TIH 622: Jasper Bark on Draw You In, R. L. Carver, and Conspiracy Theories and Comic Books

Michael David Wilson 0:20
Welcome to This Is Horror, a podcast for readers, writers and creators. I'm Michael David Wilson, and every episode, alongside my co host, Bob Pastorella, we chat with the world's best writers about writing, life lessons, creativity and much more. Today, we are welcoming back Jasper bark to talk about everything to do with his draw you in book series from Crystal Lake publishing. Now for those of you unfamiliar, Jasper is an award winning novelist, children's author and comic book writer. He is famed for his imaginative storytelling. He's published a number of novels and countless comics and graphic novels, and in addition, his work has been translated into nine languages and is used in schools throughout the UK to improve literacy. But those are his children's books, I'm not sure to draw you in is used with children, which may be for the best. Now, he regularly performs His work all over the country and on the radio. And he also used to host, This Is Horror live events back in the day. He's a fascinating guy. If you've heard him on this as horror, then you already know that. But before we get him back on the show, a quick advert break.

RC Hausen 2:12
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RJ Bayley 2:46
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Bob Pastorella 2:55
From the creator of This Is Horror comes a new nightmare for the digital age. The Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson, after a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends into paranoia and obsession. More videos follow, each containing information no stranger could possibly know, but who's sending them and what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves. The Girl in the Video is the ring meets fatal attraction for the iPhone generation, available now in paperback, ebook and audio.

Michael David Wilson 3:23
Okay, without saying, Here it is. It is Jasper. Bark on This Is Horror. Jasper. Welcome back to This Is Horror.

Jasper Bark 3:38
Thank you very, very much. It is superb to be back. It's been, oh, hours, perhaps, since we last spoke.

Michael David Wilson 3:47
Yeah, I think in reality, it might have been a month or so, or possibly only a few weeks. I'm not sure. You know, time is unimportant, but it's constantly moving forward. Has anything significant happened in the last few weeks for you,

Jasper Bark 4:07
lost a very good friend to lung cancer. My daughter got engaged, eldest daughter, that takes me one step closer to being a grandparent. Handed in the final edits on a new novel, signed off a novella. I think that's about it. Actually,

Michael David Wilson 4:40
you think that's about it? Do you? Oh, my goodness. I mean, you have, I didn't expect you to say that much had happened in the last few weeks, but your answer is possibly included more life events than some people when I asked them after a year or. What they've been doing,

Jasper Bark 5:01
yeah, I guess. So maybe it has been quite Yeah. Or maybe kind of like, I'm just sort of like, every two weeks, I'm like, trying to fit a lifetime's worth of events in, perhaps kind of like reincarnating over and over again within the same life. Or maybe have, like, a bunch of lives that are waiting to be reincarnated in the one time there's been too much of a backlog. So I've got to go through way too many, like, life experiences and and also develop way too many gray hairs as a consequence, in places I don't even want to mention.

Michael David Wilson 5:36
Well, I think in saying you don't want to mention, you just mentioned them. I

Jasper Bark 5:41
think I might have done but at least I didn't actually get them out here on camera, for those of you who are watching on YouTube,

Michael David Wilson 5:47
yeah, well, thank you for not doing that, because we don't want to get the video banned early doors, and ideally, we don't want to get it banned at all, but with the quantity of rum that you might drink in the next two hours. We never know.

Jasper Bark 6:04
Who knows. How many life experiences do you think I can actually fit into this one individual experience, including getting canceled completely?

Michael David Wilson 6:11
Well for people who are who are watching along, then Send your answers to Michael at this@zara.co.uk and you'll find out how many by the end of the episode. And on that note, we are going to talk about your fantastic free volume series draw you in,

Jasper Bark 6:37
right? Yeah, for those who aren't watching and just listening. I've just held up the cover to the first book draw you in, and because that will feel a bit lonely, I'm going to hold up the volume two and volume three. You might have noticed as well, if you've been paying attention, actually, that each subsequent cover is like a mise en obese, because there are inordinate number of stories within stories, within stories, even to the degree that one of the stories within the actual overall plot arc eventually becomes a character within the story itself. So we kind of wanted to reflect this in the in the covers, because each cover hat contains the cover to the previous volume within it, and we continue that as well, because this is part of a series of books called Bach bites horror, which is kind of like like a Goosebumps for grown ups, or a sexed up scary story to tell in the dark. And I actually introduced each one a bit like the Crypt Keeper from tales from the crypt, as a cartoon version of myself. And even the cartoon introductions for these three books, each one of the introductions also contains the introduction to the previous thing within it. So there was, yeah, there's a lot of thought going into folding narratives into narratives, into narratives, into narratives.

Michael David Wilson 8:09
Yeah. Well, since you've mentioned the artwork, we should talk about. You know, who's responsible for the artwork, both the cover and the internals.

