Interview: Oscar Osorio on the Making of Cut the Roses
Trigger Warning: This one's about a new erotic slasher comic that gets taboo, all to blow past what AI can do.
Cut The Roses is the kind of comic book that dares you to keep reading. As equal parts horrifying as it is beautiful, this first issue is a disturbingly good kickoff to an erotic horror story created in homage to comic books such as Luana Vecchio’s Lovesick. Which mixes murder and sex from the get-go.
Written by Oscar Osorio with art by EL KRP and covers by Narcelio Sousa, Ivan Angulo, and Luana Vecchio herself, this book is a horror story about a beautiful woman slasher and the mystery that follows. The first entry of a series about a universe full of serial killers.
Here’s the premise:
Cut the Roses follows Billy, a teenager who one night witnesses his parents being murdered in a ritualistic way by a mysterious woman he calls The Hell Muse. Beautiful, composed, and horrifyingly precise.
Twenty years later, William lives a hollow life until news emerges of a new survivor: a young woman named Dasha, whose parents were killed in a disturbingly similar way. William tries to find her with help from an unexpected ally: a prostitute he has been seeing named Stephanie. Together, they will decide whether Dasha is the key to solving this mystery or if some dark truths are meant to stay hidden.
We sat with Ringo-nominated writer Oscar Osorio to learn more.
This article was edited for clarity
Oscar, we’ve known each other for a while, coming up as students from Scott Snyder’s Substack. I’ve always supported your work. But this one? This is grotesque! Next-level intense. It’s… incredible.
I gotta ask… are you okay?
OSCAR OSORIO: Haha, I appreciate your support, my friend! I’m as okay as someone trying to make art for a living could be in this world.
Your writing tends to orbit things that scare you. The Childless tapped into societal anxiety about declining birth rates; Cut the Roses feels like it’s digging into something even more uncomfortable.
What is this comic really about?
OSCAR OSORIO: Cut The Roses, and the subsequent serial killer universe I’m building, will explore human feelings that make us uncomfortable, particularly within loving relationships and sex.
This is not a high concept or a dystopian society made by the decisions of a few, but rather a personal story about those “taboos” that we’re afraid to discuss with others, and sometimes with ourselves, that ultimately make us who we are. Those desires we feel but are told not to explore because of societal norms.
Trauma exploration, fetishes, behaviors, I want to explore this to communicate that we shouldn’t hide who we are, because, as broken as we could be, that’s what makes us human.
This feeling stems from a world more and more dominated by AI, which is taking everything down the same path: a world where we’re all deemed “equal”, dictated by those in power.
I think it’s important to highlight that we are all different, and that each person’s uniqueness is what makes humanity beautiful. I know this feels like a stretch from a slasher book, but if you come with me for the ride, you’ll see it for yourself.
This universe is for people outside the norms: people who are minorities, neurodivergent, queer, and more. It’s all about us being unique in a system that wants us all to be the same.
Now, this book goes really far. There’s a line in most mediums, but comics feel like they can cross it safely because of the abstraction.
Where do you think that line is, if it even exists at all?
OSCAR OSORIO: I think that depends on the book. Each story has lines that it traces, and for each story, you can determine how far the creators may go. As you say, this one goes far, but I believe it serves a purpose. It’s not “free”; it’s needed. If I don’t go far enough, I’m not taking the story where it needs to go, and that’s detrimental to the book and the readers.
I put the Mature label for a reason, and there’s a reason why I’m Kickstarting this book instead of trying to get it published. But at the same time, I believe we need these. Creative freedom, when not hurting anyone, is something we can’t lose.
To add, I once asked Ryan Stegman a similar question: what can I do in comics, and what are the limits? And his answer was short but precise: “as long as it’s good…”
CUT THE ROSES PREVIEW PAGES 1-4
Let’s talk protagonists. William feels broken, having survived psychosexual trauma: his parents, killed in a sex-murder.
How does this traumatic event drive who he is?
OSCAR OSORIO: William is a victim, and not only does he lose his parents at a young age, but he’s also mistreated by a patriarchal society that either doesn’t believe him about the killer or shames him for not being able to defend his parents against a woman.
Society’s influence on William resembles our society. He grows up overcoming this trauma the best he can, but we quickly see he’s scared for life.
His biggest scar is his obsession with the Hell Muse. Even though he did his best to turn his life around, he can’t stop seeing her. Everything goes back to the tragedy, with reason.
Now, William has the rare chance of getting answers, and maybe revenge? But is that what he really wants? We’ll see.
The Hell Muse is… a lot. Equally tantalizing as she is terrifying. What is she? An entity, metaphor, or something in-between?
OSCAR OSORIO: We’ll delve deeper into the Hell Muse’s origins as the series unfolds, but something in-between best describes her at this stage.
