Skybound

Just in time for you to jump in the water this summer, the immortal Creature from the Black Lagoon swims once more in Skybound’s Universal Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives! Written by fan-fave scribes Dan Watters and Ram V, and illustrated by Matthew Roberts, the first issue of this much-anticipated limited series is making a splash in comic shops this week. To celebrate its release, we sat down and chatted with Watters about his love of classic horror and what makes the Creature unique. Here’s what he had to say…

How would you describe Universal Monsters: The Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives!?

The book’s about Kate Marsden. She’s a journalist who was almost drowned by a serial killer in New York, in the Hudson, and has now tracked him down to this small town in Peru on the edge of the Amazon. And that brings her into contact with the Creature. The connection between the killer and the creature is the central mystery of the book.

What element of the original Creature from the Black Lagoon films did you want to preserve and reinterpret in this comic?

The idea that the creature is mature. We didn't want to say, “Here's the origin of the Creature, the background. Here's where it came from, here's where it's going.” We want to let it continue to be this submerged mystery. And really the drama of the stories and how people react to it, how it reacts to people coming into its territory. That really became the core of the entire story – people, revolving around the monsters, passing over it and projecting their own desires and their own philosophies onto what it is. And everyone having a different idea of what that is, driving them into different kinds of tragedy.

Are you a longtime fan of the Creature?

Yeah, I think I was sort of obsessive. I've always been a sort of obsessive horror fan. I love everything that's a bit schlocky, a bit old school, anything black and white, and grainy. Especially if it was nice and violent as well, I just absolutely gravitated towards it as a teenager. I used to watch these films over and over again, anything with Vincent Price or Christopher Lee. Anything like that. And all the Universal Monsters films as well, of course. I first would have seen The Creature from the Black Lagoon back then, and probably would have watched it at least two or three times over. In rotation with all the monster movies.

Then as I got older and learned more about craft and about storytelling, I developed a new appreciation for how beautifully made it is. I always like to think about how things must have seemed when they first came out. The beautiful cinematography of that movie is a real standout.

The design of the Creature may be second only to that of Giger’s Alien.

Yeah. And it's a standout among the Universal Monsters, both temporally and that it came out 20-something years after Dracula. But it's also the one that's not based on an existing piece of folklore or novel. It's entirely its own thing, cut from whole cloth and appearing from nowhere. Which I think is very indicative of what the Creature has come to represent.

How do you and Ram V collaborate on a project like this one?

We’ve collaborated on quite a few things at this point. It's always very comfortable collaborating with Ram. But this one in particular… I was brought in [after] Ram had pitched this central idea to Skybound and to Universal. That they really loved. Then for a myriad of reasons, he couldn't commit to the scripting. We were already working together on another project for Image – The One Hand and The Six Fingers. So both [editor] Alex [Antone] and Ram thought, “I wonder if Dan would be interested in this premise?” Ram came to me and gave me the elevator pitch of Creature from the Black Lagoon but done as True Detective.

I thought that was a fantastic pitch and it really lit up my brain. So I took his outline and made my own tweaks to it, and started scripting from there. Then wherever I ran into roadblocks or bumps, I would call him up and we'd talk through it and go through the scripts. So it was me doing the scripting, but both of our brains in play.

It's interesting you mention True Detective, which takes its cues from horror writer Robert Chambers. Whereas it could be argued that Creature takes a cue from Lovecraft, who was also inspired by Chambers. Did that appeal to you as a hardcore horror fan?

Yeah. When we talk about the mercurial nature of the creature, I think all of that stuff was definitely in the brain. The King in Yellow is still one of the most fantastic, terrifying things. But I think if we knew much more about it, if it got built out into much more, it would would lose all its appeal. So that vein of horror is exactly what we were trying to tap with our approach to the Creature.

The Creature is such a visual icon. What do you think artist Matthew Roberts brings to the book?

Alex had worked with him on a couple of projects, as editor. So he just sent us an image of the Creature as drawn by Matthew, and we were just lie, “Yeah, this is gonna work. This is spot on.” The thing I keep going to is the underwater scenes, which I don't think are the easiest thing to draw for any comic artist. To get a real sense of there being more out there than what's on the page. Those are the ones that Matthew and the colorist, Dave Stewart, have just absolutely nailed. It's such an important key part of this story that if they fell flat the whole thing might. We've been very lucky to work with work with them on this.

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