Jasper Bark 8:20
The artwork for the covers is done by the awesome Ben Baldwin, who did every one of the bark bites horror covers so far, but sadly, hasn't done the next two installments, which are currently awaiting publication, and the artist for the comic strip introductions. In this case, was the amazing Russ leech, who is a British they're both British artists. Ben is a is a cover artist, and I think he also does album covers and concept art. And Russ is a comic strip artist who's worked on a whole host of different strips, including Doctor Who and also several Marvel Comics work as well, and also mentoring your deal with Uncle JASP, yeah, I

Michael David Wilson 9:11
had a feeling when I saw the covers that they were probably Ben Baldwin pieces of art. And I mean, when I first got into the British horror scene, I'd say that Ben Baldwin and Vincent young were the two names who, if there was a really good cover, it was by one of them.

Jasper Bark 9:31
Yeah, it's been a real place to work with them. And the the idea behind the cover, again, for those who who are just listening and aren't seeing, we've got like little inkwell in which an eyeball is bobbing right at the top in the ink and somebody is about to dip what is known as a speedball Speedball dip pen, which is also used by many comics of artists to ink. This is a bit. Of an antique one, but we're also paying homage to you might remember I used to write for many, many years a column for This Is Horror called injured eyeballs. And the injured eyeball motif was a very big thing, particularly in 1950s horror comics, there were lots of cover shots of like, large eyeballs with flaming hot poker or swords or needles about to stab it. We couldn't quite get that graphic on a cover and get it past Amazon, so we we suggested it. So again, it's paying homage to a very specific cover that's linked to horror comics, and horror comics and the history of horror comics from the 1950s all the way through to the present day, are the backdrop to all three novels in the draw you in trilogy, which is also in some ways, it's like a paranormal thriller and conspiracy theory, but it also is a road trip through the United States. It's a road trip through the Secret History of the United States and what actually happened. And it's kind of a love letter to the horror genre, because it actually, as well as driving through all the states and an odd number of different locations, it also kind of takes a bit of a meander and a drive through most different sub genres in the horror genre, from extreme horror to psychological horror, from like extreme horror to even quiet horror, and most of the little pit stops you can

Michael David Wilson 11:38
think of, oh yeah, this is an enormously ambitious book, because you have the main narrative, but you've also got so much comic book history, you could actually take all of those parts and have a non fiction book on the history of horror comics, and then you have the embedded stories, the stories within the story that bring to mind the likes of The Canterbury Tales and then Chuck Palahniuk haunted so I mean goodness, when you kind of set about to write This, what was the initial Genesis, and at what moment did you realize you were going to be putting so much into one book, which is actually three books.

Jasper Bark 12:30
I think the initial Genesis was of all people, I was quite late to read James Herbert. I'd always known about James Herbert, and the kind of things of James Herbert's books that I'd read had kind of been when they were passed around the school ground, like in the early 1980s and the book would always fall open at certain places, and so you'd kind of read the bit in the fog where the groundskeeper gets his penis chopped off, or where the woman is leaving her female lover at the last minute decides not to commit suicide, then a giant wave of like suicides push her back into the seat. But I never actually sat down and read them all, and it was round about the time Herbert died. I thought, Oh, I really must properly catch up. And I rather fell in love. You can go, they're not his best written books. They're either fell in love with the early 70s books, starting with the rats and going through the dark and the usual, the kind of formula for them is there is a big bad a nebulous threat, like a fog or a sentient dark or the disembodied souls of plane crash victims, which wreak havoc in a particular geographic location. And there's like two kind of narrative thrusts. There's the main thrust, which is the big bad it's coming, and then there's a small group of plucky heroes and heroines who do their best to stop it, usually having to fight bureaucracy and myopic authorities in order to put it down. And then every three or four chapters we we cut away, and we get, like a tiny vignette where we get a victim who goes up against the big bad. And those are always my favorite bits, and I think they're many people's favorite bits of the of all these books, and actually, even the bits I mentioned about the book falling open to those are usually the bits that you really like. And I quite like this as a as a literary conceit. And I thought, What could I do with that? So initially, speaking, I sort of thought, What's my big bad? What's it doing? And how can I have these, these cutaways? That was my first thought. But as I and then I realized as well that I could, it's always great to write about not just the things that you know, but the things that you love. Write about your passions and things you want to celebrate. I've been a comic. Professional for about 25 years now, and at one point I'm supporting myself entirely by writing comics for the British and the European market and a tiny little bit for the American market. And although I wrote pretty much as a hack, anything that anyone would pay me my the big love from childhood has always been horror comics, since it was stumbling on a black and white British reprint of the tomb of Dracula by Marvel Comics, comic by Marv Wolfman and Gene colon at age about five and opening up and looking at gene colon, strange artwork and his fabulous depiction of vampires and lords of the undead terrified me, completely warped and twisted me at a seminal age, five years old, and I never lost that love and that fascination and terror for horror comics, particularly black and White horror comics. So I've always been really, really fascinated with them, and really quite fascinated with their history, particularly as back in the 1950s in fact, 1954 55 there was a giant like moral panic surrounding horror comics, juvenile delinquency was spiraling out of control. There was a fascinating left wing Senator called estes kalva who was who made a huge national name for himself going after organized crime, and was looking for his next big like crusade, and he hit upon juvenile delinquency and horror comics. And he actually interviewed nationally on national television, which, those days, the 1950s was quite an event, because you didn't really get coast to coast broadcasting due to the technology time. But this was broadcast coast to coast, and the main publisher of EC horror comics, which were the single best comics being published pretty much anywhere in the world. At that point, came on to argue that this is an adult art form. This is ridiculous censorship. And he at the time, he was like trying to combat his weight taking dexes, which his doctor had given him. So it was a huge speed come up, and they made him sit about and wait for hours and hours and hours, and by the time he got in front of the committee, he'd crashed. And although he was a very eloquent publisher, he wasn't up to the type of cross examination he would get at the hands of seasoned veteran politicians that he was up against, and they tore him a new asshole. And everybody in the comics industry was watching on the television sets as they were sitting there drawing board like with their head of hands, thinking he's absolutely shafted as all he knew it at that time as well, and as a consequence, there was this massive moral backlash against comics concerned citizens and parents and scout masters and moral guardians of the youth organized giant, great comic book burnings and the in order to protect itself, the industry introduced the Comics Code Authority, and which was basically a giant censorship. And if ever you bought a comic from it's sometime in the late 50s all the way through to the early 80s. You might have noticed in the top left hand corner it had almost like, looks like looks like little postage stamp saying approved by the comets Code Authority, meaning this has been totally and utterly and completely censored half to death. And so although we've throughout the kind of history, we've had big moral scares around things like everything from like rock and roll when it first came out, to metal to rap to hip hop, and we had a little kind of like, you know, like parental advisory stickers put in it. You've never effectively had such a massive backlash against an incredibly popular art form that was really pushing the boundaries and was producing some amazing artwork, some fantastic stories, some incredibly progressive adult themes being dealt with in comics. And ever had an art form quite so effectively shut down in Britain, they actually passed a law making it illegal to print or sell American horror comics. We've never, ever in the history of, I think, of Europe or even America, actually seen a law passed. And the same thing happened in Australia as well. They passed laws actually directly banning an entire creative medium, and however bad things got in it for metal or black metal or supposed Satanism in music or. Or sexism and racism in hip hop, nobody passed a law actually banning it and shutting it down, and they they did that for horror comics. And it didn't just hit the horror comic. Horror comics, it shut down three quarters of an incredibly thriving publishing industry brought it these and it wasn't until the 1960s when Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, with the help of Stan Lee, invented the Marvel Comics universe, that comics got off its knees and started selling in any significant numbers again, but it was still a pale reflection of what it had been before this giant moral panic that's always interested me, and it's always a story that we've kind of like almost forgotten about and brushed under the carpet or swept to the mountains both of the you know of the history of creative endeavors, literature and comics itself. So I thought I want to write about this and put that against the against the backdrop. So part of my my big bad involved horror comics and it three completely disparate characters get drawn into an investigation supposed by the FBI into the life of a of a strange, legendary but marginalized horror comics artist known as R L Carver. It starts when an artist who's now in her middle age, but has been, you know, a couple of decades ago, a hot new a female artist now her kind of like career is kind of like somewhat washed up, which happens to a lot of comics professionals. Unfortunately,

