Political Comedy Podcast Chapo Trap House will work with publisher Bad Egg to bring fans to zero per year. The comic is a new horror anthology of podcast teams and hosts, and is the first volume in the three-volume series.
Chapo host Will Menaker and publishing director of Bad Egg, Robert Meyers spoke with Beat about interviewing Alan Moore and interviewing Zero’s five brand new stories.
Javier Perez: Retailer Conference, maybe Comics Pro? I happened to see your chapo logo and I said, “What is this? I thought they were doing audio things. How did you create the comics? How did you link?
William Meneker: Well, Robert, you guys reached out to us, right?
Robert Myers: It was organic. It started with Daniel Dominguez. I know I was working with you about some non-common related things. I think he was helping you guys with that when you were setting up your cold feet. So he seemed “they’re interested in doing something.” So he contacted me with Chris Wade and I think Amber Ally Frost was right in front of me, and we all made a big call for some kind of kickoff at the end of last summer, early fall of last year. Yes, it was a friend of a friend.
Perez: This seems like a horror anthology. Why did you want to ask why you all went for it?
Mentor: Well, life is so scary. (laughs) When the concept of anthology was first considered, the first thought that came to my mind was a great anthology series from the basement or an astonishing story, science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Personally, the horror format suits my sensibility. I wanted to write a story that is like a horror story. I didn’t want to do anything superhero related. I love writing these as standalone, understated stories within genre format.
Perez: Do you find that, especially in comic books? Why are you wondering about comic books?
Menekar: Well, especially because we’ve been paired with these incredible artists. I think it’s like a canvas that will make your imagination wild. You don’t have to worry about your budget or how you can do this as a period. You don’t need anything like $500 million to do that. I love it’s a way of bringing ideas that we have lived and existed, and I’m excited about it. And since my end, I have read comics forever. I was a comic fan, but I never wrote comics. I wrote the pilot and script.
It was also an interesting learning process because when writing manga, I realized that you must also be a director, rather than writing a script. You need to draw something like the movement from panel to panel, for each panel, for each panel. So it was an interesting process. It was tricky at first, but filming in my head and translating it in the artist’s writing direction was rewarding.
Perez: And you said you’ve been a comic book fan for the rest of your life. At one point, wasn’t it like Chapo’s episode with Alan Moore?
Menekar: Ah, that’s right. We not only interviewed Alan Moore on the show, but we also had a previous professional relationship with him.
Perez: Ah, amazing.
Menekar: I was a Magnum Opus novel like him, an American publisher in Jerusalem. When I did my previous work before starting Chapo, I was an assistant editor at Liveright, a division of WW Norton, and was responsible for acquiring American rights in Jerusalem. Not only am I familiar with Alan’s work, I have previously worked with him on another project.
So, knowing he doesn’t do much of the media, it was obviously very special to be interviewed with Moore. And I say with affection that my comics, my story, the horrors of Clinton Hill, I jacked his entire flow. Bars for the bars, lines for the lines, and I’m mentioning Neonomicon and Providence. I wanted to create something like that, but that involves exploring real history and creating lovecraft stories that bridge the intersection of strange fiction and real events.
Perez: Yes. If that’s okay, did you want to know if we could talk about your story? Clinton Hill horror.
Meneker: Clinton Hill is a nearby Brooklyn where I live. I wanted to do something about where I live. Because this was like a nod to HP Lovecraft, who lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
I wanted to write a version of the HP Lovecraft story about the neighborhood I lived in. It created a strange and alternative history that touches on a considerable part of the area’s actual history.
Perez: So Clinton Hill Horror is another history of New York City. Is that a good way to proceed?
Menekar: Yes, I think so. It was the universe terror of Lovecraft, which fuses the universe terror templates, and I wanted to insert myself into it. The main characters are like a thinly veiled turn-of-century analogue for me, based on a series of Cthulhu role-playing games we’ve done on several occasions on the show. I had a character based on myself, an occult detective, and I wanted to take that character and cast him into the story.
