By Zack Quaintance — After years of making readers laugh, writer/artist Kyle Starks is getting ready to do something different. He’s getting ready to scare the #*@& out of them.

*Artwork by Artyom Topilin with colors by Lee Loughridge.*

Starks has long been one of the most reliably funny (and heartfelt!) creators in comics. See his Eisner-nominated work on Sex Castle, Rock Candy Mountain, Old Head, Assassin Nation, and, most recently, The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton. Starks’ stories often feature a sort of old school tough guy — action movie stars, assassins, NBA enforcers — serving up big laughs, usually with deep personal relationships at the center. All of them, though, have a clever and absurdist tone. From one page to the next, they’ll give you a slapstick brawl, a set of rapid-fire one-liners about the devil, or a truly moving character moment between father and a daughter.

Starks’ new book, however, is different. It’s called I Hate This Place (or, alternately, Fuck This Place), and it’s due May 18 from Image Comics/Skybound. It features art by relative newcomer Artyom Topilin (Ice Cream Man Quarantine Comix), colors by Lee Loughridge, and letters by Pat Brosseau. And it trades the action-comedy genre for straight-up horror. There are some recognizable qualities from Starks’ books (more on that below), but for the most part, I Hate This Place is a clear departure. Starks recently hopped on the phone with me ahead of the book’s final order cutoff date, which is April 25 (so tell your LCS you want it this week!).

The foray into a new genre has been exciting, so much so Starks said he is working on more horror projects already, but putting out something so different comes with some stress:

STARKS: I’m incredibly anxious about this one. For my comedy stuff, my action-comedy stuff, I have confidence in that. I know the work is good. I know what I’m doing. I have a lot of anxiety about this, but horror and comedy are very similar creatures in terms of storytelling. They both require pacing, they require setups and payoffs, they require tone to be successful — just one is for laughs and one is for creeps.
I love horror and I love comedy, so it’s not as difficult to do, but man, I’m anxious about it, for sure. I think the book is great, but it’s different than anything else I’ve done.

I Hate This Place #1 certainly reads as something new from the creator. But that’s not a bad thing. The premise is that Gabby and Trudy are a couple who have inherited a ranch from a great aunt, and they’re moving to the country to start a new life there. When they get there, however, they find ghosts…and aliens…and zombies…basically, pick a horror trope — there’s a decent chance you’ll find it on this ranch.

As a creator, Starks is excited about the possibilities of the book’s setting:

STARKS: Why I’m so excited about this ranch is that I’ve constructed it in a way that I can kind of do anything, potentially. What am I focusing on right now? Hauntings, monsters, demonic entities, something terrible in the woods, and, you know, a slasher killer because there’s a hitman on the ranch looking for money. Figuring out how to do a bunch of things at once, it’s going to be so much fun.

Believe it or not, the ranch in I Hate This Place was inspired by a real world location:

STARKS: The inspiration for I Hate This Place is in Utah, and it’s called Skinwalker Ranch. It’s the most paranormal place in the world. It has monsters, and it has ghosts, and it has UFOs — I thought, what a crazy setting. I’d never heard stories about some place that has everything. I became so fascinated as a horror fan. What a great setting. You’d have the opportunity to work with a bunch of different tropes. To me, that’s a good setting.

Having a great setting in place was one thing, but after that, the creators had to (obviously) build interesting characters and a strong story. The idea that a couple was having to live amid all this supernatural mayhem actually stems from Starks’ own fears, not of monsters or anything gruesome, but of being put in situations where there’s no clear idea of what to do:

STARKS: What scares me is not knowing what to do. What would you do in a haunted house? I don’t know. There’s no YouTube video to watch. The thing with our heroines in I Hate This Place is that it’s a myriad of things. There’s things in the woods. There’s some sort of demonic entity that roams the countryside. There’s lights in the sky. What do you do? That terrifies me.

The other fear that inspired this book is putting one’s loved ones in danger. It would be one thing, Starks noted, to be stuck in a haunted house by yourself, but if you were responsible for bringing your loved ones to a dangerous place? That’s a much scarier and more dramatic idea. This notion also popped up in Old Head (both written and illustrated by Starks), which had a father-daughter vampire-hunting duo at its core.

I Hate This Place, meanwhile, is brought to life by Artyom Topilin’s artwork, colored by Lee Loughridge, and lettered by Pat Brosseau. This is Topilin’s first major comics work, and Starks described bringing the artist on to the book, as well as the evolution of his work:

STARKS: We looked hard for an artist. It’s hard to find someone who does creepy stuff well and is willing to work with me, a lower-name guy in a lot of ways. So, we looked hard. We looked at a lot of different people and nothing seemed right. [Robert] Kirkman suggested Artyom. He’s only done like an Ice Cream Man anthology story. This is his first major work, and I think he does an incredible job. The first issue to me maybe feels like it’s his first major comic, but the second issue? He’s full speed. Issue three? Full speed. The jump for him from issue one to two is great. He’s a really talented illustrator, and his stuff has a great tone. Him and Lee Loughridge, the colorist, are very simpatico too.

Topilin and Loughridge certainly deliver spooky imagery in I Hate This Place, doing so in a versatile way that works for all the various horror tropes. It’s kind of surprising that this is Topilin’s first major comic, just as it is that this is Starks’ first straightforward stab at telling a horror story. The book feels really polished, and it’s a fantastic read.

It takes what should be a joyous moment — finally owning a home at a time when housing often feels like its own type of scary story — and throws familiar horror ideas at it until so many pile up that it all starts to feel like something new. And while it’s not a straightforward comedy like Starks’ other work, it’s still a clever and heartfelt book with charming lead characters. It’s spooky, to be sure, but I found myself snorting here and there. I was also absolutely invested in the relationship at the book’s center.

I Hate This Place seems sure to satisfy fans of Starks’ other work (different though it may be), while also appealing to the growing audience for horror comics. While the ranch may be absolutely horrid for the characters who inherited it, it’s a fun place to visit as a reader, one that I had a blast checking out.

FOC for I HATE THIS PLACE #1 is April 25

I Hate This Place #1

I Hate This Place #1
Writer: Kyle Starks
Artist: Artyom Topilin
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Pat Brosseau
Publisher: Image Comics - Skybound
SERIES PREMIERE
FOR FANS OF GIDEON FALLS AND HOME SICK PILOTS!
After inheriting a farm house, Trudy and Gabby are ready to start the next chapter of their lives together...except it's already home to a mysterious force that's attracted ghosts, aliens, and all kinds of supernatural beings for decades.
Now, Gabby and Trudy must play by the "house rules" in order to survive living among the most frightening creatures on Earth in this new series from KYLE STARKS (ASSASSIN NATION, THE SIX SIDEKICKS OF TRIGGER KEATON) and ARTYOM TOPILIN (ICE CREAM MAN PRESENTS: QUARANTINE COMIX SPECIAL).
Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 18, 2022

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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.