The Sixmiths are your normal, everyday, suburban family. They go to work, go to school, buy groceries and attend church regularly. The only difference is that, when they go to church they worship Satan and cannot WAIT to experience the joy of living in Hell in the after-life.The Sixsmiths, this is one heckuva comedy and one helluva family.

We caught up with the creative team of Jason Franks and J. Marc Schmidt to talk about The Sixsmiths.

Decapitated Dan: Hey guys, thanks for taking time to talk with me about The Sixsmiths. First of all lets talk about you. Who are you and what do you do?

Jason Franks: By night, I'm a freelance writer. I've published a bunch of short stories in prose and comics. By day, I program drug dealing robots for pharmacies.

J. Marc Schmidt: I used to be a high school teacher but I got out because thoughts of murder and social misdeed kept popping into my mind. Lol. Then I started teaching English overseas, just like JK Rowling and Edward Norton. Soon after that, I drew two graphic novellas, both themed on an unconscious fear of being devoured. I was completely surprised when someone pointed that out to me. Egg Story came out in 2004. It's about eggs who fear being eaten by humans, among other things. Eating Steve came out in 2007, and it's about zombies. The Sixsmiths also contains a minor theme of cannibalism. What's wrong with me, doctor? I guess The Sixsmiths completes the cannibalism trilogy.

Decapitated Dan: How did you find yourself getting into making comics?

Jason Franks: It wasn't til I was about 18 that I really became interested in the medium--not coincidentally the same time that DC's Vertigo imprint started up. Suddenly comics was full of exactly the kind of material I wanted to read: surreal horror and dark fantasy stories. Fast forward a few years. I was writing mostly prose, but somehow, while I was messing around on an internet forum, I wound up sending a script for a short story to an artist whose name I didn't even know. When the pages came back I was blown away. That was it; I had to do more comics.  The artist turned out to be J.Marc, and that story, "One More Bullet", is probably still the piece I am best known for.

J. Marc Schmidt:
I wrote an outline for an ambitious graphic novel sometime after seeing the movie Akira as a teenager. That movie made me think I should be an animator when I grew up, and I thought the path I should take to get there was the same as the path Otomo, the director of Akira, took; i.e. do a comic first! So I did one (not the aforementioned, though).

Decapitated Dan: So what can you tell me about The Sixsmiths?

Jason Franks: The Sixsmiths is kind of like The Simpsons meets Rosemary's Baby. In Australia. A family of Satanists have fallen on hard times and they have to work out a way to survive in the secular world. A funny, sad, heartwarming paean to the Dark Lord and his Legions of the Wicked.

J. Marc Schmidt: Jason disagrees with me on this, thinking smart readers and adults are not affected by what they read and can easily distinguish reality from fiction. I on the other hand am expecting a surge of interest in Satanism, the occult and so on. Just as Akira inspired my future path, perhaps The Sixsmiths will inspire others, kind of like how Dungeons and Dragons inspired people to join dark cults in the 80s. In fact, D&D has inspired the Sixsmiths in its own way, too. Juiblex, 'The Lord of Slimes and Oozes' has appeared, for example. I want to be a drug-addicted biker with a totally sweet laser gun.

Decapitated Dan: Who are the main characters?

Jason Franks: The principle characters are the members of a nuclear family: Ralf, the breadwinner (currently out of work); Annie, the homemaker with a background in the porn industry; Lilith, who has ambitions to rule over her new school with an iron fist; Cain, her twin brother, who has ambitions to hide in his bedroom playing the bass; Jezabelle, their wayward elder sister; and Furfur, the mischievous devil-dog. Then there's Dennis, a dorky kid a bit younger than the twins with a fixation on satanism and female anatomy; Julius, the schoolyard bully and wannabe rockstar; Memoth, the satanic vicar;  the office nymphomaniac, Vicky the Virgin... There are a lot of supporting characters.

J. Marc Schmidt: Yep, the main characters are the nuclear family, who make up 6 members, allowing for family members who are absent (big sister Jezabelle), or non-human (dog Furfur). Six is an evil number. There are about 6 secondary characters who are important to the story as well.

Decapitated Dan: Where did the ideas for this story come from?

Jason Franks: Marc was visiting Melbourne for a book launch and we were sitting around in a coffee shop talking comics. Marc did a sketch of a schoolboy in a pentagram t-shirt, which wound up becoming the character Cain. We just built it from there. I've always had an interest in the occult and the Devil shows up in a lot of my other stories, so I drew a lot from that as well as from classic horror movies like The Omen and Rosemary's Baby. Just as much is drawn from real life: things that happened to me or people that I know, recast as devil worshippers.