Jasper Bark 22:05
she's given the opportunity to perhaps reinvent her career and revive her career, but at a comic con, but her former editor, who is supposedly a person of some power and influence within the comics industry, entirely disappears. But not just disappears suddenly, it appears, within a matter of hours, he has utterly ceased to exist, or have ever existed. And she can't accept this, and so she goes in search of and she she meets his former colleagues, none of whom know him. And she even tracks down his mum at one mom at one point, and she has no recollection of ever having a child, and she can't let go of this. And she she even goes and reports him as a missing person, or almost gets into trouble for filing a wrong missing persons report. And then she set off a red flag on some FBI investigation. This guy gets in touch with and says, I have been investigating a case which is incredibly similar to this. And bizarrely enough, it both cases involve this forgotten figure from comics history, this absolute genius who was almost too talented to for the whole comics industry to support him. So they go in search of this character and try to find the secret history of this character, and in doing so, they uncover the history of horror comics from the 1950s to the present day. And also they begin to uncover the secret history of the United States, as they do so,

Bob Pastorella 23:41
I wanted to ask, because I know, during the Comics Code, the like Warren publishing got around the code by issuing in a magazine format. Were those magazines? And when I mean that, it's like the your creepy, eerie vamparella, savasor of Conan those particular were actually in a bigger format than their your actual standard comic, and so it was what they called a magazine. Were those magazines also banned in Europe? No were they? Were they available.

