EXCLUSIVE: How my job in newspapers became the new horror comic, MACABRE VALLEY #1

My first job after college was at a newspaper in McAllen, Texas, covering the night cops beat. When I took it, I’d never been to Texas. All I knew of McAllen, I’d learned online, minus a retired neighbor who’d told me, “McAllen?! Why, that’s citrus country!”

And my job was hard from the start. As soon as I got there, I covered bodies found along the U.S.-Mexico Border, a man swarmed by killer bees, a human smuggler who fatally crashed a mini-van carrying 18 people. I was 1,400 miles from my hometown of Chicago and barely 23. I was in over my head, and I didn’t do my job well.

At the same time, this was about 15 years ago and newspapers were dying. I had nightmares about layoffs and furloughs. Ultimately, I would spend almost five years in McAllen as a reporter..and I’m telling you all this, dear reader, because I’m now turning the experience into a horror comic.

Here’s the tagline: A young reporter gets a job covering the night cops beat at a newspaper in South Texas. When a Border Patrol agent is gruesomely murdered, our hero must untangle a violent mystery with a beloved local priest and a werewolf at its dark center.

It’s called Macabre Valley #1, and it’s live on Kickstarter as of today. Here’s our cover:

While this first issue stands on its own well enough as a contained adventure, the idea behind the book is also to construct a larger narrative about the death of newspapers — while having some fun with Southwestern takes on monster-of-the-week horror. And it’s all drawn from real stories I covered.

For example, when I was in McAllen there was a car thief the cops called El Vampiro, because he’d driven off a steep river bluff and somehow lived to steal again. Wait until you see what we plan to do with that. 

Thankfully, super talented artist Anna Readman (winner of the Observer/Faber Graphic Short Story Prize) has joined me on the project. While Anna has never lived in Texas, you wouldn’t know it from her work, which is informed by a love of the Southwest, from Cormac McCarthy novels to the music of Townes Van Zandt. Plus, her art is a perfect fit for our grimey horror story, and her storytelling choices seamlessly bounce between pulpy gore and noir-tinged journalism procedural sequences.

Joining us on the project are veteran colorist Brad Simpson (Feral, The Invisible Man), Eisner-nominated letterer Becca Carey (Absolute Wonder Woman, Radiant Black), and celebrated designer Jared K. Fletcher (Paper Girls). And we’ve also got a variant cover by John J. Pearson (see below). It is, if I do say so myself, a good team. 

And on a personal note, even though I no longer work for one, I strongly believe that the loss of local newspapers is an underdiscussed blow to our communities. With this comic, I hope to make readers consider that, as well as how we got here and how scary it is that nothing has effectively replaced what we once had. Plus, we want to tell bonkers comics stories with werewolves, vampires, goblins who ride chupacabras, wrongly-convinced ghosts who haunt courthouses, and on and on.

We hope you’ll take a look at our project, and if you like what you see, consider pledging your support, snagging this first issue, and joining myself and my collaborators in the Valley this Halloween.