Foxe and Orlando described “Party and Prey” as “a chance for the two of us as queer men to tell a grimy, taboo-testing horror story that centers LGBTQ+ men while also addressing the wolves in sheep’s clothing that exist within the community, as well as the way indifference and hate outside of the community can enable those wolves to run wild for far too long. We want to intrigue, we want to offer a wealth of representation, and also admit that we’ve got work to do within the community. When you’ve got a story full of queer folks of all kinds, no character has to be perfect, and that’s when we can get into the provocative storytelling that makes horror so great.”
The 112-page OGN will be published on October 6, and retail for $17.99. It will be released two months after Orlando and Foxe’s much more kid-friendly “Rainbow Bridge,” published under AfterShock’s Seismic Press imprint. The writers admitted “it’s really a fun fluke of timing that ‘Party and Prey’ comes out just a few months after ‘Rainbow Bridge.'”
For the full creator Q&A, as well as unlettered interior art, scroll below:
STEVE AND STEVE ON WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT AND WHY THEY ARE EXCITED FOR IT TO COME OUT:
“It’s tough to talk about PARTY & PREY without giving away some key plot details you really shouldn’t know until you’re about 30 pages in, but we’ll do our best: this thriller is about an older gay man named Alan who meets a younger man named Scott at a nightclub and takes him home. The book wouldn’t be a horror-thriller if that summed it all up, though, and there’s much more to this hookup in the making than is immediately obvious…
On a broader level, PARTY & PREY was a chance for the two of us as queer men to tell a grimy, taboo-testing horror story that centers LGBTQ+ men while also addressing the wolves in sheep’s clothing that exist within the community, as well as the way indifference and hate outside of the community can enable those wolves to run wild for far too long. We want to intrigue, we want to offer a wealth of representation, and also admit that we’ve got work to do within the community. When you’ve got a story full of queer folks of all kinds, no character has to be perfect, and that’s when we can get into the provocative storytelling that makes horror so great.”
STEVE AND STEVE ON THEIR APPROACH TO CREATING THIS BOOK COMPARED TO RAINBOW BRIDGE, ANOTHER (MUCH DIFFERENT) BOOK THEY’RE BOTH WRITING:
“It’s really a fun fluke of timing that PARTY & PREY comes out just a few months after RAINBOW BRIDGE, because it’d be difficult to find two more different books. While RAINBOW BRIDGE found us Steves channeling an emotionally honest fantasy/adventure story about a boy and his dog, everything stays firmly in the PG range. PARTY & PREY, on the other hand, is a hard R or maybe NC-17, and was a chance for us to explore the darker underbelly of a community we’re both very proud and grateful to be a part of, using some of our favorite horror/thriller storytelling tools. Loving something doesn’t mean ignoring when it’s got some issues to work on, and we’re playing that out in PARTY & PREY as a horror-thriller.”
STEVE AND STEVE ON WHAT THEY HOPE READERS WILL TAKE AWAY FROM READING THIS BOOK:
“First and foremost, we hope readers are thrilled in the most literal sense—our goal is to get hearts and adrenaline pumping when the full dynamic between Alan and Scott becomes clear. And if it leaves readers thinking about the complicated reality of threats within marginalized communities—and who does or does not take action when those predators are revealed—all the better.”
STEVE AND STEVE ON IF IS THERE IS ONE MEDIUM OF COMIC WRITING PREFERABLE OVER ANOTHER: (i.e. single issues vs. OGN)
“No iteration of the comic medium, from single issues to OGNs to newspaper strips, is intrinsically better or more preferable than another. Story should always dictate form, and we’re grateful AfterShock enabled us to tell PARTY & PREY in the form that suited it best: a single OGN with all of its twists, turns, and tortures between one set of covers.
This also gave our fantastic art team—Alex Sanchez, Juancho Valez, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou—the runway needed to do their best work on the book. Each of them helped define and elevate the mood and tension in the book, and it’s been a test of willpower not to show off more of their hard work before now!”
STEVE AND STEVE ON WHAT READERS WILL FIND IN THIS BOOK THAT THEY WON’T FIND IN ANY OTHER:
“There is a very valid, important time and place for affirming, uplifting queer stories, and both of us Steves thankfully get to work on a lot of those, too. But there’s also a need for queer creators to be able to tell other kinds of stories, even those with difficult content or challenging going things to say about the community itself. That’s not to say the book is about gay misery or suffering—far from it, by the time you reach the last pages—but readers who pick up PARTY & PREY are going to find a thrill ride that isn’t afraid to ask some difficult questions.”