Jasper Bark 24:21
They were available. Actually, it was back to max Gaines who started EC. William Gaines, Bill Gaines, sorry, who started Max Gaines was his dad who actually started comics, but that's another story. Bill Gaines, he was publishing mad, which was originally a comic, and in order not to lose Harvey Kurtz, when he was the genius behind mad, he said, Okay, we'll make into a magazine. But then when his whole kind of publishing Empire folded, the only thing he had left was mad, and he turned it. To a magazine because it was a magazine, it was an adult publication, and therefore not didn't have to carry the Comics Code Authority on it. And it was Jim Warren who published Warren comics, who then thought, and also famously was having success with famous monster film land, with forestry Ackerman who who then decided he would had had some success publishing comics in famous monster film, and thought, why don't we launch a horror comic? These horror comics were quite they weren't actually as gory or as violent initially, speaking, not until about in the first kind of like, 10 years of their publication, but they did bring back a lot of the artists and writers who'd worked in EC horror comics, but they weren't subject to the same strictures because they were a magazine. It was a very, very clever work around and enough time had passed from the giant moral scare for people to move on. And by that point, they were worried about people having hair that was too long and listening to this, this terrible psychedelic music, so kind of like the whole kind of public conversation had moved on, interestingly, black and white horror comics they were that were published here in the UK. There was a publisher called L Miller, Len Miller, and he was still reprinting him in black and white horror comics. And he was actually dated to court in the 1970s but at that point, we were about five or six years behind. It was like the beginning of the 70s that they started publishing Warren comics and also sky wall comics, which are actually the best of the black and white 1970s horror comics. They are barking mad, sheer genius and sometimes incredibly bloody and violent. And there's another publication as well, called Erie publications, who put out they used to reprint the horror comics from the 1950s but they actually used to paint more blood and more guts and more gouged eyeballs and, like torn cheeks, just to kind of make the stories more interesting. And then when they reprinted these, like 100,000 times, and people were getting sick of the same reprints, and also, kind of it was like the mid 70s, and these look kind of hokey with all the kind of costumes he actually then went Byron fast, who was the publisher behind Erie publications, went and hired a bunch of incredibly cheap South American artists to redraw the same stories with even more gore, with 1970s fashions. And sometimes, like three or four artists would simply redraw the same story and rename it, but and these things, again, they weren't. They were available in the mid to late 70s and the early 80s in Britain, and by that point, nobody was people had kind of moved on and kind of they'd found other shibboleths to kind of go after, yeah,

Bob Pastorella 27:58
the like the early creepies and early Aries are just, just there. They feel very, you know, Tales from the Crypt, yeah, you know, they, they have that, that kind of vibe. But with, especially with Erie, especially Erie, you get, you get 10 years in and and early, you know, mid, mid 70s, they started, actually, like they had, you know, they had, like series, they had coffin, you know, and some of those, some of those, like stories, or the first ones that I saw, and They scarred me, you know, just like that, I remember them today. I bought on eBay and tracked down an issue. I can remember what, which one it was of an Erie that, and I have it, and I've looked at it one time, and I had nightmares for a month because of just some of the imagery in in the story. And it's probably a redone story, you know, that's been done over and over and over again, but it's just some of that stuff is just fascinating. And I think a lot of it has to do, like, with the serial stuff was with, like, when heavy metal magazine was also starting to come around, and they did a similar type thing of like, well, we got to kind of capture that, that serialized vibe in comics. It was just a amazing time to be reading that stuff. It's just some of those stories were,

Jasper Bark 29:37
Wow, incredible. You had the amazing Bruce Jones and you had artists like Bernie Wrightson who cut their teeth. So then you had like, once they'd kind of kind of run out of EC horror comic artists to kind of like pump for work. Yeah, a new generation of artists started to break in. And who, who had grown up reading the original EC horror comics, and Bruce Jones and Bernie Wright said they had the famous story called Jennifer, which also was adapted into one of the masters of horror TV series, which is a superb, absolutely excellent story,

Bob Pastorella 30:19
is that the one Argento did,

Jasper Bark 30:22
I'm not sure it might have

Bob Pastorella 30:25
been. I think it was Jennifer.

Jasper Bark 30:27
And also, actually, kind of just speaking of creepy and eerie, the they were edited from the mid to late 70s onwards by a lady called Louise Jones, who later became Louise Simonson when she married Walt Simonson, and actually Louise and Walt make cameo appearances in the first and second volumes of draw you in actually as themselves. Another of the themes of the books is the way that reality and fiction often bleed into each other, particularly in comics and horror comics as an example that from the a lot of the EC horror comics actually featured the writers and artists as characters in the story. They would appear as characters who were writing the story within the story. And this, this started edition, which is carried on quite a lot in comics in the 19 late 1980s early 1990s people like Grant Morrison start appearing in their story, and all kinds of meta activities take place, but also reality. Some fiction sometimes bleeds out and into reality itself. The best example of this is the FIFA vendetta mask from the story of FIFA vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The Mask designed by David Lloyd was taken up by anonymous and also by the Occupy Wall Street people, and became a sign of subversion, just as it is in the actual comics. So I wanted to, kind of like look at I wanted to mirror that in both the themes and the execution of the novel. So I was, I originally had two characters based on Walter Louise who were actually good family friends of ours. But then I thought, why don't I actually have them appear as themselves? So it was a bit of a creative experiment to go back to the comic art. Comic writer Grant Morrison that I mentioned before he spoke about in the future will have fiction suits which are kind of like strange metaphysical devices will put on, which allow us to step into our favorite stories and interact with them. And I thought it saw was an idea that's quite fascinated me. So I thought, how can I do that with Walter Louise? So I actually invited them into the story, to be characters. And when I was writing the scenes in which they appear. They wrote all their own actions and all their own dialog, and actually, we wrote it, passing it backwards and forwards like a round robin. So they knew they were really friendly with the main character. They knew as much about her life as they were as a friend, but they didn't know quite what was going on with her and why she was acting in such a strange fashion. But on the other hand, anything they said or did was became part of the story. So they stepped into my story and could change it as much or as little as they liked. And I just had to kind of roll with that. So they they be. They became real life characters, and they mentioned friends and friends of theirs and stuff that was happening in their life, which then becomes things which happen as part of the fictional world of the novel. And I also a little bit later on, just before the novel, all three novels were released, I had a bit of a hoax online where I got a series of quite well known comic websites and blogs to run a series of strips. I claim to have found a set of UN published printers proofs for a series of comics amongst a friend of mine who was a big collector when he passed I was overlooking his work. And I came across these printers proofs. Most of them were just reprints of previous things, but I came across this strange artist that I'd never encountered, and I printed copies of his work on these websites, asking other collectors and various people who knew things, can you help me track down and look for this character? RL Carver, and for a little while I had some genuine comics experts saying, well, it could be this, it could be that, and other people going, now, this is, this is a clever hoax. You've got this right, because this isn't this dot matrix printing that you've actually think this is done with a screen. You can tell for this reason, there was a big debate going on up to. The release of the book. So for a brief while, one of my fictional characters actually had a kind of half life in the in the blogosphere as well. And I actually had real life people searching out and trying to find this character, Ariel Carver, just as my fictional characters do throughout the book. So a lot of reality bleeding into fiction, and fiction bleeding into reality as well.

