Why Horror Comics? panel at C2E2 2024 featured laughs and insights
Hundreds of C2E2 2024 con-goers were in the audience at the Why Horror Comics? panel on the afternoon of Saturday, April 27. Panelists talked about the comic book publishing industry, the creative process of drawing, why horror comics are so unnerving, the allegories of monsters and other related subjects.
The Why Horror Comics? panel featured a roundtable discussion from five horror comic book writers and artists — Tim Seeley, Alton Simpson, Eric Palicki, Joseph Duis and Jamie Primack. They shared their thoughts and feelings with the audience about why they make horror comics and why you should read them.
I, a local journalist and the author of Massacre at the Comic Shop and horror poetry in my books As the Moonlight Shines and American Bug, organized and moderated the Why Horror Comics? panel. I spent the last year figuring out who I wanted on the panel and preparing questions for a roundtable discussion and questions tailor-made for each panelist. My hard work paid off. The C2E2 panel ended up being everything I’d hoped for and more.
The five esteemed panelists said they had great chemistry — even those who hadn’t met each other before. Duis was photographed by an audience member sharing a laugh with Simpson as Palicki shook his head. Simpson said everyone on stage enjoyed each other’s thoughts and company. Duis said it felt amazing to be on stage with everyone.
Javi Foshee, an audience member, concurred with the panelists that they shared “a good bit of chemistry.”
Simpson and Duis caught flights to Chicago specifically to attend the Why Horror Comics? panel — with Simpson coming from Philadelphia and Duis from Colorado. Palicki and Seeley came from their booths in Artist Alley.
Primack’s Artist Alley application was denied by C2E2 this year after five years of being in Artist Alley, she said. However, because Primack was a panelist on the Why Horror Comics? panel, she received a Panelist badge and attended the show for free.
Primack appeared on stage in full cosplay as Mangle from Five Nights at Freddy’s. She said cosplaying gave her confidence to speak publicly but it was difficult to talk with the large, fake teeth that were a part of her costume.
“Someone came up to me after the panel and told me I spoke surprisingly clearly for someone with a mouth full of shark teeth,” Primack said.
Panelists talked about why they love the horror genre.
“The thing about horror as a genre is that it’s so malleable,” Palicki said. “If you take a horror story and you add a few jokes, all of a sudden, you’ve got Ghostbusters. If you take a horror story and put it in space, you’ve got Alien.”
Palicki said keeping this in mind is a good way to broaden the audience and attract new readers to horror comics.
“Jaws is one of the best and most successful horror movies of all time. My parents don’t watch horror movies but they love Jaws,” Palicki said. “There’s a way to take the tropes, the tricks and the important story-telling aspects of horror and staple it into something that doesn’t outwardly seem like horror. And it becomes much more appealing to the masses.”
Seeley said the comic book medium is a great way to tell a horror story.
“You have to interact with comics to finish the story. Because every panel tells you something in the gutter that asks you to fill in yourself. So, it causes intimacy instantly. And you’re waiting for the author to mess with your shit. You know it’s coming,” Seeley said. “When you go to a horror movie, they do the jump scare — and there’s sound and you poop or pants or whatever. But you can’t do that in comics. It has to be about the intimacy, the trust and you waiting for us to break the trust.”
Seeley shared his thoughts about the state of horror comic publishing. Horror comic creators aren’t resorting to crowdfunding because publishers aren’t noticing horror comics, he said. Rather, horror fans are enthusiastic about supporting horror comics — whether it’s through Kickstarter, comic shops or wherever else.
Horror is probably the second most published genre in comics after superheroes, Seeley said. Aftershock Comics was looking for an identity as an indie publisher before gravitating towards horror. Seeley said this doesn’t happen with humor, romance or other genres.
Palicki said he uses both Kickstarter and the traditional publishing route for his comics. Kickstarter is a good starting point to show publishers that there’s an interest in the book and to make sure all contributors get paid right off the bat, he said.
Simpson said he pitched his comic to an indie publisher at C2E2 2020 and was turned down, but he’s experienced much success in crowdfunding.
“Going directly to the public has worked out very well for me,” Simpson said. “The numbers that I’ve done on Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been pretty sizeable. I’ve got a pretty good following. I ship as far as Australia — 20 countries or 30 countries.”
Throughout his 10 Kickstarter and two Indiegogo campaigns, Simpson has shipped over 10,000 comic books and graphic novels and raised approximately $160,000.
Duis shared his thoughts about the deeper meaning of popular horror monsters and the cultural implications behind them.
“In some cultures, vampires represent a fear of disease. You have the legend about how when one of your relatives has recently died. And maybe that relative became a vampire and is sneaking around the house and is making other family members sick,” Duis said. “Werewolves are more about a civilization versus nature thing — where you put together your village and you go ‘this is a safe area’ but then the wolves are coming and killing the sheep and maybe carrying away small children.”
Simpson, writer of Vampires of New Jersey, Witches of Westchester and Werewolves of Brooklyn, said he writes about real places because it makes the story feel more grounded.
“When I was a kid and you picked up a Marvel book, they grounded their stories in real locations,” Simpson said. “If I were on a class trip in eighth grade in New York, I’d look up and I’d see a building. And it was the building that was The Daily Bugle.”
Simpson said he’s often inspired by real people in his comics too.
“I met people at that alternative music club that would tell me they were vampires or they were witches. And they were very serious,” Simpson said. “My idea for this was — is it a psychosis or is it a real thing? Not knowing which makes an interesting story.”
Primack, creator of the comic Binary Star and numerous spooky, single-panel illustrations she sells as prints, said there can sometimes be more creative freedom in the latter.
“I love drawing comics obviously but you can be a little bit constrained. For example, if a scene takes place in an ugly room, now you’re just stuck with that background in every panel. There’s a lot less wiggle room,” Primack said. “Whereas with illustrative work, especially when it comes to horror, you can just go absolute bananas with it.”
Duis mentioned that Primack has a variant cover and a seven-page story in his book, Two-Eyed Tales of Dracula, currently available for pre-order on Kickstarter.
At the end of the panel, nearly ten audience members asked questions. A common theme in them was writing advice. The first six audience members to ask a question received a free copy of Massacre at the Comic Shop by Nick Ulanowski. Justin Anderson, a friend of mine, was in the audience and handed it to them.
An audience member suggested that because human beings no longer have any natural predators, we’re releasing this primal fear when we consume horror media.
“With Dracula, the original novel, there’s an argument to be made that Dracula represents the nobility exploiting the lower classes,” Duis said. “Not having natural predators, we have sort of re-created the food chain through the class structure.”
“Yeah, we do have natural predators. They’re called ‘the rich,’” Seeley said, concurring with Duis, causing the audience to erupt in applause.
Next year, at C2E2 2025, I’ll likely moderate a panel like this again with a slightly different lineup of panelists and a new series of questions.