J. Marc Schmidt: Yeah, I'd written an essay about Disney movies analysing what seems to be a vein of pagan religiosity that ran through them, in a book called 'Secrets of Popular Culture'. (Disney movies and Disney period might seem really Christian on the surface, but if you watch them you'll see that they almost never mention God. And the one time the church played a part in the stories, in 'Hunchback of Notre Dame', it wasn't a positive portrayal at all. Secrets of Popular Culture was originally published in Korean but is now available in English! Go to www.jmarcschmidt.com to get a copy!) Anyway, one of these many pagan/non-Christian ideas I looked at in that essay was about this business of 'following your heart,' which seems to be in every Disney movie and is part of the reason they are so popular. So the idea popped into my head, while in that cafe, to draw this non-Christian boy (satanic this time rather than pagan, probably because Jason's always going on about the devil), just like Jason mentioned, with a pentagram on his t-shirt, holding a candelabra, looking glum, saying 'but I don't wanna follow my heart!' We both liked that image of the sullen satanic boy, and Jason has had an interest in Satan and death/black metal for ages. An unhealthy interest. So, as we were sitting in a coffee shop at the time, we started developing the idea together. It was Borders in Camberwell if anyone fancies mounting a protest. Tell 'em to reduce their prices for graphic novels, while you're there! Over the next few months, inspirations came for different plot ideas from different sources, as they do.

Decapitated Dan: If you were to give this book a movie style rating (G, PG, PG-13, R,  X) what would it get, and why would you say that?

Jason Franks: PG-13. The book does have some sex and nudity in it, as well as some harsh language (one f-bomb), and of course 'adult themes'. There is one scene in particular that will freak some people out if they don't read through to the end of it.

J. Marc Schmidt: Yep, that sounds about right, but as always it depends a lot on the 'P', and whether they are capable of adequately providing the 'G'.

Decapitated Dan: In terms of horror what can we expect?

Jason Franks: Black masses and satanic sermons, mostly: these Satanists are very domestic. Oh, and there might also be a baby sacrifice.

Decapitated Dan: What are you hoping readers can take away from this book?

Jason Franks: I hope that they'll get some laughs. I hope it will make them think about faith and tradition, about what it's like to be an outsider having to cope with a different culture and its prejudices. I also hope that it encourages young people to experiment with the dark arts and perhaps even devote their lives to the service of the Lords of Hell.

J. Marc Schmidt: Primarily I want readers to be entertained, and secondarily to be inspired to contact their local coven and/or Dark Chyrch. The internet and social networking has made that second task so easy nowadays. I don't know how satanic covens managed without it, back in the 80s.

Decapitated Dan: How has the reaction to the story been so far?

Jason Franks: Reaction to the webcomic and the one-shot has been very positive. Most people seem to have immediately understood what we are going for. I am a bit disappointed that nobody has been offended enough to make a fuss on TV about it yet, but there's still plenty of time for that...

J. Marc Schmidt: Yep, people seem to like it. But then again, that's how the devil operates, right? He'll give you everything you want, everything you like. Then BAM! You're stuck in a small white room with no doors or windows, and no soul, tears streaming down your face, forever. One lady at Comic-con ran from us when asked, 'how do you feel about Satan?' Zombies were a-ok for her but not Satan, even though they are kind of in the same ballpark. But yeah, otherwise it's been positive.

Decapitated Dan: Can we expect more Sixsmiths material in the future?

Jason Franks: Perhaps a collection of strips from the webcomic, none of which appear in the graphic novel.

J. Marc Schmidt: Yep. Not many people mention this, but I think we're about the only ones who have done this. We did a webcomic which is not the graphic novel. Many people serialise their comic on the internet then collect it into a book, but not us. We did two separate books, the graphic novel and the webcomic. There are no plans for the webcomic to be collected yet but it might be. It'd be about 70-80 pages.

Decapitated Dan: Can we expect more titles from you guys in the future?

Jason Franks: I am currently editing volume 3 of the KAGEMONO horror comics anthology, which should be ready around December. I'm also working on a slasher/ensemble drama graphic novel called DEUCE with the ludicrously-talented Nic Hunter. I have a pulp novella about Ye Olde Zombie Apocalypse coming out later this year called PACK RULES that will be available in newsstands across Australia.

