometimes there’s not an impetus; you just discover a theme. I’m glad you asked that question, right, because now I’m remembering the story, sometimes stories just arrive. And this story, I was actually away on vacation and sometimes the stories feel like it’s a download from storyland.
Like somebody’s just downloading something into your head. And this story got downloaded and I just ran into my little cabin in the woods where I was and started writing all this stuff down and had all these notes. Then time passed, and I never developed it beyond these notes, but I spoke to Karen [Berger] about doing something, because we’ve worked together for years, you know. I said, “Well I have this idea.” And she loved it, and then I began to refine it. Then I realized what the themes are ad what the impetus is after the fact. The original burst was like a burst from storyville. I really, I have this theory that I thought up and it sounds silly but I really believe it, stories are all out there floating around there like in another dimensional space and they’re kind of floating around looking for the right person to tell them. They go to writer A and they’re like, “Nah, it’s not the one… oh I’ll go to this guy” and then they start downloading the story. And that’s what it feels like.
Corin Howell: The universe is a vast and beautiful thing.
JMD: That’s right yeah.
So Corin, how did you get involved? Did you two know each other a little bit or…?
CH: Actually, I met Karen through my friend Sean Murphy, I took his apprenticeship two years back, and he introduced me to Karen and Karen, she loved my work, and she was trying to find the right project for a little while and also my schedule was also kind of full, because I was working on “Ghostbusters.”
Then, I get this email and she’s like, “hey, I’ve got a story for you, would you like something with doppelgangers?” And I was like, “yes, tell me more”. So that’s how I got involved. It’s been a lovely, lovely, wonderful ride. I love it, I love the book.
It was just announced today, so give me the elevator pitch for the book.
JMD: It’s Brooklyn 1969, like 18 year old hippy girl tripping her brains out one night meets this guy in a bar in Sheepshead Bay, they go out onto the dock and she thinks to basically make out with him. Instead he pulls out a knife and stabs her and throws her into the bay. She somehow manages to come back to the surface, struggles her way back to the bar and discovers that it’s not 1969, it’s 2019. Somehow 50 years have gone by. That’s the premise that we jump off from.
That’s a really fun premise to play with because when you think about it, in the broad strokes, the world and cars looks different, but for the most part, at a quick glance, different areas 50 years apart may not looks all that different. But once you gt into the day to day of the world it’s a totally different experience, so it’s a bit of a fish out of water story in that way, pardon the pun.
Continued belowJMD: And there’s also the other twist, which she loves, is the doppelganger. I’ve learned now that you love doppelgangers.
CH: I do. I love the story.
JMD: Is that she discovers through those 50 years there’s been another version of her living out her life. So there’s a 68 year old version of her out there that’s married, had kids, had a career, done all this. So there’s a mystery going on there, there’s a horror element as we find the person that did this to her 50 yeas ago who’s still stalking her now, and an entity. So there’s horror elements, spiritual elements, time travel, cosmic elements, there’s a lot of stuff going on in this story.
Wow. That’s pretty intense. So Corin, what is it in the doppelganger thing that appeals to you as an artist?
CH: Well I like the weird and freaky and the occult, but basically the legend of a doppelganger is that if you yourself have a doppelganger and if you yourself encounter your doppelganger, which is what I find interesting about the story because we don’t know who the doppelganger really is, but when you encounter your doppelganger you die.
I was not aware of that.
CH: That’s the legend behind the doppelganger, that’s the original legend behind the doppelganger. I don’t know if it’s German or Swedish. I forget what country it comes from, but that is the legend of a doppelganger. That’s what I find interesting about this book is that what other supernatural elements are going to come in to, what’s the mystery, it’s the mystery of the doppelganger, like, who’s the doppelganger? Are you the doppelganger or is she the doppelganger? You don’t know.
That adds a really interesting bit of mystery to the story, the way you tell it initially you think “of course, the older one’s the doppelganger” because you’re following the narrative of this younger person. But when you ask the question it really does create a fun mystical element to it. So is this book being in your mind is it an ongoing, is it a limited series? Where would you like to see it go?
JMD: These four issues will tell a complete story. We will solve this particular muystery, but we will leave certain mysteries unanswered, so you do get a satisfying four issue story, but the door will be open to follow our main character on the road to other stories and deeper mysteries.
Do you find when you’re writing for a more limited story, when you want to tie up a mystery in four issues, does that change your process as a writer, versus when you’re starting a journey without a determined ending?
JMD: Oh absolutely, because you have to end it. You know if you’re starting a journey without a determined ending… a lot of times I write very intuitively, so I don’t have all the answers when is start to write. I have a general sense of where I’m going. I love to be surprised by the story and by the characters and encounter unexpected things along the way. With four issues you have to be a little bit tighter and a little bit more concise. Even then the front of it is being surprised along the way.
Did you find as you were writing those four issues, you thought “Damn, I wish I had two more”.