Michael David Wilson 35:28
And so when people found out that the El Carver stunt was, in fact, a stunt, what kind of reaction did you get? You know, they've put a lot of their time into this, and it's like Jasper.

Jasper Bark 35:47
Usually, most people got it as a joke. Thought it was a clever publicity stunt. I got a lot of I got a lot more good coverage than I thought based on, wow, this is a bit of like, genius marketing, and a lot of people were nice about that. Privately, I got a few rude notes from people who said, you know, that was how effing dare you. This is terrible. It's people like you that are responsible for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you name your list of things that are wrong with the world. It was my fault, and I was very apologetic about that. One or two people unfriended me on social media, but the most of the response was what an excellent hoax. That was superb and I got it. I got possibly slightly more coverage for having put on a hoax than I did for actually the the the original, but it was covered all over Europe as well. It was covered in Italian and German. Blogs covered it for a while, so it was a nice little core celeb surrounding the hoax, and most people kind of got it because it was linked to a theme of the novel. So I would just explain this is the reason I did it. I kind of wanted one of my fictional characters to escape into the real world. And every now and again, people even, even still, stumble upon one of these blogs and drop me a little line saying, Do you think our Carver could actually have been this artist? And then have to go, no, actually, he is a fictional character. But thank you very

Michael David Wilson 37:21
much. I don't know. Is there a temptation to just continue it going and you know, if they aren't aware his fiction, or you're like, oh yeah, that's an interesting one. Why don't you pour more hours of your life into that and tell me what you uncover

Jasper Bark 37:39
sometimes? Yeah, but I have to come clean, but then I have to, sort of went up against, would you like to buy this book? Yeah. Would you like to buy this book? I have a wife and three very hungry overdrafts to feed. Please buy my book.

Michael David Wilson 37:56
And with the engagement and presumably, you know, down the road, imminent marriage, you know, you got those considerations as well. So,

Jasper Bark 38:08
yeah, this is true. Well, I'm kind of hoping that one of my children will strike it incredibly rich, so maybe they can look after me and my teachers.

Michael David Wilson 38:17
That's what we all hope. And by that, I mean, with our own children. Not everyone in the world is hoping for your children to strike incredibly rich, but if they did, then the power of that could, you know, result in

Jasper Bark 38:31
it? Yes, hope I strike it rich, but I can look after my kids, and I don't need to look after my dotage. I can buy a Japanese robot to look after me in my dotage, which is, so far, is my plan?

Michael David Wilson 38:45
So absolutely solid plan. And I mean, goodness, yeah, I was going to bring up the stunt online if you had not done that. But I mean, if we think about conspiracy theories in comics, do you think that it's perhaps the medium where there are more conspiracy theories than any other medium, or do you think it's particularly ripe For having these theories?

