Gunfights! Kung fu! Monsters! If Hammer Films had hired a band of Hong Kong filmmakers to create a Spaghetti Western, they’d have created HELLDORADO! An unspeakable act of violence has altered reality itself, and a supernatural evil looms over the town of El Dorado. The most horrific myths of the Far East threaten to engulf the American West in darkness, and the only thing standing between a vengeful Chinese vampire, its army of undead minions, and the end of humankind is an unlikely band of erstwhile heroes: an heiress, a gambler, an aging sheriff, his deputy, and a warrior priest. Horror, fantasy, kung fu, and Western action combine in this bizarre genre mash-up.

We caught up with writer, C. Michael Hall, to talk Helldorado.

Horror News Network: How did you come up with the concept for Helldorado?

C. Michael Hall:  I co-created Helldorado during a brainstorming session with Ape Entertainment COO Brent Erwin.  As has happened many times over the years, Brent had this wild, almost-ridiculous idea he knew I would love to write.  He basically pitched me this one-sentence idea about Chinese vampires running wild in the Old West, and once he realized he had me hooked, he just let me run with it. I’m a rabid fan of Hong Kong action films, horror movies, and spaghetti Westerns, so once I knew what elements I wanted to incorporate into the series, it started writing itself. When you get right down to it, Helldorado is really just an over-the-top love letter to several genres at once.

Horror News Network: Can you tell us a bit about the main characters in the book?

C. Michael Hall: It’s a big cast with a lot of characters who feel at once familiar and classic, but they’re tweaked into new, interesting forms. It’s actually kind of hard to talk about the cast without spoiling the story, but the characters will surprise you. Our heroes start out in very archetypal Western roles—the mysterious gambler, the heiress trying to run her dead father’s ranch, the kindly, aging sheriff and his dashing deputy—but the supernatural elements of the story change them. They go through some interesting permutations once their reality is revealed to be entirely different from the one they’ve always believed themselves to inhabit.  They start out in very classical molds for very classical reasons, but their character arcs don’t go in the directions you’d anticipate. My personal favorite character is Emma Vinton. Emma is this Western damsel-in-distress waiting to happen, but I refused to let her go to waste like that, and she ended up with some great moments in the series, including my absolute favorite scene (in issue #3). Of course, it could be argued that the real stars of any horror comic are the monsters, and I’d have a hard time arguing that…but Master X’iao—our resident kung fu expert, monster hunter, and flying swordsman—is pretty damned awesome, too. X’iao is the rest of the cast’s window into the world of the supernatural, and he kicks ass in all kinds of ways: sorcery, kung fu, swordplay…you name it.X’iao is our freakin’ superhero.

Horror News Network: What types of monsters will we see in this book?

C. Michael Hall:  One really pissed-off Chinese vampire and its army of quasi-zombie, quasi-vampire minions…and I do mean “army.” I stayed fairly true to Chinese mythology and folklore when writing the monsters, but I didn’t worry about being slavishly devoted to the source material, since when these creatures appear in Asian cinema they tend to get reinterpreted in subtle ways to suit the needs of the narrative. Since we were following a cinematic path in creating the comic, I figured we had the same latitude. Monster fans will appreciate the uniqueness and creepy charm of our creatures, and for everyone out there who is sick of handsome, angst-ridden romantic vampires, here’s your opportunity to see them depicted as proper monsters again instead of swoon-inducing teen idols.

Horror News Network: What can we expect from this book in terms of blood and guts?

C. Michael Hall:  I like my blood and guts in staggering quantities, so Helldorado delivers the goods. There were things I wrote into the script I was just sure would get cut before we ever got to the art stage—at one point, our vampire uses a severed head, complete with attached spinal column, as a melee weapon—but the guys at Ape understood what I was doing. I was playing by a whole different set of rules with this book. Asian cinema has a long tradition of violence so extreme that it becomes almost cartoonish, and that’s the direction I was headed with the script. Why just shoot somebody when you can shoot them in the face and douse the other characters in brain matter? Why stab a character when you can have him cut in half and dump his entrails all over the ground? Blood, brains, viscera...Helldorado virtually oozes with the stuff Gore fans will not be disappointed.

Horror News Network: What is the collaboration process like with Martin Coccolo?

C. Michael Hall: Because I am also an artist, I tend to write my stories with the finished page in mind…I imagine the finished art while I write. The pacing and composition of each page I write are very carefully constructed, so I write full-script to make sure the artist can get inside my head and see what I see. Martin had his hands full with Helldorado. It’s a big cast, the action is insane, and it’s a period piece, which requires a lot of research and reference work on the part of the artist. Also, I like dialogue as much as I enjoy action, so Martin had to give the quiet scenes the same level of visual interest as the noisy moments. It turned out to be an effortless collaboration, though; I honestly can’t remember another instance where an artist so perfectly understood how to interpret the material at hand. He took the pages right out of my head and made them even better.  I simply cannot say enough good things about the art on this book.  Each finished page nearly brought tears to my eyes as Martin turned them in.  He is that damn good.

Horror News Network: What has impressed you the most with his artwork in the book?

C. Michael Hall: Martin’s sense of composition is excellent, but I think what impresses me most about his work on Helldorado is how his line quality and his use of light and shadow so perfectly evoke both the horror and Western genres. I don’t know what Martin’s influences are, so I’m hesitant to speculate as to how he developed his style or who and what have influenced him, but he has done something really special with these pages. No matter what I threw at him in the script, he nailed it. Monsters. Gun battles. Aerial kung fu duels. Sorcery. I couldn’t even slow the guy down.

Horror News Network: Where can our readers find out more about Helldorado?

C. Michael Hall:  You can see a sample of Helldorado and other Ape Entertainment books at http://ape-entertainment.com/comics/ape-properties/helldorado/. The first issue hits stores in October, but be sure to let your local comics retailer know you want to read it, because Diamond is taking pre-orders for the book this month. We all know the drill these days: if you don’t tell your retailer what you want, he can’t order it!

Horror News Network: In closing, what would you like to say about Helldorado?

C. Michael Hall: Helldorado was a real labor of love for all of us at Ape Entertainment, and on a personal note, I have never been so excited to see something I wrote come to life the way Helldorado has. It’s a Western which does justice to the horror genre, and a horror story which does justice to the Western genre. This book will turn heads, I guarantee it. The art and color are stunning. The story is a thrill-ride of action and mayhem. The monsters are proper monsters doing horrible things to everyone around them, and the heroes are kung-fu-kicking, six-gun-packing bad-asses. Comics just don’t come any cooler.  Period.

Horror News Network: Thank you for your time! Good luck with Helldorado. Comment on this interview here.