By Zack Quaintance — I recently had a chance to read the first issue of a new series from Vault Comics (always a treat) called Black Stars Above, which is written by Lonnie Nadler, illustrated by Jenna Cha, colored by Brad Simpson, and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. It’s a dense and immersive comic, one that blends elements of both cosmic horror and historical fiction into a dark existential cocktail that feels a bit like Twin Peaks set in the icy Canadian frontier.

It is, in a word, a singular book. We’ll have a full review when the release date gets closer (it’s due out Nov. 13), but today, it is our honor to bring to you an interview about the comic from Nadler and Cha, who were kind enough to take some time from their busy schedules.

Enjoy!

Q: This first issue — and I presume this longer story — is heavily informed by history, the meeting of cultures French and Métis, and the realities of that time. What sort of research did the creative process require, both in terms of the writing and of the artwork?

LONNIE NADLER: I knew right away this was going to be a period piece, and I have a love/hate relationship with the genre. When it’s done well and offers us a unique and honest look into the past, or uses the period as a means to better understand the present, it can be very rewarding. The other side of that, where my hate comes in, are stories where the time period selected is merely used because it offers “cool” visuals, or because someone is trying to win some sort of award and having your movie or book set in the past automatically makes it more high-brow and worthy of praise. All this is to say, I knew if I was going to do a book set in rural Canada at the tail end of the fur trade in the nineteenth century, it had to be authentic, it had to be accurate, it had to feel real, it had to be motivated by the story. 

I love doing research and getting lost in bygone eras, so this part of the process is the most rewarding for me. I read textbooks about the fur trade, encyclopedias and books about the Métis people and their history, read first-hand account journal entries from fur trappers of the era, and spoke with Métis people and a historian. I have pages and pages of notes, most of which will never make it into the book, but it allowed me to feel comfortable dwelling in this time period in my head instead of guessing at every turn what was an honest portrayal and what wasn’t, and I think you can feel that on the page. A lot of this work did make its way into the pages through references I would give Jenna for artwork or clothing or newspaper headlines, etc. and thankfully for me Jenna is the kind of artist who responds well to that kind of thing and uses it to help build out the world, making it all the more rich. 

Q: Lonnie, in the writing process, what was it like to sort of toggle between the elegant journal narration, and the conversational almost-gritty realism in the speech patterns of some of these characters?

NADLER: During the era in question, people typically wrote a lot more formally than they spoke and that informed part of this decision to have a contrast in Eulalie’s narrative voice versus the conversations. Still, though I want all of it to feel somewhat poetic, even when capturing realism in conversation. I knew I wanted the narration to be in the form of journal entries early on, throwing back to the Gothic tradition and early Weird fiction, guided by the fact that Eulalie herself longs to be a writer, and so she almost overcompensates in her descriptions. She’s young, but smart, and her writing voice is vastly different from her speaking voice. It was about showing who we are inside is not always who we are outside, and showing that division was important. As for the dialogue, I never wanted it to feel stilted or feigned. I wanted most characters to speak with economy to add to the dreariness of the world. Having this contrast between narration and speech keeps things interesting for me as a writer because I get to switch back and forth between them, and hopefully that effect comes across for readers. I think having Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou on letters helped with this a great deal because in addition to how I wrote it, Hass allows readers to see a stark visual distinction between speech and captions that gives the book a very unique feel. It’s also worth noting that silence plays an equally important role, pages where there is neither narration nor speech, because it evokes a specific mood that informs a lot of the book, and Jenna and Brad nailed those silent pages.

Q: Jenna, I really liked the angles you picked and the way so many of these panels had a sense of claustrophobia, despite the inherently open region in which the story is set. You really get a sense of how trapped the protagonist feels. How aware were you of creating these feelings, and was it challenging at all, especially in scenes set outside?

JENNA CHA: I actually took inspiration from the cinematography from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West as visuals and mood for the book. Those movies are so impossibly vast and open in their environments, yet some of the shots are right up on people’s faces, or tight and cramped and sweaty inside a dilapidated cabin. I took that idea of visual contrast as a thematic intention towards centralizing the humanness of the story and augmenting the character study amidst an infinity around them. I feel like that concept encapsulates Eulalie’s journey in Black Stars Above; as much as it is about the impenetrable forces surrounding her—family conflict, the economic state of her homeland, the vast merciless elements of the Canadian wilderness, the cosmic entities haunting the earth—it is ultimately her story. 

Q: Not to spoil anything for anyone — but there seems to be a metaphysical horror story lying under the more straightforward historical fiction. How did you decide to balance that and what to show the audience when?

LN: There is a lot brewing beneath the surface in Black Stars Above, and when I say it’s a slow burn, I mean it’s a slow burn. The reason for this, and to answer your question without ruining the reading experience, is that I wanted the beginning of the series to feel like standard historical fiction with a bit of weirdness simmering underneath. There is a groundedness that begins the series, so all characters are firmly planted in reality, so that by the time the veil of terror is cast over this world it, hopefully, has a greater impact. Since the characters begin sane and slowly lose their way, so too does the reader. At least that is the desired effect. To begin a story like this with too much metaphysical horror out the gate, I don’t think is a terribly interesting way to instill fear or to convey the themes we’re working with. It feels tawdry when you don’t do the work up front to make readers care about and be able to understand the world. I believe the best horror stories are first and foremost grounded dramas that ask important questions about humanity, and then they utilize the genre elements to augment what’s already there, to offer some sort of metaphor to transform what could be banal into something more engaging and thought-provoking. That’s why I love movies like The Exorcist or Don’t Look Now or The Innocents or Picnic at Hanging Rock. They take their time. They set up beautiful drama. And then underscore it with the supernatural. 

Q: Finally, I really loved this debut issue, just for how singular and new (yet old!) it felt...it doesn’t fit neatly into any existing boxes. How was it for both of you wrapping your heads around what this story was and what it was about?

LN: Thank you for saying that, first off. A big goal for this book was to make sure it didn’t feel like anything else on the shelves, and that it represented us as creators. So, hearing you say that really means a great deal to us. I’m the kind of writer who needs to know the themes I’m dealing with up front. I rarely have it in me to figure things out as I go, like many other writers whom I envy greatly. Before I even started outlining I set out to tell a story that would examine things I found fearful. Namely, the notion of family lineage, and the fear of being unable to escape your circumstances despite trying your best to forge your own identity. Family is one of the only things in life that we do not choose, and it is tied to us irrevocably. Our parents are literally part of our biology and there is something scary about the idea that one can’t ever fully be their own person. Obviously I didn’t want to explore this in such on-the-nose terms, so the cosmic horror elements, which are typically reserved to explore themes outside humanity, are turned inward here. The book is about a lot of other things too, but I don’t want to talk too much about themes and motifs so as not to color readers’ experiences. At the end of the day, it’s about whatever people want it to be about. It’s out of my hands now. But, I believe this is the type of book where if you give it your attention and care, it will give back equally to you. It is the (pretentious) Nietzschean abyss that gazes back.

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