By Zack Quaintance — DeadBox #1 from writer Mark Russell, artist Benjamin Tiesma, colorist Vladimir Popov, letterer Jim Campbell, and designer Tim Daniels. It’s the newest series from Vault Comics, and if you’ve been following this site for any length of time, you know we absolutely love Vault Comics. In fact, for us around here, a new Vault launch is basically an event.

That’s definitely the case with DeadBox #1. I had a chance to read this first issue in advance, and it was fantastic. It’s just such a great blend of horror with a meditation about the roles that stories play within our lives. I’m a fan. When Vault reached out with an opportunity to chat with Russell and Tiesma about the new book, I absolutely jumped at it. You can find our full conversation below.

Enjoy!

DeadBox Interview: Mark Russell and Benjamin Tiesma

ZACK QUAINTANCE: I might be wrong on this, but I think this seems like the purest horror comic either of you have ever done. How was working within that genre different than say superheroes, satire, or crime comics?

MARK RUSSELL: It is for me. The thing I like about writing horror is that it’s about tapping directly into your own neuroses. Writing about the things that terrify you and hoping that someone else is creeped out by them, too. In that sense, it’s a lot like writing satire.

BENJAMIN TIESMA: Thanks for the interest in DeadBox Zack! I guess not having many projects under my belt makes all genres new to me! Haha. My approach to Deadbox has just been trying my best to capture the people and the feel of the town first and the horror aesthetic comes easier once you’ve found that voice. Carefully starting small, unintimidating and living with these people until the sinister elements make the art POP is what sets it apart from those other genres that really, want to hit you with Big Mac flavoured pages early to keep your interest.

ZACK: How did you work together on some of the character designs? There was a real sense of small town frustration in this book, although it felt like it stood outside the usual tropes in ways I can't quite articulate…

MARK: When Benjamin first came onboard, we had phone and email conversations about the town of Lost Turkey. About the feeling of a small American town in a decline nobody who lives there is quite able to describe or deny. About the sort of resentment it creates in the people who live there, which is then easily manipulated and misdirected toward people they see as outsiders. I really wanted that sense of a town that is at once in steep decline, though in a way, more proud of its identity because of it. I think the designs Benjamin came up with reflect this sensibility very well and because of it, the scenes in Lost Turkey have a very different feel and aesthetic than the scenes that take place in the Deadbox movies.

BENJAMIN: Working with Mark and even our Editor Adrian has really been pleasant. They’ve trusted me since the word go to bring a lot of these characters to life. Which makes my job easy. I think the harshest notes so far were like “no hat, maybe a bigger belt buckle.” Otherwise we seemed to be on the same page about Lost Turkey and its inhabitants.

ZACK: Benjamin, I really liked how clearly the sci-fi story-in-a-story stood out from the stuff set in reality. What were some of the things you did with the art in the section to make the difference so clear?

BENJAMIN: Thanks for saying so! It’s been fun to use different art muscles for the town of Lost Turkey and the worlds shown in the Movies they watch. I guess I try to appreciate that the real world has stronger light and dark values, and everything in the movies is well lit. In “The Lonely Planet” I tried blending a pseudo 50’s sci-fi movie with a bright pastel aesthetic with my own lines. And colourist Vladmir Popov brought that vision to life swimmingly! Issue one kinda holds your hand, there’s A LOT more stranger movies and art styles to come.

ZACK: Mark, how does Deadbox relate to the rest of your work, and is that something you've thought about?

MARK: In a way, Deadbox may be the most personal comic I’ve ever written, in that’s it largely about the sort of semi-rural environment I grew up in, how I found my escape in movies and paperback science fiction novels, and coming to a reckoning with how that world made me who I am and this country what it has become. It’s more serious at times, less overtly funny, than other comics I’ve written. But that’s because I’m maybe still very close to much of the pain it describes.

ZACK: Finally, one of the (many) excellent themes in this book has to do with the relationship between our lives and fiction. Give your work as creatives, I imagine this is something you both have thought about quite a bit, and I was curious, how do the stories you consume tend to inform your lives? And have you ever felt anything eerie or supernatural in connection to that relationship?

MARK: If I have a religion, it is culture. And I tend to think of culture as a long rambling conversation, a conversation that started with cave paintings and moved on to Gilgamesh and the Bible and Shakespeare and My Little Pony. All of us writers and artists just sitting at the dinner table, talking our heads off, adding a few more seconds to the conversation before it rambles on without us. I tend to think of stories, both the ones I myself write and the ones that I have quietly absorbed from my seat at the table, as being my actual life. My physical presence in the world is more of a pleasant distraction. A downtime to reflect on the people I love and how lucky we are to play a part, no matter how small, in the great human conversation.

BENJAMIN: Oh there’s been so many times the movie I’m watching or the song I’m listening to has given me perspective on my own problems. That’s something Mark's story has really tuned into perfectly and we’re hoping this story we love so much strikes that chord with readers as well. Even take something like the car radio scene in Jerry Maguire. Sometimes pop culture just hits your own narratives bullseye! The other way is more impressionistic but applicable, as an artist everything I see and hear informs my process (whether I like it or not) and helps me consider solving an art problem another way. Sometimes it's as simple as “wow that composition works, I’m lifting it” and other times it's what's missing, the negative space in things that makes it sing. I grew up in the school of 90s cross hatching, so unlearning that and taking note of what’s NOT THERE is a big lesson I’m constantly learning with my art.

DeadBox #1

DeadBox #1
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Benjamin Tiesma
Colorist: Vladimir Popov
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Designer: Tim Daniel
Publisher: Vault Comics
Welcome to the town of Lost Turkey, where the main source of entertainment is a cursed DVD machine that seems to know more about the fate of its citizens than they do.
Release Date: September 8, 2021
Price: $3.99

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.