The Hell Muse came to life as I was wondering: why are all the slasher killers from my youth monstrous men? How would society react if a serial killer were a beautiful woman? Probably the authorities wouldn’t believe it, and everyone would underestimate her. So, to an extent, she’s a manifestation of society’s flaws, the same as William.
They are outliers, flaws, what happens when people derail. At least from an external perspective, but I want to explore both of them, and more characters, because that’s where real humanity lies. Behind the masks and appearances.
The Hell Muse is not just a symbol; she’s a complex character with her own problems and concerns. I’m very excited to continue telling her story.
Cut The Roses is an original Erotic-slasher-horror universe. You’ve officially hit every indie comic book trend, my friend.
Was that intentional, or did it just come out that way?
OSCAR OSORIO: Cut the Roses started as a self-contained story, but as I was writing it, I had too much fun with the characters and the world. Then I started thinking: The Hell Muse is my Freddy Krueger in a way, so I started wondering: where’s Jason? Where’s Michael Myers? How does the existence of multiple serial killers work in this world? What is this world, exactly? Why are the serial killers all women?
So many questions, and, as a storyteller, I had to craft all the answers. It has been a dream of mine to craft a universe of interconnected stories, and I’m glad it happened naturally. It wasn’t planned, I wasn’t trying to tick the indie comic box trends, and the fact that it happened out of nowhere is what keeps me going. I don’t want to tell these stories. I need to.
What kind of visual were you chasing for this book? I immediately thought of Lovesick when reading, then saw you actually got its creator, Luanna Vecchio, for a cover.
OSCAR OSORIO: For Cut the Roses, I wanted to transmit a mix of passion and gore. The antithesis of what’s beautiful and what’s monstrous, how sometimes these lines intertwine, and what it says about us.
The red tones characterize the Hell Muse and give this book a sense of urgency, while the black-and-white sections serve as interludes. Color has been used very strategically and will continue to be so for the rest of the books.
Also, this book doesn’t exist without Lovesick, and I’ve told Luana this, as I’ve been a fan of her work ever since it came out.
It’s a visceral book. Obviously, I love Luanna’s work–I sell lovesick in my own store and am currently working with her sister. That family of artists is fantastic.
That said, talk to me about the artist, EL KRP. What did they bring to the book that elevated it beyond what you had on the page?
OSCAR OSORIO: El KRP is a young Chilean artist who’s very talented, has great projection, and understands what I need from him in the book. His incorporation into the project came after a previous artist couldn’t continue, so we didn’t get the chance to create it from scratch together, as I normally like to work in this type of partnership. Fortunately, he’s a fan of slashers and erotica and has shown he’s up for the challenge. Now that I’m continuing to build the universe, we’ll keep working on this.
For this story, the key is that El KRP has a great grasp of expressions, which is absolutely crucial for conveying what the characters are feeling, since this book is all about that. You will see it in William and in the Hell Muse; their expressions are what make this book.
I love how the look opens like traditional manga before it spirals and, honestly, bleeds into something else. How involved were you in the layout and pacing? What does your collaboration process look like?
OSCAR OSORIO: The circumstances around this book were not traditional, and I think it’s a testament to how indie comics sometimes work. Basically, when we first did it, back in July 2025, I wanted to sell it at an event in Peru, but we were at an impasse with the previous artist, so we finished the whole book in a month, and I printed it in Spanish.
This wasn’t the best collaborative effort, and even if the result was good, the rush left some pages and the storytelling less than ideal. So, starting this year, we got back together to make a better, more consistent book. This was a tedious, inefficient process, but it worked wonders for my chemistry with El KRP, as we really understood each other.
It’s true that in times of crises, you can see who steps up, and El KRP definitely did. Now, the collaboration is less one-sided, and I feel we’re creating a story we’re both proud of.
Without giving too much away, can you tell us what to expect? Maybe A hint at what’s to… come?
OSCAR OSORIO: I can tell you that Cut the Roses continues in a way that no one would expect, as you can see from those final pages. There are many underlying mysteries, some of which will continue in subsequent series with other characters, though the idea is that every story in this universe can be read independently.
Cut the Roses gets weird: we’re going back in time, there will be more action, gore, and sex. In general, it will not be for the faint of heart, and it will definitely be entertaining as hell. Cut the Roses is all scripted, and artwork for issue 2 is already underway.
And I can tell you I’m already working on the following two series in this universe.
We have Iron Man, we have Cap, and we have the Hulk. And I’m already thinking about the Avengers. If everything goes well, I’ll be working on these characters for the next five years. It’s going to be a fun one.
Cut The Roses has just launched on Kickstarter.
You can support it by clicking this link right here