Jasper Bark 39:19
That's interesting, isn't it? I think it probably is. Well, I think one of the reasons it is is because comics, even though they've been somewhat rehabilitated in the last 20 years, and children's publishers like scholastic who have got quite high reputation, are making a very good living and are publishing graphic novels. It's still seen as a marginal art form, and for most of its existence, apart perhaps from the 30s and 40s, when it was very, very mainstream, and apart perhaps from like the 20s and 30s, when newspaper strips made like millionaires and huge stars out of their creators, you. It's always it's never been seen as like a mainstream or or a particularly literary medium. It's always been seen as as a marginalized art form. And the marginalization of art forms and the marginalization of the people who create them is another theme in the novel, but because it sits there in the margins, I think the people that are drawn to it, on the one hand, are very, very imaginative people, or people who, certainly, who like exercise their imagination in some way, and also they're, they're people who they're drawn to a pursuit or an art form that isn't necessarily mainstream in the way that like sports or fashion or politics would be. So those people are probably somewhat prone to marginalized thinking like conspiracy theories. And I think conspiracy theories are often they borrow an inordinate amount from Pulp Fiction. Anyway, I think the problem we were having a bit of a discussion just before the program started about the fact that the problem with most conspiracy theories is that they there's almost a failure of imagination about them. They recycle the same old tropes and cliches over and over again, unfortunately, and I think we've got to this kind of almost post truth situation in our 21st century society, where we know full well that the the official story, the official reasoning, the official history that were given around most major world Events probably isn't the entire truth, if there's any truth there at all. And so this kind of gap, this vacuum that that leaves in our public trust, is filled very, very quickly with alternate theories about what might happen. But unfortunately, these alternate theories then breed Alternate Facts, which actually aren't facts at all their invention, and they borrow very heavily from the pulp fiction world which exists within comics itself. So a lot of theories and ideas regarding the world and how it operates within conspiracy theories probably began life first off in the pulps, and particularly the science fiction in the horror pops. And then they the science fiction horror Pope's gave birth to early comics. And again, they continue this, this repository of Alternate Facts, alternate histories and and so people who are into these things, they're almost kind of like programmed. They've had them these kind of archetypes embedded in their consciousness, so that when the world around them stops making any sense, when the facts that were given don't seem to join up, and when we know that there are greater forces working behind the scenes, and they are working together with each other, effectively conspiring for an agenda which is not the agenda which is being publicly announced, and it's kind of becoming achingly apparent. We try and then almost, kind of like decrypt these events and work out what's actually going on behind the scenes. And we've been primed already with all these pulp archetypes. And so we go, ah, obviously it's a there's a giant conspiracy. Because the most terrifying thing to think is actually, maybe these people who are directly in charge of vast resources, huge amounts of money and and incredible apparatus of the state. Maybe they're incompetent. Maybe they're actually really don't know what they're doing. Maybe they're less smart than the of the average people. That's quite terrifying. So it's nice to think that actually, although they may look really, really stupid, although these things may look to be like almost, but clenching Lee foolish in what they're doing secretly, there is actually a tiny little cabal of incredibly clever, brilliant minds working together behind the scenes to distract us with these like foolish puppets, while it actually is dad hasn't actually left the building, and now they're as mom, they really are in charge of things. So take a deep breath. Relax. There's not an idiot behind the wheel. We're not charging over the cliff into a complete apocalypse. This is all part of some grand plan, and where one of us goes, we all go, trust in the plan. Actually, secretly, it's all going on behind the scenes. So relax. And I think I've gone off on a huge tangent about conspiracies and but from from a writer's perspective, I tend to treat these things as just another form of mythology. It's there. It's another giant grand. All encompassing, like, perfect explanation of everything. And rather than saying, is this true? Is this not true, it's more fun to say like, well, there is an element of fiction in what we call mainstream fact and mainstream history, and there's a huge element of fiction behind the theories that which perhaps explain the conspiracies that we think are going on behind the scenes. So this is our domain. We're writers. So this is a giant one of like public fiction, which is has an inordinate amount of material for us to draw upon and to play with. And it's okay for me to sit here and going, actually, most conspiracy theories bore me, because we've all heard the yada yada yada. Alien gray is back to Atlantis. Oh, it's the Freemasons, by way of the Knights Templar. Isn't it more fun to actually take all the ideas and then go, Well, why don't we actually using our creative brains, come up with a better conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory that explains things much more concisely, that perhaps explains the not just the nature of society and history, as we know, perhaps the entire core components of what makes reality itself. And so as a fiction writer, that's what draws me two conspiracy theories. I'm not necessarily that right or they're wrong. It's just like, wow, this is a whole extra mythology for us to play with, and it's horror fiction in particular, deals with the neuroses, the fears and the anxieties of a society at any given point, and so does conspiracy theory. So why aren't we just like, leaping into this pool and drawing on it and actually adding to it? Because we've got better ideas than a lot of the guys on the Q and on sites. So let's bring our own ideas in.

Bob Pastorella 46:53
Cultural anthologist, or excuse me, cultural historian, Colin Dickey, has written a book came out a couple years ago, called under the eye of power, how fair and secrecy, how fear and secret societies shaped American democracy. And reading this book, and it's talking about the history of America and how, basically, how it's like, hey, you know, Colin's theory is, you know, we all just talk about conspiracy theories. And maybe you're kind of thinking that's a new thing, and it's not. It's old. It's as old as the United States. And so that got me to thinking that you could take these like you're talking about archetypes, and put them over any modern society and watch as conspiracy theories actually develop society. And so it's when you said, mythology bingo man, that's we have a vast wealth of existing conspiracy theories. And if you here's thing, if you get involved in that kind of stuff, it can be really, really dangerous on yourself, but to use it in fiction, I think, I think you should. I think you should. You should explore that and also have the, you know, the, I guess, the gumption to go, hey, you know what? Then sometimes just weird shit happens. So, yeah,