I write as if it was a straightforward horror story. I’m not trying to do it with my tongue, as if I wasn’t doing it, but I wanted this me to roam Clinton Hill at the time. Having my mind back to the early stages of the century, then even more back to the Revolutionary War, having these two different timelines where my characters pass on the veil hats can thwart the thin layer of sanity that keeps us all going and can deal with reality every day.
Perez: So the city is a constant reminder
Menekar: Yes. I touch on a considerable part of the story. This includes a memorial at Fort Green Park, just a short distance from me. The origin of the monument is what it represents. All the revolutionary war aspects of the story deal with it. I use it as a jump-off point and create something truly terrifying lovecraft.
Perez: Next, the loop jumper. That’s by Felix Biederman.
Menekar: Yeah, Felix’s story, loop jumper. This came from the pitch of fake films that I created as one of my live shows at Frequency Festival. And this was the idea that we were all in LA, so if we wanted to make an action film, we’re just starting to think about what we’d do. What is that? What is a Chapo Action movie?
And this is basically like we collaborated on this idea. It’s mostly Felix, but that was the origin of the concept. We created this fake movie pitch for an 80s style action film. The genre’s ratio trop blends strange fiction with our obsessions, plot, and manipulation of deep states. But it’s similar to something else we did. We developed a TV show pilot based on the series we created about George H.W. Bush (titles Poppy). I think this is sort of indebted to that as well because it deals with once again real political figures and real history but in like a completely completely far out and bizarre action movie format that concerns a former operator waging a war against the deep state through using a technique known as quantum suicide to sort of time travel and jump the loop of time travel over and over again, waging kind of an eternal time war against the uh CIA and the executive branch of the federal government.
Myers: I think Felix said at some point it was like the right time cop at some point. It is explained by Ken Ndoson in Charlie Kirkoff’s colour.
Perez: Next, defeat Dan Devil.
Menekar: Yeah, this was written by Amber Ally Frost. The elevator pitch will be “Evil Dead of Appalachian.” One of the things that sticks out to me when I was talking to Amber about writing this was her story, and hell isn’t a place, it’s work. It is about a coal miner who has made a contract with the devil, and then refuses an agreement and has to fight against three devil minions and himself and his home. But I think the line I always suck up with me is that hell isn’t a place, it’s work.
Perez: How about Pasaran from Matt’s book on Spanish Civil War? Can you ask me about that?
Mentor: Yeah, this is essentially a few adaptations of some of the important parts of his history of the Spanish Civil War. So this is a slightly different story from other offerings, but it is a fundamentally depicted history of the Spanish Civil War based on the book by Matt Cristman.
Myers: This was drawn by Dean Cott and colored by Daniela Miwa. I think that will impress people. Matt’s book on civil war was incredible. It was fun to see the threads of the story pulled by these vignettes from the book. They are all excellent, but this looks and feels like a news reel. It almost seems to be a journalistic work.
Perez: Last but not least, Chris Wade and Joel Smith are crew of consumables
Menekar: Yeah, this is from Chris and a friend who wrote the script. It is their portrayal of the Martian colony that is privatized. Thinking about their ongoing love between certain prominent figures in American life and the idea that humanity should move to Mars, or that they can create a perfect society from a massive government on another planet that has no rewarding atmosphere. This is a science fiction story about what happens to the human crew, the colony of Mars colonies, when their colonies are privatized.
Perez: I’m looking forward to it. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Mentor: You travel to far away places. This is an eerie learning. These are stories that crush your vulnerable sanity, and will surprise you, surprise you, and mad. There are so many people in the independent media field, so I think it’s cool to have the opportunity. I’m certainly not trying to replace traditional comic book writers, but it gives us the opportunity to combine us with professional comic book artists and develop something we’ve never seen before. I think people will like it. And I believe that there is just such a wealth of talent, especially when it comes to creative arts.
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