JMD: Oh always. No matter what story you’re working on you always say, “Damn I want two more”. Yeah, absolutely.
Corin, how about you? When you’re drawing something that has a more limited scope, four issue series, does that make you want to put more in each issue because you know there’s only four happening right now? Or does that focus you into I have a very specific task to do visually?
CH: It actually proves a bit of challenge because with the limited amount of issues that we have, the story has to move along quickly, so its like when you’re drawing something and you’re having to figure out what we can put into this issue and what can describe the story. I welcome the challenge because it’s like, alright, you want to see if I can do this in four issues. I can take that challenge. I do also wish that we had more, because I also want to know more about what else [J.M.]’s got planned for the rest of the story. No, it’s a bit of like a challenge and a missing, I wish there was more but I’m also like, “yeah I’ll take that challenge”.
Continued belowYeah, and it’s good to want more. You want to leave the audience wanting more. Is there a reason Brooklyn is the place for this story?
JMD: Because this character… how do I put it? It’s not me, but this girl comes from the same world. She’s a little bit older than I am, but she comes from the same world. In fact, I found reference online to the apartment house I grew up in, which is the apartment house this character grew up in. As Karen was saying on the panel, the bar she goes to is a bar that Karen and I used to hang out in back when we first knew each other.
Which bar?
JMD: It’s in Sheepshead Bay. It was called, it had two names, one name was Davy Jones, and the other was called Captain Walters by the Bay. But it was basically the same bar, it just changed ownership. So it immerses itself in a time that means something to me and a place that means something to me and it also means something to Karen as well, because she comes from the same world that I did. I’ve discovered over the years, everything I write, if I’m writing a Spider-Man story, it doesn’t matter, it’s autobiographical in some way. In a creator owned series it gets a bit more direct, so it’s one for me to revisit that world through this lens of this fantastic, of the horrific and the fantastic, which life kind of is anyway. And that’s the great thing about fantasy stories, because I think the whole world is like a fantasy tale that we’re walking through, and we can literalize that in these kinds of stories.
Now Corin, I’m going to presume something here, I’m going to presume you weren’t hanging out in Brooklyn in 1969. So what kind of research…
JMD: Karen and I were hanging out in the 70s.
Okay, in the 70s. What sort of research do you try to do to set a realistic setting when you’re drawing? Or is it more important to fit the tone of the story and you’re not so worried about those realistic elements.
CH: It’s a bit of both, because as an OCD person I really do pay attention to a lot of detail. When I first got the script, I literally ut together a Spotify playlist of 60s, 70s and 80s music just to kind of get into the mindset. I had to ask my dad a few stories about what it was like, because he was like, I want to say he was like a pre-teen or teenager back then. [J.M.] also provided a lot of reference.
JMD: I think I spend as much time online finding photos of things as I have been writing, you know? Just because I’m throwing out something, okay Madison Square Garden 1968, she’s in a concert. Well, what does that look like?
CH: What did it look like?
JMD: I remember being 14 and going to a concert in Madison Square Garden around that time and it’s like, it has to look like what I remember. So I had to go through all these pictures, and I got some casual reference to John Lennon in a specific outfit when he went to India, or whatever it is, so I’ve spent a lot of time putting together images for her to help her rocket off from that.
CH: A lot of help also came from my boyfriend, Russell Badgett, who’s the colorist of this book. He was a film major beforehand, so he’s got the intensive knowledge of all these films and so it’s like he and I were watching films from the 70s, old horror movies from the 70s, but it’s still to get that idea of what the fashion was like, what did the world look like? What did people act like? What did they do? What did they drink? What was it like? So it’s understanding that and doing a lot of the research was fun because it’s like “I’m listening to all this music and watching all these awesome movies, this is great”
That’s really cool. Last question for you guys. If you encountered a doppelganger in the world, and not die, what do you think you would notice about yourself that you don’t notice now? So recently I saw a video of myself I didn’t know somebody took of me walking into a room, and I was like, “I walk funny!” Because I don’t look at myself walking.
Continued belowJMD: We’re often different people in our heads than people see objectively.
Absolutely.
JMD: Even sometimes the sound of your own voice when you hear it played back can be strange. I was a musician for many years and singing, I have who I wanted to sound like in my head, and then there’s what comes out on the tape. And it may sound good, but it’s not what I heard in here and I’m sure that’s exactly what it would be like and it would be kind of, on one level, aside from being a very Twilight Zone and horrifying, it could be very cool too, the only way you could look at yourself with even a semi-objective lens. So if I had the courage to not run screaming in the other direction, I think it would be an interesting experience.
CH: Besides the concept of an “oh my god I hope I don’t die”, one, “oh my god I need to recolor my hair”, two “oh my god I need to get more sleep”, and three “where the hell did it come from?” That would be the three main things that would probably go through my mind. Besides screaming and running away as far as possible.