Jasper Bark 48:20
yeah. The thing is, I think we don't include enough in conspiracy, the general confusion. It's like we've reached a point of which we'll probably never, ever find the smoking gun and find out who directly killed President Kennedy, unless you actually believe in the official version, in which case I not going to argue with you, but if you don't believe in the official version, the thing is, I actually even think the person who shot the bullet, which actually went through Jack Kennedy's head, even they are not 100% certain that it was them. I think sometimes, like stuff just happens and no one can explain. And one of the reasons the authorities, like leap in and cover the whole thing up is because they don't have an explanation. They don't know why. They don't want to be caught their pants done and go on the like the 10 O'Clock News and go warrior, I'm going to clip what happened. Who shot him and why shot him? And wait, did that. So let's just shut the whole thing down and find a culprit, because that maintains their power structure and their standing and their authority. But to admit, well, we kind of don't know. It could have been this guy. It could have been that guy. There were 20 different guys thinking about shooting him, and we were having conversations. We don't know, and I'm pretty certain the guy who shot Kennedy, even they don't know they did it, if they arrested the right guy. I mean, he would probably be beyond the news saying, and I'm just Patty, it wasn't me, which is perhaps why Lee Harvey would maybe he even did it, but he just wasn't aware there are any number of people probably hanging around grassy knolls and book depositories, taking potshots. President, probably 20 of them, just for the simple fact that that somebody had to have done it. But if there was enough people who could have been potential candidates for it, then everybody is ultimately deniable and therefore covered. Hmm,

Bob Pastorella 50:18
just so many things, so many things I could say about the current situation,

Michael David Wilson 50:24
but I think because it's so prescient, and because, you know, conspiracy theories are perhaps more at the forefront of the collective Zeitgeist than they have ever been, that's what makes this book, amongst other things, so successful. So even though it is unapologetically a love letter to horror comics, you could read this with absolutely no knowledge of horror comics and get a hell of a lot out of it. And I mean, even before we get deep into the conspiracy theory, just that hook, just that way that I was drawn in from the start with this simple idea that someone could disappear from everyone's memory but your own. I mean, how can you not be excited by that? There's just that this kind of intense paranoia, this questioning yourself and well, hang on, either the whole world has gone mad or I've gone mad, and that's just such a kind of ripe area for exploration, particularly within horror fiction.

Jasper Bark 51:44
Thank you. It's almost like a classic, like Twilight Zone episode. Those always start with a really, really simple thing happens. One person suddenly steps through the wrong door or turns around the wrong corner, and reality goes in one direction, and they go in another, and they're the only person who seems to have spotted this has happened, who's taken a peek behind the curtain of reality, and suddenly they find themselves ostracized from the rest of the world, which is a fear that we all have. What if all of a sudden, consensus reality changes. Everybody goes off in one direction, like a giant mandela effect. And only I remember so and that was kind of almost as I saying. It kind of goes through different types of genres. You know, it sort of starts as almost like a piece of quiet horror. There's nothing like horrific. And it's, it's a, it's a strange psychological situation this character goes through and they have had problems in the past, which is exporting more depth later on as to why they have had mental health problems. And this is brought up and used against them early on as well. This is the artist, Linda, who's our main protagonist. So there was a psychological element behind it as well. But it is kind of like it does start like a classic Twilight Zone story. It's just that it's, I also quite like the idea of having a like a story that went through a whole load of different genres in the same way that a if you pick up a really good compendium of horror stories, a really good anthology, you'll have all different types of horror fiction. It's about the each individual stories as you read through the book. Wouldn't it be kind of cool if you had one cohesive story that had a incredibly strong through line took the characters through all sorts of different situations, but at the same time, change genres. I mean, throughout most of the most of the novels, go through about three different genre, sub genre changes over the course of the individual story. But I'm hoping that you kind of won't notice the changes that won't be too jarring, because the story does have a very cohesive through line as well. You can say I was being very ambitious with this one step away every point, I think, in all three novels, from like absolute complete disaster and total failure. But I might have just managed not to do that. I think,

Bob Pastorella 54:19
no, I was trying to figure out a way to comp them, you know. And it's like the only thing that comes to mind to me. And I'm not a big fan of of either one of these, but I'm a major fan of the second one. It's like either national treasure or the Da Vinci Code meets in the mouth of madness in the world of horror comics, you know, because I have this. Have you read RL Carver, you know? And so, have you read, have you read Sutter Kane, you know, I have this, yeah, this, this whole kind of, it has this vibe to it that's just, you know, and then in the mouth, the madness kind of figured. This, you know, kind of features, like several different types of genre of horror. I mean, there's the body horror, there's cosmic horror, there's psychological horror, you know, there's Sam Neill horror, I don't know how you would put it, like Sam Neil. Sam Neil brings his own game to it. You know, it's like, but, yeah, and then, and then you, but you, then you have this kind of globe trotting, or, you know, kind of going through, you know, the United States, and has this kind of national treasure field. You kind of feel like every other scene, like some guy like Nicolas Cage is going to show up, going, well, it's actually the decoration of independence. You know,

