New Horror One-Shot ‘Hello Darkness: Good Bones & Other Sordid Tales’ INTERVIEW with Steve Orlando
“Horror plays in the world beyond the campfire…”
BOOM! Studios’ acclaimed horror anthology Hello Darkness has a new special one-shot hitting comic shop shelves this February: Hello Darkness: Good Bones & Other Sordid Tales. As you probably know, if you follow my video content, this is one of my favorite on-going series. Why? It is a celebration of the horror genre. So many concepts and subgenres are beautifully, and disturbingly, brought to life through the pages of Hello Darkness. Countless incredible creatives have told their twisted tales of terror in the anthology including Garth Ennis, Becky Cloonan, R.L. Stine, James Tynion IV, Werther Dell’Edera, and Steve Orlando!
Eisner, GLAAD, and Ringo-nominated writer Steve Orlando, known for titles such as Scarlet Witch, Dead Kings, Martian Manhunter, and Midnighter, has had multiple stories in Hello Darkness since the debut first issue of the series. Hello Darkness: Good Bones & Other Sordid Tales is a curation of Orlando’s previously published works in Hello Darkness with a brand new story Good Bones. with up-and-coming artist Dillon Snook. I got to pick Orlando’s brain about the incredible story that explores the importance of queer-spaces in history, and the horrors of gentrification! Read below…if you dare!
Hello Darkness: Good Bones & Other Sordid Tales hits shelves February 11th!
Edited for clarity.
Hello Darkness: Good Bones & Other Sordid Tales collects your previously published works in Hello Darkness with a new story, Good Bones, which explores the horror of erasing the history of a safe haven for queer men. What inspired this unique tale of terror?
My old life! This is a story about respecting a place’s history, above all. And when I was a wine and spirits professional in my old life, I saw plenty of gentrifiers coming through and steamrolling the histories of buildings and towns in the name of profit and so-called progress. But this isn’t just about gentrification, it’s about how all of us can be haunted by our history if we insist upon looking away from it.
What are you most excited for readers to see or take away from Good Bones?
Oh for this story, it’s all about finally getting to work with an absolute legend like Dillon Snook, someone I’d been dying to work with for ages. When the stars began to align for this story, I got even more excited than when I got the initial offer—Dillon is a master of the game, and his pages brim with character, emotion, and dark wit.
Spaces for members of the LGBTQIA+ community to safely themselves are integral parts of queer history, does the Mary-Anne draw any inspiration from real locations?
Absolutely -- it’s an ode to the bath houses that used to be refuges during the early part of the last century. And close to home for me, it’s a hat tip to Jacques Cabaret in Boston, one of the first gay bars in the country—and the only continuously operating one, full stop.
Having written multiple incredible queer stories in comics, including the GLAAD-nominated series Midnighter/Midnighter and Apollo for DC, what has it been like bringing queer stories to the genre of horror for Hello Darkness?
It felt like the right move—the next evolution of what I try to do with all my work. It’s been a long time since those DC books, and I’ve been lucky to be part of a lot of stories. One thing I try to do is never repeat myself—when I feature queer characters, every time, it’s something that’s never been shown on the page before. We did that with Kill A Man, we did that with Martian Manhunter, with Virgil and so much more. With Hello Darkness, the chance came to step into a genre that’s long been connected with the queer community—because horror is provocative, it’s transgressive, and it can certainly be gamp as well. It’s also uncompromising, just like Midnighter himself! So, it’s been exciting to finally work in the genre more, since it’s one I hadn’t dipped my mind into much until Hello Darkness!
What draws you to horror? Why does it work so well for the comic book medium?
To me, it’s that no holds are barred. Horror is meant to shock you, to thrill you--and if we do it right, get you to think as well. Horror plays in the world beyond the campfire, the same place folklore comes from, so it’s always been special to me. And as for comics, what we have vivid imagery, the shock pageturn reveal, and the ability to pull a read across the page with precise perspective and shadow—we control the world and what folks see. And we do so with perhaps more precision than any other medium.
For Good Bones, what has it been like working with breakout artist Dillon Snook, colorist Brad Simpson, and letterer Jodie Troutman to bring the story to life!
A dream, there’s no other way to say it. Dillon has long been a bucket list artist for me, so I would’ve dropped anything to get this story done. And Brad and Jodie have picked up the baton and elevated what Dillon and I kicked off as no two other collaborators would—that’s the magic of comics, it’s a team sport, and it’s one of the only places your own story often ends up surprising you.
Any last words for readers? Anything you’d like to share about Hello Darkness: Good Bones & Other Sordid Tales, or any new projects you can talk about or tease?
This whole thing was a shock! Hello Darkness has been a joy from start to finish, telling stories inspired by pillars like Gogol and Cronenberg. But for BOOM! to support me with a focused one-shot is unprecedented—it’s an honor. These stories will hopefully shock you, hopefully even disgust you in their way—but there’s a whimsy there too, there’s a warning wink and a knowing nod. There’s a catharsis in knowing we aren’t like these folks—we’ve avoided the cliffs they’ve fallen off. So stop by, crack the cover open, and revel in the schadenfreude.
Sami DeMonster is the founder of The DeMonster and a freelance writer for DC.com. She is best known for being a content creator with a focus on comic books, with an emphasis on horror. She works with most major comic book publishers to help promote new titles and encourage people to read more comics!
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Fantastic interview! Orlando's point about horror living in that folklore space beyond everyday life is kinda brilliant when you think about it. I've been to Jacques in Boston a few times and it's wild how places like that carry so much untold hisotry that most people just walk past. The gentrification angle is probly the scariest part because we're watching real communities get erased in real time, not just in comics.