On Wednesday, not coincidentally Halloween, Vertigo Comics is launching “Hex Wives,” a new series from writer Ben Blacker (“Thrilling Adventure Hour,” “Deadpool”) and artist Mirka Andolfo (“DC Comics Bombshells,” “Wonder Woman”). We sat down with the pair at New York Comic Con, to discuss the new series.
Let’s start with the basics. What is “Hex Wives?”
Ben Blacker: “Hex Wives” is coming at you from Vertigo Comics on Halloween. The sort of soft pitch through the Hollywood pitch is that it’s Bewitched plus The Stepford Wives. What it is about is there’s a powerful coven of witches who do not know that they are a powerful coven of witches. They’re being held as suburban housewives against their knowledge and will by cabal of men who fear them and therefore try to control them. But they won’t be controlled for that long.
So, the book deals with witches and magic. What makes, from a story telling point and a visual stand point,
your magic so different from anything else?
BB: It was really fun to sort of, let me back up. With witches, there’s, as a horror trope, there’s no Frankenstein, there’s sort of no basis text for it. What you have is an accumulation that is thousands of years old that comes from history and religion and stories. In creating the world of their witchcraft, I got to look at all of that stuff and choose what I like. The tropes that we’re familiar with like blood magic or familiars, broomsticks even, I got to look at and say, “Okay, what’s our version of that? What’s the way that we can sort of turn that? What’s a version I’ve never seen before?” I’m very proud of what we did with broomsticks. There’s a great image in the first issue that Mirka drew of one of these men … we sort of tell throughout history, these men have already tried to fight these witches and kill them and there’s an image she drew of one of the witches stabbing one of the men through his body with a broomstick.
And that is something I haven’t seen before, but then the magic of the broomstick itself was really interesting to me because it’s a domestic tool, right? That’s a loaded image to give to a woman. So, I thought a lot about it. How do we make that an object of power instead of being an object of control? When we talk about, “What does it look like?” You know, the blood magic, that is where you come in.
Mirka Andolfo: Yeah, I tried to create something very horrific.
BB: So Izzy, Isadora, is our main character. She’s sort of leader of this coven, and her- they all have this sort of basic magic stuff that they do, but each one has specialty, and hers is a capacity for violence beyond her physical capability. So, she goes into this crazy mode and the stuff that Mirka drew, she almost changes the way she looks. She looks sharper, she looks fiercer, when she’s doing this stuff. It’s really cool. Marissa Louise, our colorist, created a whole pallet for when they’re using magic. What that would look like, and how we can signal that to the reader that that’s what happening. It’s really cool.
There have been a lot of horror comics that have started popping up over the last couple of years, but horror can be tough when you don’t have the leisure of music or jump scares, so how do you create that good, uneasy feeling of horror within a comic?
BB: Yeah, how do you create horror in a comic?
MA: I tried to create horror contrast is important. So, if you want to come to a particular scene, you don’t have to let that too much happen in the previous scene. For example, that is also, thanks to his descriptor, you turn the page and there is something like in the last issue of this second, the last page of the second issue-
BB: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
MA: … it’s not a jump scare, but it’s like our version of a jump scare. I tried to make the pallets more dark or also more dynamic if there is a particular scene of action or horror. You use more black, use that is the most important thing to do balance. Because you have to balance those kinds of scenes with the most sunlight, with the most nice scenes.
Continued belowBB: Yeah. So you really feel the horror. I think what comics does, what horror comics do the best is sort of creeping unease, and that’s a thing that we were really … we were able to accomplish, thanks to Mirka and Marissa really. I knew what I wanted it to have but there was something about taking this suburban setting of very classically 50’s, 60’s American suburban setting and translating it to Italian, which she has no basis in that. You grow up with the same points of reference that we have.
MA: Yeah, in fact I had to make research for the references because that kind of suburbs is not very, it’s not in Italy, so I go on the internet, but also T.V. shows, Bewitched–
BB: Bewitched. Also The Brady Bunch.
