Adam Gallardo: Twenty-five words or less: tell the kids what the book is all about.
Scott Allie: A young man discovers that a curse on his family has something to do with his father, who practiced witchcraft. In order to protect his family, he has to conjure a demon to find out what's going on. Things get very bad, and don't ever get much better.
AG: You went way over twenty-five words, but that's okay. Tell me how your idea for the book has changed from when you first conceived it to when you executed it.
SA: I first came up with the idea about six years ago. It was originally conceived as a story about a much older man dealing with the sins of his life. As I got more into the character, I decided I wanted to show his first steps down that road, when he was still innocent and wanted to do only good. I thought it would be an interesting trick or metaphor to show a magician whose ultimate trick was to transform himself into something better than what he was. What I discovered, as I researched magic, is that that's the real aim of any magician worth his salt. My research became studies, and Devil's Footprints became a lot more personal, a lot more about personal redemption ... and fighting monsters, of course.
AG: Is there any sense that you are trying to portray magic "correctly" as opposed to the Dr. Strange-type treatment that magic has received from comics in the past?
SA: Yeah, for the most part the magic in The Devil's Footprints is real. Some of it is a little bit silly, because this is a comic, and I want things to have a lot of visual punch. But even the demon conjuration is real, if a little truncated. A real conjuration would take pages and pages to show in detail, but keeping this stuff authentic makes it a lot more interesting than what you normally see in comics.
AG: I know you're a fan of Alan Moore's work. How much has his writing, and I'm thinking specifically of Promethea and Snakes and Ladders and some of his serious explorations of magic here, influenced what you're doing with The Devil's Footprints?
SA: Alan's a huge influence on me. I can't really get around that one. Promethea is my favorite book right now, but I won't be trying to do with magical philosophy what he does there. In a big way, Promethea and Hellboy sort of limit me more than anything else. Originally I had more stuff dealing with the Goetia in Devil's Footprints, but then Alan did something with that in Promethea, so I thought it would look derivative if I kept it in DF. There have been little bits in the story that felt too close to something Mignola would do, so I pulled most of those. The biggest influence Alan's had on me in recent years is that we talk about magic, he recommends books and writers. He taught me what little I know about scrying, which I used in the DF story in Reveal, this past fall. He's turned me on to a lot of things about the qabala, too.
AG: When did you decide to make the setting of the book your real-life hometown of Ipswich, Mass.?
SA: I set a lot of stories in Ipswich. It's an amazing place, so anytime a story would work in Ipswich, it goes there. Star Wars: Empire, I had no choice but to set it elsewhere ... When I was self-publishing, about half the stories were set there.
AG: How did you come up with the name for the series? I'm thinking of the story you once told me about the Devil having put in an appearance in Ipswich.
SA: Yeah, the title comes from an actual landmark in Ipswich. I was searching all over for a title for this thing--The Demonologist was an early, awful idea. Then I thought of this thing in Ipswich, where the Devil allegedly left his footprint while being chased out of town, and I felt like I'd hit upon it. Because the title takes on some double meaning. Brandon's dead father is considered by some a Satanist, and Brandon is afraid of walking in his father's footsteps. So the title took on literal and symbolic significance. Just the kind of title I like.
AG: Having started as a self-publishing writer with the horror title Sick Smiles, do you feel like you're returning to the genre you love with this book?
SA: Oh, god, yeah. One reviewer who read the preview version of the book commented that this wasn't like any of my other work. He was referring to things I'd done for Dark Horse -- Star Wars: Empire, Scorpion King, Planet of the Apes. I thought, "No, this is EXACTLY like my other work"-- it's those licensed things which are the anomalies. Horror comics is where it's at for me. It's all I've ever wanted to do. I mean, there are some other things I'd like to do, but if I could write horror comics all day and night, I'd never complain.
AG: What was Dark Horse's reaction when you pitched this series to them?
SA: Mike Richardson (Dark Horse's publisher and the biggest man in comics), to whom I owe a great deal, and who seems to think very highly of me, simply said, "I like that book by those two artists from Buffy. Those guys are great." It was as though he didn't even realize I was writing it. So mainly he was approving it based on the art, and the fact that it looked like a good horror comic with lots of monsters and lots of emotion. Randy Stradley (Dark Horse's V.P. of publishing) has been more involved in the story end of it, and he's been supportive from the beginning.
AG: The concept at least first appeared in an issue of Dark Horse Presents. Is the version you're now working on very different from what people may have seen in the short story?
SA: I think the story that comes out in March is very different from the one in the Lovecraft tribute [DHP 142], but that was always the plan. Galen Showman was the original DF artist. I pitched the story to him, and he was really into it. When we started thinking about this legacy that Brandon's father had left him, we found ourselves thinking of the dad more and more as a character. We did the DHP story as a way of making the father seem real to us and to the readers. William, the dad, is such a different character from Brandon, that their stories are going to be a lot different. William works best when you don't know what he's thinking; Brandon's just the opposite. So the differences are extreme in the two stories, but that was always the idea.
AG: How did you come to tap Paul Lee to handle the art on the book?
SA: Brian [Horton] and I were having dinner with some other Buffy writers and artists one night, talking about how we wished we had a story that really meant something to us, something we could really be invested in. It wasn't until the next day that I realized that Devil's Footprints could be that story for both of us. Brian and Paul and I are great friends -- I've been following Paul's work since before either of us were really in comics, back in 1991 -- so it fell into place pretty quickly from there. Paul and I have a very similar sense of storytelling, so that's gone really smoothly. Paul and Brian have both really contributed to the story, as well. We work very symbiotically. I make suggestions about the inking to Brian, he makes suggestions about the story to me, etc. We've all sort of worked character designs out together, cover sketches. I wish I could just do comics with these guys all the time. It's a really good working relationship.
AG: Okay, maybe I had the artist on the book wrong. I thought Paul was pencilling and inking the book. What has Brian Horton's role been on the book?
SA: Paul does layouts, Brian does finishes. That means Paul is in charge of the storytelling, while Brian has a big influence over the final look. They work together on covers and interiors both. These guys work really well together, so their combined efforts become a real solid whole. Brian is also a really wonderful character designer, so he developed the looks for most of the characters. Paul did some, and I did one of the demons.
AG: Has it been a good experience working with them, do they "get" what you're trying to do with the book?
SA: Oh yeah, we've sort of joked about Paul writing a Devil's Footprints story for me to draw, that's how blurred the lines have gotten between who does what.
AG: Besides the Dark Horse web site, is there anywhere else that people can go to learn more about The Devil's Footprints?
SA: Yeah, we have our own website, www.devilsfootprints.com, which has a lot of info on the book.
AG: Do you have any other comics writing coming up in the near future?
SA: Not much. I want to really focus on this series. We're talking about a sort of sequel to my Star Wars: Empire story, but I don't know if it's meant to be. We've got a couple Devil's Footprints short stories set for anthologies later in the year, and I have a bondage-and-domination murder story that I might be doing with Jason Pearson, but that's not certain yet.
The Devil's Footprints, the first of a four-issue series written by Scott Allie and drawn by Paul Lee and Brian Horton, and published by Dark Horse Comics, will be available in comics shops March 5th.