Vertigo has more coming down the pipeline. The past couple of months, we've seen the launch of a bunch of new books and coming on Wednesday, November 18, is the newest series from writer David Baillie and artist Meghan Hetrick. The book is called RED THORN and we talked to the creative team to find out more about this series.
COMIC VINE: What is RED THORN all about?
DAVID BAILLIE: RED THORN is a new ongoing series from Vertigo written by me and drawn by the insanely talented Meghan Hetrick. It's set in modern-day Glasgow and mines Scottish mythology and pop culture to find the raw materials for a sexy, bloody story that pushes all of the characters to their limits.
MEGHAN HETRICK: Red Thorn is a new series set in past, present, and what-could-have-been Glasgow. It draws upon Scottish myths which get interwoven with the modern setting, to create a dark, sexy book that harkens back to old school Vertigo.
CV: Who does the series follow?
BAILLIE: Isla is our viewpoint character for the first arc, Glasgow Kiss. She's a young American woman with Scottish ancestry, who's in Glasgow to investigate a dark secret from her family's past. She also has an unusual ability - when she draws people they sometimes come to life. Throw into the mix the fact that's started sketching Thorn, an almost permanently furious and semi-nude demi-god who's been imprisoned beneath the streets of Glasgow for the last sixteen hundred years and that's our starting point.
HETRICK: Right now, Isla is the focus character, for this arc at least. She’s a fiery, headstrong American girl who finds herself in Scotland to try and solve a mystery.
CV: The series deals with Scottish mythology. Who and what are some of the creatures we'll see in the book?
BAILLIE: In the first few issues we'll meet the Red Caps - a bloodthirsty army of creatures that jealousy guard the border between Scotland and England, and who bathe their hats in the blood of unlucky trespassers. We'll also have Kelpies, ancient water spirits that can adopt human and equine form and, probably my favourite, the Shellycoat - a creepy creature that lurks in rivers and lochs, and wears a putrid coat of shells. This clacks when he walks and leaves bits of rotten fish flesh in its wake. I knew when I was writing the Shellycoat scenes that Meghan and Steve would go to town - and they really did!
Red Thorn is my attempt at putting a very modern spin on classic Vertigo territory. It's also absolutely gorgeous - Meghan is probably the best new comic artist in the western world, and if you think the first issue looks great just wait until you see what's she's doing around five and six. It's just unbelievable.
Steve Oliff is on colours. He's a stone cold industry legend (Akira!) and he's pulled something incredibly special out of the bag for Red Thorn, that I think will make it look entirely unique. Of course we have Todd Klein on letters which, all on its own, makes this feel momentous and reminds us all that we're building upon Vertigo's rich history.
And the covers by Choong Yoon are absolutely brilliant. Like McKean, Jean and Jock before him Choong really knows how to make a cover stand out on a crowded shelf. They're raw, visceral, graphic and tell a story all on their own.
HETRICK: Oh, there are a bunch. Off the top of my head, i’ll say Red Caps are a huge presence, along with a few orcs of various shapes and sizes. There’s a Shellycoat, which was a blast to draw, since it’s a big goopy critter covered in a jacket of seaweed and shells. There are a number more, but talking about them might give away some things later on.
CV: What can you tell us about the prison thousands of miles below the streets of Glasgow?
BAILLIE: When the pagan gods were slaughtered some 1600 years ago, Thorn was imprisoned miles under the ground. By the time 2015 comes around, Glasgow has been founded and flourished and the world that Thorn emerges into is a very different place.
As for the prison itself I'm afraid I'm going to have to be deliberatively fuzzy to avoid spoiling some story stuff that's not due to happen until next year! I can tell you that it is fashioned from the bones of some ancient creature, which existed and became extinct even before the time of the pagan pantheon to which Thorn belongs. The power contained within those bones was enough to keep Thorn in one place all those years, unable to escape or do very much at all.
Hopefully it's not too big of a spoiler to say that after escaping, Thorn grabs a couple of shards from his bone prison and uses them as daggers - although we won't discover the true power of those weapons for a while yet.
CV: Where did the idea for the book come from?
