Political comedy podcast Chapo Trap House has teamed up with publisher Bad Egg to bring fans Year Zero. The comic is a new horror anthology from the podcast team and hosts, and is the first volume in a three-volume series.
Chapo host Will Menaker and Robert Meyers, Director of Publishing at Bad Egg, spoke with The Beat about interviewing Alan Moore and the five brand-new stories in Year Zero, available for order here.
JAVIER PEREZ: I found out about the anthology at the Bad Egg table during a retailer’s convention, maybe Comics Pro? I happened to see your Chapo logo, and I was like, “What is this? I thought they were on an audio thing. How did you approach creating the comic? How did you guys link up?
WILLIAM MENAKER: Well, Robert, you guys reached out to us, right?
ROBERT MEYERS: It was organic. It started with Daniel Dominguez. I know I was working with you on some non-comic-related stuff. When you were setting up Cold Feet, I think he was helping you guys with that. So he was like, “They’re interested in doing something.” So, he put me in touch with Chris Wade, and I think Amber A’Lee Frost was right at the front, and then we all had that big call to kind of kick off, late last summer, early fall last year. So, yeah, it was friends of friends.
PEREZ: This seems like a horror anthology. I wanted to ask why you all go for that?
MENAKER: Well, because life is so horrifying. [Laughs] When the concept of an anthology was first considered, the first thought that came into my mind was Tales from the Crypt or Amazing Stories—these great anthology series in science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Personally, the horror format suits my sensibilities. I wanted to write a story like a horror story; I didn’t want to do anything superhero-related. I love to write these as standalone, discreet stories within a genre format.
PEREZ: You find that particularly with comic books? I’m wondering why comic books?
MENAKER: Well, because the format, especially that we were paired with these incredible artists. I think it’s like a canvas that lets your imagination run wild. You don’t have to worry about a budget or how we can do this as a period piece. We don’t need like half a zillion dollars to do it. I like that it’s a way for us to bring any idea we have to life and make it exist, and I’m excited about that. And, from my end, I’ve read comics my whole life. I’ve been a comics fan, but never written a comic. I’ve written pilots and screenplays.
It was also an interesting learning process, as I realized that when writing a comic, as opposed to writing a script, you have to be the director as well. You have to give the artist, panel by panel, how you like what you want to depict, such as how the action sort of moves from panel to panel. So, that was an interesting process. It was tricky at first, but it was rewarding to film it in your head and translate it into an artist’s writing directions.
PEREZ: And you said you’ve been a comic book fan your whole life. Wasn’t there like an episode with Alan Moore of Chapo at some point?
MENAKER: Oh, yeah. Not only did we interview Alan Moore on the show, but I also had a prior professional relationship with him.
PEREZ: Oh, wow.
MENAKER: I was the American publisher of his sort of magnum opus novel, Jerusalem. When I had my previous job before starting Chapo, I was an assistant editor at Liveright, a division of W.W. Norton, and I was responsible for acquiring the American rights to Jerusalem. I was not only familiar with Alan’s work, but we had also previously collaborated on another project.
So, it was obviously very special to get an interview with Moore because I know he doesn’t do a lot of media. And then my comic, my story, the Clinton Hill Horror, I will say lovingly that I jacked his whole flow. Bar for bar, line for line, and I’m referring to Neonomicon and Providence. I wanted to create something like that, which involves crafting a Lovecraft story that explores real history and bridges the intersection between weird fiction and actual events.
PEREZ: Yeah. I wanted to know if we could talk about your story, if that’s okay? The Clinton Hill Horror written by you and art by Simon Roy and Sergei Nazarov.
MENAKER: Clinton Hill is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, where I live. I wanted to do something about where I live because this was sort of my nod to HP Lovecraft, who lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn, for a short period and wrote the story “The Horror at Red Hook.”
I wanted to write my version of an HP Lovecraft story about the neighborhood where I lived, creating a weird, alternate history that touches on a significant portion of the real history of the area, which dates back to the Revolutionary War.
PEREZ: So, Clinton Hill Horror is an alternate history of New York City. Would that be a good way to go about it?
MENAKER: Yeah, I think it is. It’s a Lovecraftian cosmic horror that blends the Lovecraft template of cosmic horror, and I wanted to sort of insert myself into that. The main character is like a thinly veiled turn-of-the-century analog for myself, based on the series of Cthulhu role-playing games that we’ve done on the show several times. I had a character based on myself that was an occult detective, and I wanted to take that character and cast him in the story.