MA: Yeah.
BB: I sent you some of that.
MA: Yeah, and so a lot of research for this.
BB: Yeah. But it was, there’s something in that translation that Mirka’s done because she was unfamiliar with it that when it comes back, it has this feeling that everything looks perfect, but its not quite right. That’s exactly the feeling of unease that we wanted in this comic. The other thing that you have to do as a writer, and I think the only way to be honest in horror is to say what really scares me. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten until now to do that in my career. To really have to confront those things and say what makes me feeling uneasy? What’s hard to write? What scares me? What’s the most terrifying thing I can think of for this scene, for this episode, or this issue, or for this entire story? To be forced to do that has made it a better book and a scarier book.
So, batting off that, what are some of your personal favorite horror stories, movies, T.V. shows? What kind of inspired you while working on this story?
BB: I have whole list.
MA: Oh, me, too. My list is very long.
BB: I think the common ones that we sort of talk about back and forth a lot, were Rosemary’s Baby was a big one. Especially from the first few issues where Izzy doesn’t quite know what’s going on in the same way Rosemary, for most of that movie, doesn’t know. It all seems very normal, but you get these weird things happening. So, that was a big one. What else?
MA: Honestly, I look at this after, I look at movie The Witch.
BB: Oh, The Witch.’The Witch’. It’s a big one. Yeah.
MA: That was very great. Yeah, it’s better that I’m looking at a lot of movies like that for making inspiration-
BB: Which is so beautifully composed.
MA: Yeah, yeah. Veronica.
So, so good.
BB: Veronica is great!
MA: Great, right? You told me-
BB: Oh, that’s right!
MA: Yeah, I see. Also, there Baba–
Babadook.
BB: Babadook is a good one. I mean we’ve been so lucky to get so much good horror.
MA: The story’s not the same-
BB: Right.
MA: … you can take the atmosphere and something like that and also-
BB: So much of it informs the story, the heart, the feel of the thing. Even if it’s not a direct-
MA: Yeah.
BB: … which aren’t a lot of great, witch horror movies. The Witches are the exception to that. That’s what I did watch The Witches. There’s … American Horror Story was a good one. I don’t always love it, but I did love the coven season. It Follows is probably the best horror movie of the past 20 years.
We’re doing a fun thing. I don’t care, I’ll talk about it. We’re doing a fun thing for, between the big arcs, we’re doing ones that tell the origin of one of the witches in the coven, and we were going to get guest artist to [give Mirka] a break. The way we’re doing these origin stories is to sort of retell a classic horror story, but from the point of view of the monster or the villain to sort of reframe it and justify the actions of that character. So the first one, is an ‘Exorcist’ take, which is probably the best horror movie of all time, that is about what if Regan invited the devil into herself? What reasons, what would push someone so far to do that? Because the way that someone becomes a witch is to commune with the devil, and so to a possession story totally made sense within the context of “Hex Wives,” but to reframe The Exorcist and sort of pull out themes as well as hopefully some visuals, is really cool.
Continued belowYou’re part of a very big Vertigo launch here with a lot of different series. How exciting is it to be a part of Vertigo on such a special anniversary and do you have any big thoughts on the history?
BB: Yeah. It’s intimidating.
MA: Yeah, absolutely. I love all the good artists at Vertigo.
BB: I mean, all of these books, I’ve gotten to read six of the seven books now and they’re all so good. They’re from the big picture of when DC was relaunching this and the other editors were coming in, they wanted to give creators the opportunity to tell stories they were passionate about telling, that’s there’s a social conscience to each of these books really speaks to what people are interested in right now in these sorts of stories that we want to tell right now. And then the execution of the books has been incredible. Top to bottom, every story is…you could feel the passion on the page. Everyone makes it look so easy and I know, I mean, maybe it is easy for them, it wasn’t for me, but you can really, everyone’s working at the top of their game, so to be included in that mix is unbelievably flattering, but also hugely intimidating.
