CINEMA NOCTURNA-Thanks for taking some time to chat with us at Cinema Nocturna Jason. Let’s get right to the vein and meat of the matter here… for those who don’t know (and for shame if they don’t), what is Sword of Dracula and how the hell did you make Dracula so cool again?
JASON HENDERSON- SWORD OF DRACULA is a big, loud, thundering vampires-versus-commandos war story that has at its center these two huge characters, Dracula, a 600-year-old uber-vampire who controls blood so keenly he can make your blood boil by looking at you, and Ronnie Van Helsing of the Polidorium, a woman under an extreme amount of pressure who’s forced to make some very difficult choices in the series, many of them with a big axe. There are also rocket launchers.
CINEMA NOCTURNA- The prequel to the SoD saga was in Digital Webbing Presents #10 (http://www.digitalwebbing.net/dwp/), was this the first story that you worked on for the series? And did you hook up with Greg Scott at DW?
JASON HENDERSON- The prequel can also be seen online at http://www.swordofdracula.com/prequel/index.htm . I’ve been constructing the whole story so that you you start with just a little information and get more as you go, and there’s always a lot more. ICE, the prequel story, is a short teaser that gives you some character background as two Polidorium agents, Ronnie and Marcus, her second in command, rappel down an ice cliff to destroy a vampire hidden in a Colorado cave—a vampire who actually winds up giving them information about the location of the well-hidden Dracula. The story leads up to the first issue, and in many ways it could simply lay right in front of it. Actually, though, Greg Scott and I did that story after Issue 2 was in the can, and still it came out before Issue 1. Greg and I had actually hooked up on an Issue of Vampire: the Masquerade for Moonstone, a project Steve Ellis ended up doing. Greg came back and asked if there was anything else we might pitch.
CINEMA NOCTURNA- So…are you prepared to have SoD take over the big screen AND the little screen as a videogame?
JASON HENDERSON- Who wouldn’t want that? My goal is just to be able to keep doing stories in the Polidorium universe. I’d really like to see people embrace Ronnie, though, because she’s become real to me—so would I like to see her in a computer game and movie? Over and over again!
I think the coolest thing about SOD so far is the growing community. I want it to be beyond the team—I want us to be channeling something people experience as real, part of their lives. I want Jason and William and Ed to fall away and let the fantasy rise. And the online community, although it focuses on the making, I think actually helps that—people are embracing Ronnie, taking her as their own, pros and non-pros doing pinups. So all of these things are about growing the world away from my grasp.
CINEMA NOCTURNA- Right then, so tell us a bit about yourself and your road to being a contributor to the lore of Bram Stoker’s vampiric creation…
JASON HENDERSON- I come to it honestly through great geekiness and incessant sitting at night. I was a tremendous Dracula geek to begin with. I hosted Dracula nights, I bored my friends with trivia, I read and re-read the novel. But I had really shied away from writing any sort of vampire story. I’d written fantasy novels, Marvel Super Hero novels, Highlander. Dracula I knew was too big a character for anything I’d thought of yet. I knew I wanted something—something really vivid. And what pointed the way was Anime, and the amazing way that the world functions in anime, which is so influenced by the East. The Malaysians have a vampire that’s just a head that detaches and flies around, the entrails sort of bandying behind it like a kite’s tail. It’s a wacky, creepy image and it’s the sort of thing I’d been putting in my novels but that people often didn’t get. I realized that Dracula had to own action that would just blow your mind. So I took my utter, even Roy-Thomas-geeky reverence for the source material and added to it a desire to see Dracula blow people’s mind. And the linchpin was Van Helsing’s speech in the novel when he suggests Dracula’s powers are evolving.
CINEMA NOCTURNA- SoD feels equally cinematic in the storytelling as it does as a graphic novel. Are you a fan of the celluloid vampires?
JASON HENDERSON- Like crazy. When the comic was first coming out I hosted a movie night at the world-famous Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, in fact. We showed a handful of different contributions to the genre, Badham’s 1979 DRACULA, a MR. VAMPIRE movie from Hong Kong, and DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, a lesbian vampire movie. I’m very interested in how different artists treat similar subject matter, and I could explore it endlessly. And of course I’m a big ham, so I love speaking about it. The great thing about doing an Image book is you can hold forth at great length if you feel like it, so I published an early version of WHAT I FORGOT ABOUT DRACULA in Issue 2, just a treatise on Dracula, vampires and the movies. (See http://www.swordofdracula.com/ Dracula_what_I_forgot.pdf )
CINEMA NOCTURNA- One thing I love about SoD is that it bucks the trend of a lot of modern horror comics and doesn’t fear exposition and character having equal say with the action. As a writer, do you find the comics form fun to explore?
