Stefan Hutchinson’s been a great friend to Cinema Crazed since we began reviewing his comic books and our raves about his takes on “Halloween” and the mythos of Michael Myers have not been sycophantic. If you’ve ever read a comic from this man, you’ll know he’s one who understands the world John Carpenter unfolded for horror audiences, and why it’s remained so prevalent in the film community in spite of bad sequels and remakes. With that said, we hear from Hutchinson and his approach to the comics.
So what inspired you to write Tarantula Man?
Tarantula Man came about as a result of a long discussion between myself and the team who write the website material. We were having a conference about potential new content for the site, and Greg Mitchell (one of the site writers) suggested possibly doing Tommy Doyle’s comic books. My thoughts went into overdrive at that point and I came up with the rather wrong idea of a pedophile arachnid. I was thinking about things that would scare a child, and I instantly thought of how myself, as a child, I was constantly warned to avoid strangers. In my mind when I was young, strangers were shadowy figures that hung around by the school gates and in the garden at night. That was the sort of thing I was trying to tap into there.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, are you seriously jerking me around Kirkman? The final splash is all one big tease, right? It has to be. These three new characters would say anything to be let in to the farm and I believe it. This series was originally called “Night of the Living Dead” and we only had an inkling of what may have caused the dead uprising in that movie, and one possible explanation. There’s no way Kirkman would explain and hold our hands through why the dead suddenly started rising one day.
This is one of the first issues–in fact it’s the only issue–that has kind of disappointed me since I started reading. I mean I wasn’t too crazy on the issue telling the story of the Governor, but I learned to enjoy it. With issue 52 of “The Walking Dead” I was kind of disappointed. With Rick now hopefully on the way to recovery from his stomach wound, he and Carl are now alone and he’s teaching the lad how to drive. We open the issue with a humorous, terrifying, and touching moment between the two where Carl learns how to drive crashing in to three of the walking dead and in comes Michonne to the rescue.
Devil’s Due’s newest series “The Odd Squad” is like The X-Files is headed by two of the three chicks from “Mean Girls,” and yet in spite of my inherent annoyance with the trite dialogue and cheesy pop culture references, I really enjoyed it.