BAILLIE: Shelly Bond at Vertigo asked me to pitch the story that kept me up at night, and so I started making a list of all the things I was currently obsessed with. All the stuff that I've been trying to write stories about for the last few years but for whatever reason - pitches being altered to fit new publishing plans, editorial advice, whatever - I hadn't managed to get out there. I discovered that there was actually a bunch of ideas burning a hole in my imagination. RedThorn was the solution to that problem - I needed somewhere to explore those ideas, and a cast who could cope with it all.
I decided that hurling an ancient demigod into today was the best way of talking about the aspects of our modern world that I wanted to examine. Before his imprisonment, Thorn desperately tried to be an architect of change, to make the world a certain way, and when I bring him back centuries later he finds that things turned out the opposite of how he wanted.
I also knew I wanted to explore the idea of human creativity - singing, drawing, writing poetry - how it feels divine, almost magical, and that's where the stories of Isla and Tarek sprung from.
Of course there's more, but I'd better shut up before I give the game away.
CV: What can we expect from the book, tonally?
BAILLIE: Dark, funny, sexy. That's been my goal from day one. A story about smart characters who know what they're doing, know what they want and know how to get it.
Abs. Loads of abs. And butts. (I should point out that there are far more butts in the final comic than I have in the scripts. I don't want to take credit for Meghan's uncanny ability to turn any scene into a butt shot!)
Oh and heartbreak. I promise you heartbreak. HETRICK: So far, it’s shaping up to be dark and sexy, with some fun bits of humor tossed in for good measure. There’s a fair bit of horror and heartbreak (not always separate things) to balance out the sexiness, too.
CV: David, what locations in Glasgow do you use for the book and do these locations resonate with you on a personal level?
BAILLIE: The first issue features a short tour of Glasgow - I have a couple of characters take a journey that I've made myself many, many times. They pass the Barrowlands, which is a large outdoor market with a dancehall and gig venue sitting on top of it. I worked there as a teenager, and would sneak upstairs after closing up our stall to jump around to whoever was playing that night. It's also where I discovered all the comics I was destined to become obsessed with - loads of old 2000ADs and early Vertigo series. There was a second hand book stall there that I still dream about. It had hundreds of boxes of old comics, and the owner would get really grumpy when I asked if I could check out the boxes at the bottom of the pile. Because, of course, I'd already raided the ones at the top.
The Necropolis also features in that scene. I love the Necropolis, it's an enormous Victorian cemetery on a hill overlooking the city. You get to it by crossing over a bridge, which locals named the Bridge of Sighs, after the one in Venice, because it was the final part of the funeral procession. It's absolutely glorious.
When I wrote the first scene that mentions The Necropolis I had the TV on in the background, and Billy Connolly was on. I wasn't paying it much attention (even though I'm a fan - I had work to do) until I saw where he was. He was giving the viewer a guided tour of the very part of the Necropolis I was writing about. I turned the volume up and the words he spoke next made it into the script verbatim. Don't worry, though - I do credit him!
CV: Meghan, what did you have to work with when it came to some of these mythological creatures and what did you find challenging about putting them within the comic?
HETRICK: Books! Lots of books, and lots of David’s fantastic descriptions. I did go through and take liberal amounts of artistic license with some of the critters and beings, but they’re all still rooted in what myth and legend states. The challenge of putting them in the comic was more about how to bring emotion and expression to them through their design. I have pages upon pages filled with sketches while i was trying to work everything out.
CV: Meghan, previously you worked on BODIES and FAIREST. What brought you to Vertigo for this newest series?
HETRICK: I don’t think there’s really another spot that this book could be done, not with its heritage, both in story and creative team (seriously, did you look at who else is on this book?). It’s also sort of a dream spot for me, since it was by discovering Vertigo that I learned that comics weren’t just about spandex clad superheroes smacking each other around. The fact that i get to work on a book that deals with my favorite subjects, with a fantastic team of people and creators, at a place that i’ve idolized since i was a kid… it’s both fantastic and a bit surreal at times.
Thanks to Meghan and David for answering our questions and make sure to check out RED THORNE when it hits stores on November 18.