Artist Ben Stenbeck has for some time now been a key collaborator with Mike Mignola, with the two teaming up for books like Baltimore, Frankenstein Underground, and Koschei, but now Stenbeck is making his debut as a solo creator with Our Bones Dust. And the premise is over-the-top comics genre excellence.
In this new book — which is available for pre-order at comic shops now with a first issue set for December 6 — the story is about a feral child navigating a nightmare dystopian landscape that is just lousy with cannibal tribes. Plus also, there is a curious artificial intelligence with a killer design.
Stenbeck recently made time to talk all things Our Bones Dust with The Beat, and you can find our conversation below…enjoy!
INTERVIEW: Ben Stenbeck talks OUR BONES DUST
ZACK QUAINTANCE: You’ve worked on quite a few comics with Mike Mignola and others, but this is your first solo series. What made Our Bones Are Dust the right book for that?
BEN STENBECK: It’s funny, I never set out to make this like my big debut or anything like that. I have a project that’s ‘my big thing’ I want to get to some day. This felt like smaller stakes, like an exercise in just getting my own book done and out there before attempting something bigger. This series started out as a simple idea. Originally I thought of it as being just a short 20 page thing, I even thought I would just sell black and white photocopies at one point. But the idea grew, and mostly I really wanted to draw this world and characters.
ZACK: I imagine building a new world from scratch presented you with quite a bit of freedom. How did that affect your creative process?
BEN: Yeah, that total freedom is nice. In some ways that’s the most fun part. It really made this into something where i could draw what ever i want at any point. I guess its a bit self indulgent in that way but i think good work can come out of that. I hope.
ZACK: I loved the designs in this book. How did you approach those and were there any recognizable design influences you drew from?
BEN: Thanks! Attis the AI being was the thing I spent the most time on. I really wanted her to seem almost like a god. Most of the human characters came from really rough looking police mugshots. The clothes they wear are based on the clothing of homeless people, I felt like those references were the closest real world analogue to the kind of life these characters are living. Everything is tough and you make use out of whatever you can get your hands on. I didn’t want to go full fantasy Mad Max on the designs because I was trying to keep it a bit grounded. But Mad Max is still a big influence on this in other ways.
ZACK: I also really liked the sort of dystopian slang the characters spoke in this comic. How did you develop that dialect?
BEN: I think Mad Max is responsible for that. The idea is that humans are on their way out, and degenerating to a stone age existence, so language is degenerating. But at the same time I didn’t want readers to have to sift through a bunch of jargon and get taken out of the story trying to figure out what everyone is saying. So I tried to strike a balance there.
ZACK: Finally, this book is currently a four-issue miniseries, but what are the chances it might end up going past that? It’s comics so I have to ask — have you thought about a larger continuing scope for this story?
BEN: For now I’m planning to leave it at four issues (although they have long page counts so it’s closer to five issues in length) I have another series with Mike Mignola I’m drawing at the moment, and then we have a new thing we are doing together so I’m going to be busy for a long time. But I do have a lot of history for this world and a rough idea of where everyone goes after this series ends. So never say never.
Our Bones Dust is available to pre-order from comic shops now, with a first issue release date set for December 6, 2023.
