At the center of the Mojave Desert, at the crossroads between hell and gone, lies Barstow.
Barstow is a new horror series by Rebekah and David Ian McKendry, Tyler Jenkins, and Justin Birch about a strange town with something dark and demonic lurking beneath the townsfolk. Issue #1 will be out on November 20th, but if you want to get a sense for the story before then, learn more about the series' influences and check out a list of films that inspired the series from Rebekah McKendry:
When writing Barstow, we were heavily influenced not only by crime-driven western films and neo-noirs, but also a wild mix of absurdist horror combined with quirky tales of desert communities. Here are the 10 films we considered most influential on Barstow:
1. Red Rock West (1993): Upon arriving to a small town, a drifter is mistaken for a hitman, but when the real hitman arrives, complications ensue.
2. Repo Man (1984): A young punk, recruited by a car repo agency, finds himself in pursuit of a Chevrolet Malibu with a huge, $20,000 bounty--and something otherworldly stashed in its trunk.
3. Blue Velvet (1986): The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.
4. The Shooting (1966): A mysterious woman persuades two cowboys to help her in a revenge scheme.
5. Blood Simple (1984): The owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies, and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.
6. Waiting for Godot (both the play version and all the movie versions): two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives.
7. Tremors (1990): Natives of a small isolated town defend themselves against strange underground creatures which are killing them one by one.
8. The Day of the Beast (1995): Bent on committing as many sins as possible to avert the birth of the beast, a Catholic priest teams up with a Black Metal aficionado and an Italian connoisseur of the occult. Now, he must become an unrelenting sinner. Is there still hope?
9. Perdita Durango (1997): A psychotic criminal couple kidnaps a random teenage couple.
10. No Country for Old Men (2007): Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and over two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande.