With two issues published and two left to go, Summer Shadows has proven itself as one of the most compelling horror titles of the year. Mysterious, thrilling and sexy, it stands out in Dark Horse Comics‘ catalogue and just seems to be getting better. The Beat reached out to Summer Shadows writer John Harris Dunning with some questions, which you can read below.
JARED BIRD: Issue #2 of Summer Shadows came out October 16th, 2024 from Dark Horse Comics. With two issues to go, both oversized, could you give a brief elevator pitch for the series?
JOHN HARRIS DUNNING: I’m terrible at elevator pitches! It’s basically vampires on the beach. Vampires are cruising around the Greek islands hiding around in a huge black yacht. They’re sleeping during the day and coming out to hunt at night. It’s a not-so-subtle metaphor of how vampiric billionaires are, and it comes from the fact I spend three months of every year in Greece on a secluded little island. It’s very unspoilt and very beautiful, but in those waters you also have Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and various other demented creatures. Huge yachts cruising around looking so out of place. It’s also tragic, because you see tons of plastic sealed against the elements with air-conditioned hell, while you have paradise on the islands and you wonder why someone would want to stay in a tonne of plastic when you could walk off and for nothing be on a beautiful island. It’s all about the idea of being trapped by money, being corrupted by it.
BIRD: Was Summer Shadows inspired by seeing that firsthand for yourself?
DUNNING: Exactly. Very often a story will come to me as an image or a collection of images, which works very well for me because I work in comics. With Summer Shadows, it was this image of myself on a little beach and this giant black yacht pulling in and sitting there for two days. It seemed so sinister and almost supernatural. Another image was a fashion campaign for Prada in 2001, by Cedric Buchet, a French photographer. It was these really cool, heroin chic shoot of very pale, skinny people on this very whitewashed beach where you never see the water. It’s got a disconcerting and odd feeling to it that always stuck with me. When I was coming up with the vampires, I knew exactly that shoot would be them bathing on the beach at night. From there the story started galloping, and it happens quite often like that for me.
BIRD: Something I find really interesting about the visual design of the comic is the design of the vampires. It exists in this middle ground between Lestat style sexy vampire and monstrous creature Count Orlok. There’s an uncanny feeling about how pale they are in the Greek sunshine and certain features don’t quite work to them. It’s interesting to hear where you got that from.
DUNNING: Thanks! I really appreciate it. One of the most fun things to do was play with vampires. I love Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and she was also exploring queer relationships which I loved as a kid growing up in South Africa. I also really loved 30 Days of Night, and the monstrous disgusting vampires. You ain’t seen nothing yet, and we’ve been quite slow in how we introduce them. I’m in the school of something like Ring, where you aren’t rushing into showing anything. It ratchets up and up, and it is fun and exactly what you spotted.
BIRD: Was it difficult to come up with a unique approach to vampires, given so many different iterations have existed over time?
DUNNING: Good question. It’s quite weird how it works – if you’re in a flow state, and the story is working, you almost don’t have to think too much about it. I almost have to think about it in retrospect. I knew what they wanted to be, and they behaved in the way they wanted to be, and had this great range from beautiful and charming to monstrous, and that just kind of happened. One thing I thought about was one of the main vampires, who is ancient Greek. There’s a bronze sculpture of him, done in maybe 500 BCE, which makes him quite old and pre-Christian. It made me confront whether these vampires would be concerned with crosses or holy water, because they don’t really care about Christ at all – they’re older than him. My vampires are in no way fussed by anything religious, which makes them unique, but they still have vulnerabilities, which as you will see are not dissimilar to what you might expect.
BIRD: What was it like working with Dark Horse Comics?
DUNNING: It’s so brilliant to be able to say it’s been wonderful. They’re incredible. My graphic novel Wiper, also with Ricardo Cabral, was done with them. It’s a science fiction series set in South Africa. It was a great experience. We got to work again with editor Brett Israel on this and it could not be a better relationship. They are very supportive and make me look amazing, and it made me realise how important a good editor is because they catch so many things. They allowed me to follow through on my artistic vision, and because Dark Horse comes from a creator-owned background they have perfected such a free experience. I love them and I would continue working with them as long as I possibly can. They’ve got such a good stable, heritage and background so I’m honoured to be working with them.
BIRD: I’ve always been a fan, but they’ve been impressing me even more lately with these excellent mature comics that are normally things that might not get a big media push at other publishers. Into the Unbeing, Summer Shadows, the continuing Hellboy universe. They are making the effort to tell people ‘This is what you should check out and here’s why.’
DUNNING: You’re right, and it shows they’re not resting on their laurels. They have such a heritage that they could understandably rely on but they’re so good at supporting fresh and growing talent and it’s so impressive.
BIRD: What was it like working again with artist Ricardo Cabral? He brings an early Shade, The Changing Man-style touch to the book.
