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Dead Vengeance #1
Bill Morrison may be best known in comics for his work at Bongo where he’s worked on numerous Simpsons comics. He’s also the creator of Roswell, little green Man, wrote Captain Carrot and the final Ark, and served as art director on Futurama. Now, he’s doing something different in Dark Horse’s Dead Vengeance, a crime/horror story. Westfield’s Roger Ash got in touch with Morrison to learn more about this upcoming comic.
Westfield: What was the genesis of Dead Vengeance?
Bill Morrison: Dead Vengeance started as an idea for a 1930’s era pulp hero named “The Corpse.” He was an common guy who traveled through time via astral projection to take control of his future body, only to discover that’s he had died at some point, so the body he inhabits in the future is a corpse. So he basically reanimates his own dead body. As I worked out the story and had to solve the problems of time paradoxes and exactly how and why he time-travels, it got a little deeper than just the concept of a reanimated corpse fighting crime. Also, I realized that a completely different sort of character named “The Corpse” appeared in a Hellboy story by the same name, so I started calling my hero John Doe.
Westfield: What were your influences for the comic?
Morrison: Todd Browning’s 1932 film Freaks was inspirational for the carnival aspect of the story. also Dr. strange for the astral projection element. I was always fascinated by Doc Strange’s ability to send his spirit form out from his physical body. I couldn’t remember if he was able to send it forward in time, but I figured “Why not?”
Obviously, pulp heroes like The shadow and the green Hornet were on my mind a lot while conceiving the character of John Doe. and I’m very influenced by The Rocketeer. When Dave Stevens created the Rocketeer he was paying homage to movie serials, pulp magazine stories, and adventure comics from the ’30’s and 40s. Similarly, I wanted to pay tribute to film noir, crime and horror comics, and suspenseful radio shows from the same period. While I was writing this initial story, I think I was subconsciously trying to do something that Dave would have enjoyed. He was a vocal fan of my Roswell, little green man series, and that always made me very proud. So I guess I was trying to do something new that Dave would probably dig.
Westfield: What can you tell us about the series and who are some of the characters we’ll meet?
Morrison: Well, there’s the aforementioned John Doe, aka Johnny Dover, an up and coming radio commentator in the Detroit of 1930. He’s obsessed with his own rising star and when he rails against corrupt Mayor Clarence Bowden and threatens to reveal his ties to the local mob, he puts his partner and daughter’s lives in danger.
Without revealing too many surprises I’ll tell you that by ignoring the Mayor’s threats, Johnny’s life is turned upside down and he finds himself accused of murder and on the run to avoid the electric chair. While hiding out, he meets Madame Selina Cansino, a carnival fortune teller. romantic sparks fly and he takes her into his confidence. Johnny tells her his dilemma which is that in order to get his life back and take revenge on the mayor, he has to get to Izzy Shapiro, the mob killer who is really responsible for the murder Johnny’s accused of. The only problem is Shapiro was just convicted of another crime and is serving a ten year sentence. So he’s faced with remaining a fugitive for an entire decade without any chance to clear his name.
It’s Selina Cansino who teaches Johnny the ancient method of time travel that will allow him to send his spirit form ten years into the future to get to Shapiro. The idea is that he can do what he needs to do in 1940, and then return to his body in 1930, but something happens to prevent that. That something is Johnny’s murder.
Dead Vengeance #1 preview page
Westfield: how much world building did you do for the series?
Morrison: Not very much. The story is set in a real time and place, Detroit, Michigan in 1930, and then in 1940. I grew up in suburban Detroit and went to art school downtown, so a lot of the world was already familiar to me. I did do research on a few things like the traveling carnival, the radio station where Johnny works, The Aztec Club, the Purple Gang (Detroit’s own mob), and the corrupt mayor, but they’re all based on real people and places. except for reanimated corpses, time travel, and astral projections, it’s all pretty much historic fiction.
Westfield: are there other projects you’re working on that you’d like to mention?
Morrison: At Bongo I’ve been developing a digital comic reader app for iOS which launched in July. It’s called “Simpsons Store.” now I’m working on a companion Futurama app. I’ve also been writing a fun series of Simpsons books under the series title The vault of Simpsonology. the most recent release is Grampa Simpson’s guide to Aging. I’m also drawing and painting Simpsons, Disney and star Wars images for limited edition prints from ACME Animation Archives. Oh, and I recently became the president of the national Cartoonists society because I wasn’t busy enough. By the way, we’re having a celebrity Cartoonists Caribbean cruise in January of 2016. I’ll be one of the guest artists along with a dozen other top cartoonists. It’s going to be a fun week of signings, cocktail parties, entertaining and informative talks, dining with cartoonists, etc. You can find all the details at www.reuben.org!
Westfield: any closing comments?
I can’t thank the good folks at Dark horse enough. I’m well aware that if I’m known at all in the comic book industry, it’s for doing humor. I pitched Dead Vengeance to Dark horse and they took it on without any question of whether or not I was capable of writing a crime/horror/time-travel/occult series. They had total faith in me and I don’t think I let them down. but the readers will be the judge of that and I’m looking forward to their reaction!
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Dead Vengeance #1