JASON HENDERSON- It’s funny you’d say that, because some who read Issue 1 weren’t all that sure that it was going to go that way, since Issue 1 is a series of highly dramatic, almost real-time physical beats. The people are in the moment and we don’t spend much time thinking about their past. But as we pull out into Issue 2 and beyond, we begin to get more layers. I love exposition scenes and as a novelist my first instinct is to put in a lot of those "scenes between the scenes." And my first duty as a story teller is to kill them—so that the ones that remain count all the more. Comics is wonderful because it forces you into those constraints. For instance, I’m determined that by the end of this six-issue arc you’ll know so much more than you thought you did about the characters, and you won’t remember how you learned. At the same time, I’m tying myself rigorously to form—every Issue after #1 must end in a cliffhanger.
CINEMA NOCTURNA- From the scratched out visions and interpretations of Greg Scott, I see the art has changed hands to the cleaner style of William Belk. Will this change your approach to the story?
JASON HENDERSON- Those two have in common a high degree of competence and confidence. I trust them to interpret the script, and take charge in giving me their vision of the script. But we do talk about it. I know that with Belk I’m adapting the scripts back to include some much more extreme descriptions, because his art tends to be a lot more anime-reminiscent. Whereas Greg’s was very real and gritty. But the story remains exactly the same.
CINEMA NOCTURNA- I know the first arc (1-6) is called The Elders, which has given us a great group of characters (already!) with Ronnie Van Helsing being a nice change from the standard Vampire Hunter clone and Dracula being a big bad blood wielding bastard unlike anything I can remember since the Tomb of Dracula heyday. Have you already begun work on a continuation, or will other projects call first?
JASON HENDERSON- I’d love to say I had too many projects, but the majors aren’t so aware of me yet that I can’t focus on my own work. So I can do what I’m passionate about, and that’s certainly continuing SWORD OF DRACULA in a new season, plus some side projects like GUNS OF FRANKENSTEIN, plus more SOULCATCHER.
CINEMA NOCTURNA- Looking forward to Moonstone’s publishing of Soulcatcher (http://www.soulcatchercomic.com ), what can we expect from this one. Actually, I hope to not get anything I would expect….
JASON HENDERSON- It’s not what anyone expects. The first issue is out and people are saying exactly that, Comixtreme said, if you hear the description and think "SIXTH SENSE," you’ll be a little surprised. What we do share with SIXTH SENSE is creepiness. SOULCATCHER (Moonstone, starting in March) is my creepy, more intimate story, although there’s still some axe-throwing. It’s about a young widow named Roma who comes to New Orleans, the most haunted city in America, because she’s still plagued by the suicide death of her husband and, as in most ghost stories, she wants to sort things out. She meets Chris Lockman, a man who can see ghosts—actually the latest in a long line of spiritual guardians. And they have this cool, strange relationship while every ghost in New Orleans decides that there’s something seriously wrong with Roma, such that they need to try to kill her. The thing I love is all the cafes, streets, houses, it’s all real. What’s funny is Roma is different from Ronnie is different from SYLVIA FAUST, which comes out this Summer. All these great women, and all so different. They whisper to me differently.
SOULCATCHER is first a two-issue miniseries, but we want to return for more. We have Lou Manna and Terry Pallot on art, Leslie Barkley on colors, and of course my long-suffering lettering companion Ed Dukeshire. Those guys deserve medals because comics is like putting on a play, it’s so hard and it’s so difficult to make sure people know it’s there. And then if you’re lucky, people start showing up. I hope they all get so famous they can’t work for me anymore.
CINEMA NOCTURNA- Thanks for your time Jason! All the Nocturna(l)s will be waiting to see where the Sword strikes next. If you read this article, and haven’t yet purchased Sword of Dracula, do so now. If your local comic shop DOESN’T have it…you can help change that. Ask for it by name, or go to http://www.swordofdracula.com and get started with your required reading.
JASON HENDERSON- Thank you! I can always use more readers—and I’ll always answer your questions on the forums, no matter how… ah… bizarre.
See more of Jason Henderson at http://www.jasonhenderson.com
Also, be sure to check out the Sword of Dracula trailer here : http://www.swordofdracula.com/SOD2.html
This interview was conducted by David Zuzelo for Cinema Nocturna March 31 2004. Pictures courtesy of www.swordofdracula.com
Back