Jasper Bark 55:39
there is a second volume, it kind of does. I was very purposely riffing off all those types of books, because, yeah, they go to Harvard. They go to Harvard and look at the history of Harvard and how that all kind of links in The Secret History of the United States. But they do go on on a kind of like, like a scavenger hunt. And they're taken on a scavenger hunt by this, this, this secret cabal they've discovered through who is connected to RL Carver. And so the remit of their investigation starts broadening at this point. Yeah, they did. They and by the way, every single place they go to in the Harvard campus and throughout Boston does actually exist, and all of those weird little bits of history that I picked out, they're all true, just as actually every single diner and road they go down and building they actually go into also exists. Some of those streets have actually walked down myself. And if I haven't actually physically been there, I have actually walked down all of those streets on like Google Maps. And I have even, like, gone to every single trip advisor and booking.com review of every single one of the diners. And the kind of Eater is that they stop in on this whole road trip. So geographically you could if you wanted to actually map this across the states. And at one point, they join up all the different places they've been to and find it draws a whole magical symbol, which I've also drawn up as well, and it does fit perfectly across the map of the United States, and in a kind of weird, bizarre way, I'm sure that actually, this magical symbol as well explains realities we know it. I just this, unfortunately, completely defies me. I need some completely mad visionary to explain this to me, but it will work honestly. So read the book, draw the symbol and the secrets the cosmos will be yours, I promise you.

Michael David Wilson 57:56
Thank you so much for listening to the first part of our conversation with Jasper bark. Join us again next time for the second and final part. Now, if you want to get that ahead of the crowd and support, This Is Horror Podcast as we take things to the next level, then become a patreon@patreon.com forward slash. This Is Horror now. I am planning on doing the podcast full time if the demand is there, and the way that I'm measuring that demand is through our patreon. So I'm going to be going really hard on This Is Horror Podcast and associated This Is Horror tangential activities until December. And if enough of you join the Patreon, and I think the demand is there, then I'm really hopeful that I'll be able to facilitate doing this full time going forward. Now, a big benefit for patrons is the relaunched story unboxed the horror podcast on the craft of writing, we will be unboxing and analyzing a story or film every month, starting this month with talk to me. So if you like the sound of that, that is just another reason to pledge your support@patreon.com forward, slash. This Is Horror. Okay, before I wrap up and tell you about this week's new book releases, it's time for an advert break. It

RJ Bayley 59:35
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Bob Pastorella 59:43
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RC Hausen 1:00:15
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Michael David Wilson 1:00:48
Okay, so, here it is the new books that are out this week, from first of July, a mother always knows, by Sarah stromaer, this is an electrifying novel of psychological suspense that explores the way our past shapes our future in so many unexpected ways, and that is out now through Harper Perennial. Next up you've got come knocking by Mike bockervin, the enthralling and terrifying exploration of human nature under extreme conditions poses unsettling questions about the grotesque underbelly of immersive experiences and the true nature of reality. And that is a horror book from Sky horse got a good cover too. Like it could be an extreme one, to be honest. So if you're into that kind of thing, come knocking by Mike Bockman, Next it is the RE release, the much anticipated re release of coyote songs by Gabino Iglesias in this mosaic horror crime novel, ghosts and Old Gods guide the hands that is caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American Southwest, it's out now. It is re released now via Mulholland books, kind of a classic of the genre. It's a book that launched Gabino Iglesias. So if you want to check that out, that is coyote sons. Next up is my ex the Antichrist, by Craig de Louis. Love. That title a twisted tale of love, heartbreak and the apocalypse. Yeah, that's gotta be the best title of this week. My ex the Antichrist. Next we've got odd body by Rose Keating in her debut collection, Rose Keating takes you on a bold journey through the intricacies of sex, shame and womanhood. So short story collection. It's from Simon and Schuster. Show me where it hurts by Robert E style with his debut collection. Show me where it hurts. Robert E style lures us into his dark world with examinations of loss, trauma and transformation. Out now via journal stone publishing. Robert's a fantastic guy. I was fortunate enough to be interviewed by him on his website the other day, and he's been very supportive of this as horror podcast. So I'm definitely gonna check out his short story collection, show me where it hurts, and I'd urge you to as well. Now, if you want to look at those books in more detail, go to the this is horror.co.uk website. We've listed them all in the books released for July the first click on the links and read the book description, and if one looks good for you, then, by all means, pick it up. It's another really good week. I mean, it's difficult to say what is the standout of this week? Of course, if you haven't read it, you got to pick up the RE release the coyote sons, by Gabino Iglesias, but come knocking by Mike bockervan. I know that that could be the one that is the most messed up and the most visceral of the lot. My ex the Antichrist by Craig de Louie, obviously them for me, anyway, the best title. And you know, you got debut collections as well rose Keene and Robert E style, and I realize now I've literally named all of them, apart from Sarah stromaer again. So there you go. Harper, perennial psychological suspense. If you Jack wanted them out, let me know how you got on with it. You know which is the one that appealed? To you the most. And if you want to submit your story, your book release, for the upcoming book section on the website and for me to read out on the podcast, Michael at thisishorror.co.uk. Do look on the website at the format, because if you can send it me in the format that makes my life a lot easier. But once you've done that, drop me a line. Michael at thisishorror.co.uk, I'd be happy to give you a shout out and let more people know about your book. And of course, if you want to go even further, if you want to advertise on the podcast, that again, is the address. Michael at the sorrow.co.uk, see address for anything that is my email address. So you want to contact me, that's how you do it. So with that said, I will see you next time for part two with Jasper Park. Become a patreon if you can please. I really, really, I want to take this to the next level. I want to do this full time, but the people will decide. So that's up to you. But until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror. Keep on writing and have a great, Great Day.