I’m writing as if it were a straight-down-the-line horror story. As if I’m not doing it, I’m not trying to do it tongue-in-cheek, but I wanted to have this me walking around Clinton Hill back then. Casting my mind back into time to the early turn of the century and then even further back than that to the Revolutionary War, and having these two different timelines of which my character passes a veil hat, punctures the thin layer of sanity that keeps us all getting up and able to deal with reality every day.
PEREZ: I mean, the city’s just constant reminders
MENAKER: Yeah. I touch upon a significant part of the story, which involves a monument located in Fort Greene Park, just a short distance from me. The genesis of that monument, what it represents. The Revolutionary War aspects of the story all deal with that. I take that as a jumping-off point to create something truly horrific and Lovecraftian.
PEREZ: Next one up, Loopjumper. That is by Felix Biederman and Rich Douek, art by Ken Knudsten, colors by Charlie Kirchoff,
MENAKER: Yeah, Felix’s story, Loopjumper. This originated from a fake movie pitch that we created as part of one of our live shows at the Frequency Festival. And this was an idea that we were all in LA, so we just started coming up with what we would do if we wanted to make an action movie. What would it be? What would the Chapo action movie be like?
And this is basically like we collaborated on this idea. It’s mostly Felix, but like that was the genesis of the concept. We created this fake movie pitch for an 80s-style action movie, blending tropes of that genre with weird fiction and our obsessions with conspiracy, the manipulations of the deep state. However, it’s also similar to something else we did. We developed a pilot for a TV show based on the series we created about George H.W. Bush, titled Poppy. I think this is sort of indebted to that as well because it deals with once again real political figures and real history but in like a completely completely far out and bizarre action movie format that regards a former operator waging a war against the deep state through using a technique known as quantum suicide to sort of time travel and jump the loop of time travel over and over again, waging kind of an eternal time war against the CIA and the executive branch of the federal government.
MEYERS: I think Felix at one point said it was sort of like an alt-right time cop. That one is illustrated by Ken Knudsten, with colors by Charlie Kirchoff.
PEREZ: Next one up, Beat the Dang Devil.
MENAKER: Yeah, this was written by Amber A’Lee Frost and art by Justin Greenwood. The elevator pitch would be “Appalachian Evil Dead.” The one thing that stuck out to me when I was talking to Amber about writing this was that in her story, hell is not a place, it’s a job. It’s about a coal miner who makes a deal with the devil and then has to renege on the agreement, fighting off three of the devil’s minions while defending himself and his home. But I think the line that always sucks out with me is that hell is not a place, it’s a job.
PEREZ: How about No pasarán, which is from Matt’s Spanish Civil War book? Could I hear about that?
MENAKER: Yeah, this is essentially illustrated adaptations of some of the significant parts of his history of the Spanish Civil War. So, this one is a little different from the other offerings, but it’s essentially an illustrated history of the Spanish Civil War, based on Matt Christman’s book.
MEYERS: This one’s illustrated by Dean Kotz and colored by Daniela Miwa, who also did all the colors for Old Guard. I think it will impress people. Matt’s book on the Civil War was incredible. Seeing a narrative thread pulled from the book into these vignettes has been fun. They’re all good, but this one looks and feels like a newsreel, almost like a journalistic piece.
PEREZ: Last but not least, Crew Expendable written by Chris Wade and Joel Sinensky and art by David Cousens and J.P. Jordan
MENAKER: Yeah, this one is by Chris and a friend who wrote the script. It is their depiction of a Martian colony that gets privatized. Thinking about certain prominent figures in American life and their ongoing love affair with the idea that humanity should move to Mars or that a perfect society can be created away from big government on another planet, with no breathable atmosphere. This is a science fiction story about what happens to the human crew, the colonists on a Martian colony, when their colony is privatized.
PEREZ: I’m looking forward to that. Is there anything else you guys would like to add?
MENAKER: You will travel to far and distant places. This is a mastery of the macabre. These are tales that will shatter your fragile sanity and that will astound, amaze, and offend. I just think it’s cool like to have the opportunity because there are a lot of people in the sort of independent media sphere, I’m certainly like not trying to replace traditional comic book writers, but like to pair us with professional comic book artists to like give us a chance to to flex something that people haven’t seen before. I think people will like it. And I believe just like there’s just such a wealth of talent out there, especially when it comes to the creative arts, and what I want to pay tribute to is what Bad Egg is doing.