DUNNING: Totally. There’s a comics critic here in the UK called Paul Gravett. He’s rather wonderful and introduced me to Riccardo at Thought Bubble quite some time ago. We wanted to work with each other and had put various pitches together, but when I got the commission to do Wiper there was no one I wanted to work on that book more than him. When I got to do Summer Shadows, I really wanted to work with him again, because we have such a shorthand with each other, work so well together and understand each other. To go from cyberpunk to gothic horror was a big change, but he can do anything. His versatility is incredible and I don’t know which I prefer, his science-fiction work or his horror. That really is saying something. He’s got a real visual intelligence that makes me look great, because as much as I’d like to think my script is so amazing what he brings to the table and his structure and the way he decided to put things on the page just amplifies things a hundred fold. An example of what Riccardo does so well is when the wild campers first encounter the vampires in issue #1. One of them gets entranced by a vampire, and Riccardo starts to break the page down, mushing all the panels together. It’s so sublimely illustrated. It’s not totally obvious but if you really get into it you notice it and the mood it puts together.
BIRD: You mentioned it earlier, but could you elaborate on what inspired the Greek island setting?
DUNNING: For the last ten years, I’ve gone to spend summer on a specific Greek island, which shall remain nameless because I don’t want anyone going there. It’s very far flung and unspoilt. I really came to love the island, and I love the people in Greece. I find the culture really interesting and I have for years. There’s a very cool scene in Athens, with so many writers and artists doing big things. It was becoming a part of my life and inspired me to write a story. When I saw that yacht, as I said, and thought about vampires, I thought it was quite an amusing idea. Vampires on a beach in Greece on summer vacation. It’s the exact opposite of what you’d expect. Riccardo came with me to the island and spent ten days drawing. We went around to all the beaches including where the characters met the vampires at night. I hope that shows in the pages because it’s a love-letter to the island. It’s quite magical and special and I was really pleased he invested in the project enough to come out with me and get lost on the island. I think that love is in the pages.
BIRD: Linking back to the idea of vampires on summer vacation, it all makes sense. Vampires have always conceptually been linked to notions of class, and the predatory wealthy goes back all the way back to Dracula. Big ornamental castles and lords with more money than they could ever spend who don’t need to worry about normal human worries. If you consider the way the behaviour of the super wealthy has evolved, it makes sense, even if on paper it sounds out-there.
DUNNING: That’s right. I also had this idea about what places they could go to where they could pay the government to look the other way. Maybe Greece is one of those places, certainly England is one of those places, and certainly the USA is another one. You quickly realise that almost anywhere in the world, the super wealthy can get away with almost anything. How would they be able to move undeterred through the world? A boat is a good idea if you have some sort of exemption. On a boat, you don’t have to go through airports or borders, you’re a bit of a free agent. Those things developed momentum into an idea.
BIRD: Do you like writing complex narratives? Summer Shadows has multiple points of view and quite a few different moving parts.
DUNNING: That’s a really good question and makes me think a whole bunch of complex thoughts.
BIRD: Ahaha!
DUNNING: On the one hand, I’m such a massive fan of Japanese horror comics, like Orochi and Drifting Classroom by Kazuo Umezu, and the work of Junji Ito. I really like those stories which are quite decompressed and there’s quite a lot of silence and space for images. I’m not massively keen on the current contemporary trend of super complex narratives. Having a five act structure with a three act structure in the final two acts, everything has to surprise you, and move super quickly. Having said that, you mentioned Vertigo earlier and I like the layering and the texture of those books and series like The Sandman where you have casts intersecting and re-intersecting and they all have backgrounds, a richness and a mythology. I’m trying to reach some sort of balance between keeping it rich and a really good grounded read but trying not to pelt you with so many characters and concepts that you lose interest. I lose interest when that happens.
BIRD: I suppose then the idea would not be complexity but the depth of the elements instead. Not as many elements involved but making each feel well thought out and interesting.
DUNNING: It’s about supporting a more simple structure. If you look at the horror media I love, all the way from Halloween to The Ring, these are actually very simple films. The actual trajectory of the film is simple and you have these great layers that support quite a basic structure. I think as animals, which we all are, even if you could switch on 3000 machines pelting narratives at you, it doesn’t allow you to absorb them or accommodate them any easier. We quite like mythic simple stories that have big concepts and big images and that’s more effective in some ways.
BIRD: Do you think people yearn for more queer horror stories?
DUNNING: I know I do! I think people are more curious about queer horror stories now. As a kid growing up, I found it interesting that one of the most popular genres for teenage girls in Japan was gay romance. Growing up in South Africa, which was extremely homophobic, the idea of that was such an impossible dream. Now with stuff like Heartstopper, it’s opening up the idea that you don’t have to be gay to find it romantic or sexy. You don’t have to be straight to find their romances appealing or compelling. There’s much more room for it, and also a bit of a hunger because it’s fresh and people don’t quite know what it is yet so there’s a bit of novelty involved. I’m delighted, I’m seeing so much new stuff. It’s telling stories in an arena where ideas haven’t been done to death.
BIRD: I completely agree. There’s less of a gut reaction to avoid these things now for most people, and it’s rightfully been more normalised. It doesn’t make us demonic entities or anything like that.
DUNNING: Not necessarily!
BIRD: If readers enjoy Summer Shadows, what other projects of yours should they check out?
DUNNING: The next thing I’ve got coming up is Ripperland, which is co-written by Steve Orlando and starts in January. It’s similarly a four part miniseries, all oversized. I’d love people to go back to Wiper, because I think it was an interesting project and trying to do science fiction inspired by South Africa is quite different. There’s also Tumult, which I did with Michael Kennedy, which is more of a psychological thriller akin to the Ripley series. I love hearing from people on social media, and I’d love to know what they think.
BIRD: Have a lovely day.
