Every month, Dark Horse Comics gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a comic or book. These articles can include the inspiration behind a specific title, what it's like to work in the comics industry, or some other special feature on the highlighted title of the month! In this month's Horsepower, James Robinson gives readers a look at the classic movies and fiction writers that inspired Los Monstruos:
There’s something about Film Noir crime movies of the 1940s and 50s that seems to set them in a world apart.
A fantasy place of larger-than life characters, thrown into extreme situations, often due to passionate, forbidden desires, and with their ultimate fates bittersweet at best. For example, the unrealistic thing is, you can easily use those same descriptors to describe horror movies of that era. Yeah, if you think about it these two disparate genres have a lot in common.
I’ve no idea how I came up with Los Monstruos. It’s been with me for so long, a whirl of memories and images in my head from different films that somehow found each other. The shadowy calm in Robert Siodmak’s The Killers or Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, the sardonic banter in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, the refined style of James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, even the somewhat unrealistic fog used in night scenes of some Noir and most monster movies. (For example, the unrealistic thickness and movement of the fake fog in The Big Sleep's night scenes feel just like the wafting smoke in the very fake woods scenes in Lon Chaney Jr.’s “the Wolfman”.) Then there’s the period clothing and haircuts from the same 1930s-1950s era, be they on L.A. streets or in Transylvanian castles. Oh, and the somewhat fatalist endings to many Noir movies shared that with most horror films of that time, too.
Jesús Merino, my artistic partner for the series, came on early enough that he was able to add many of his own layers of inspiration all further shaping the comic you have in your hands. I will say that Jesús and I make a great team.
In terms of prose fiction, the obvious writers: Chandler, Hammett, and Ross McDonald were all detective fiction inspiration, but it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge one other writer: James Ellroy, specifically the set of four books that comprises his L.A. Quartet. The real “star” of those books is the city itself, with certain characters taking the lead in one book and just appearing as supporting players in the next while other characters take the fore.
This will be the same in Los Monstruos as the series unfolds arc-by-arc. Werewolf P.I. Perry Cutter is the main protagonist of these first four issues, and he’ll come back to star in future stories too. But he won’t necessarily be the main character in every arc. [In fact, you’ll meet two future lead characters in Los Monstruos 2 in supporting roles.]
I’ll end by saying what a blast it’s been for Jesús and me, telling Perry Cutter’s crime exploits while playing by the rules of monster movies, especially with Jesús’ wonderful art helping to take us back to that place in time. This is just the start for the series and the inhabitants of Los Monstruos, so I hope you’ll take up residency in this city unlike any other.
—James Robinson
Los Monstruos #1, written by James Robinson, illustrated by Jesús Merino, colored by K.J. Diaz, and lettered by Jim Campbell, will be on sale on May 7!
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