J. Marc Schmidt: Apropos my last answer, a collection of my webcomics from my '09 webcomic, 3rdblade.net. Maybe. It's not a sure thing yet. It's true, I had thought that one day I'd collect those comics, but I broke copyright so many times that more than half of the strips can't be used, so I didn't think very seriously about the collection. Otherwise, I have a couple of scripts that are rarin' to be drawn. One's a horror. Jason and I aren't planning any other comics together right now but we've done a few stories together in the past.

Decapitated Dan: Any strange or interesting stories since you started working on this that you care to share?

Jason Franks: When we decided that the story would be about a family enduring hard times, the subprime loans problems in the States was just starting to unfold... but I had no idea it would lead to a Global Financial Crisis. By the time the book truly got underway it seemed as if it was more relevant than ever.

I won't claim responsibility for the global economic collapse, but it was AWFULLY CONVENIENT, wouldn't you say?

Decapitated Dan: Were you into any horror titles growing up that lead you to want to create a book like this?

Jason Franks: I'm a fan of Marvel comics' Son of Satan--particularly the Hellstorm series that ran in the early '90s-- but I've mainly been inspired by classic horror movies: The Omen, Rosemary's Baby, Dracula AD, all of those brilliant and depraved Hammer and Roger Corman films. The Ninth Gate. Having said that, there's probably just as much influence from The Simpsons and South Park in this book as anything else.

J. Marc Schmidt: When I was like 13 my friends organised a horror movie night, comprising four horror videos. I didn't like it that much and avoided horror for years and years because of it, until I saw the original 'Ring' as a grown-up, and it scared me half to death! Probably a good thing; had I been a horror buff for the past 2 decades I might have been a bit blasé about 'Ring', and it wouldn't have affected me as it did. Meanwhile the Simspons Treehouse of Horror was probably the only horrifying thing I saw in those intervening years. Suddenly the Sixsmiths is making a lot of sense to me...

Decapitated Dan: What comics are you currently reading?

Jason Franks: Crossed, by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows. Criminal, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Anything by Junji Ito, the greatest horror comics practitioner alive or dead. Northlanders, by Brian Wood. Darwin Cooke's adaptations of Richard Stark's Parker novels. Scalped, by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera.  Anything written by Alan Moore, anything by the Norwegian artist 'Jason'. Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue.  Bullet To The Head, the English translation of Du Plomb Dans La Tete by Matz and Colin Wilson. Digested, by Bobby N. Changing Ways, by Justin Randall. Lots of independent books by Australian creators, like Saw Bones and The List, which aren't (yet!) available overseas.

J. Marc Schmidt: I was floored by Scott Pilgrim, which I finally picked up after Comic-con. (It was a very Pilgrim-centric con, if you were there. Hard not to notice it). I must try not to draw comics in that style or idiom now, but it's so tempting. The only other comic I got in San Diego which affected me hugely was Usagi Yojimbo #1. See how far behind I am? That comic's been around since the 80s. Usagi is excellent, but a much bigger financial commitment than Scott Pilgrim, unfortunately! Gene Yang and Akira Toriyama are two other creators whose work I've recently admired.

Decapitated Dan: So where can readers find out more about this book?

Jason Franks: Check out www.thesixsmiths.com for free strips and information about how to order the graphic novel, or go direct to the publisher's website: www.slgcomic.com. Alternatively, you could ask for it in your neighbourhood Church of Satan.

J. Marc Schmidt: The Sixsmiths homepage also has information about the main characters. Or write to us!

Decapitated Dan: So in summary give me a quick recap on The Sixsmiths and why fans should give it a try.

Jason Franks: Do you like devils, the dark arts, sex, romance, tragedy? Heavy metal? Office politics? Video games? Schoolyard hijinks? Do you like to laugh? If you said yes to any of these, you'll like the Sixsmiths.

J. Marc Schmidt: I am certain you'll like it, re-read it, and show it to your friends. It's ace. Whether you're big or small, girl or boy, religious or not, this book is for you. Other uses: if you're a schoolkid you should definitely get it just to annoy and frighten your teachers. I've seen the Simpsons so I know that's what some schoolkids like to do. Also a lot of it is set in a school so you'll be able to relate to it. SLG should probably be selling this thing wrapped in plastic.

Decapitated Dan: Thanks so much for your time guys.

Jason Franks: It's been a pleasure, Dan. Hail Satan!

J. Marc Schmidt: You're welcome.

Decapitated Dan: Comment on this interview here or on our forum.