HALF DEAD is the story of two conspiracies, human and vampire, fighting for control of London in the present day. Using gas attacks, soldiers, suicide options, religious icons, and inhuman science, both sides struggle to keep their pawns alive and fighting whether they want to or not.

Wolfen: Let's start the interview by telling the Horror fans what Half Dead is about?

Park Cooper: It's slightly hard to classify Half Dead. It's horror, action, conspiracy, supernatural, medical... it's a comic for the 21st century, with all the coolness and unwholesomeness that that brings. It's not a period piece -- it's got the present written all over it. Chapter One contains some rather unpleasant acts of terror in the London Underground... which we wrote some time before actual terrorists bombed it in reality. We were thinking more of the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo... but then reality followed suit and caught up to the script we wrote, a bit. Half Dead explores the line between the genres of horror, terror, and reality (it's a really tangled, squiggly line) and the things in each that each drive individuals and institutions to do things in the name of combating one another…

Wolfen: I have heard that you two have had quite a journey in getting Half Dead published. Could you fill us in?


Park Cooper: Well, Barb has wanted to write comics for a long time, but it's a very difficult industry to break into for various reasons. She's been trying for some time to pitch her work to publishers, but with very limited success. So, in frustration, she wrote a webcomic called Gun Street Girl. She figured that if she could show publishers that a comic with a pre-established audience, it might help persuade comic book publishers to take a chance. Gun Street Girl got a lot of press attention and great reviews, but when sent around to publishers, it kept getting rejected. Personal, handwritten notes would back from editors saying it was an excellent series, but it just didn't fit in with their product lines, or they "didn't know what to do with it." Creator friends suggested writing a commercial miniseries. But prior rejection weighed heavily, so we decided to co-write this project, and present a united front, as it were.

Enter artist Jimmy Bott. Jimmy was looking for an action-packed project where he could really strut his stuff, where he could try things such as incorporating his affection for Asian action films (a genre we also deeply enjoy). So, we showed him Half Dead, and he was completely taken with it. He totally believed in the project.

Then, disaster hit. Speakeasy closed shop the same week Barb's father died. She was in a deep state of shock and grief. Jimmy was determined not to let Half Dead die. He put a ton of effort into finding another publisher. And it turned out to be one of the publishers we really admired, Dabel Brothers. And then, through very fortunate circumstances, DB teamed with Marvel.

So, we've learned that when you believe in a project and in your ability to create work of worth, you just have to keep trying… and that the closer that your work is to completion, the more it can help. Thinking we had a safe haven at Speakeasy helped move the book forward, and none of that effort was wasted later on!

Wolfen: How does it feel to get published by Marvel?


Park Cooper: We're grateful that Marvel chose to pick up Half Dead, a creator-owned project, along with the adaptations of well-established science fiction and fantasy books at Dabel Brothers.

Barb Cooper: I am over the effing moon about being picked up by Marvel. I'll tell you a little secret about how I feel about it. In the back of my mind, before Jimmy drew one line, I knew in my heart that if I could get the right story, one that really showed exactly what he could as an artist and what we could do as writers, I knew it would end up with a major publisher. I just knew it in my heart. So when I heard that Marvel was going to partner up with Dabel and HD would be released by them, it was just like the vision I had in my head! It was so weird, this feeling of sweet inevitability. I just felt like when you believe in something enough, even when it seems impossible, sometimes just having a vision of where you want to be helps make it so. But I don't want to take any credit for it. Jimmy Bott, Dabel Brothers, and Marvel are the heroes here.

But really, I'm just so grateful to Marvel and to the Dabel brothers and especially to Jimmy Bott, who was the person who most believed in this work and wouldn't let it die…I just can't express it in words.

Wolfen: You and Barb co-wrote this story, correct? What was it like working with each other?

Park Cooper: Yes. Like Lennon and McCartney, things go back and forth. A great deal started with her bouncing things off of me and just writing it. However, once the basic plot and beginning was laid down, I often came in and added things as she went... usually not scenes, usually just speeches and visual details. Anytime anything changed later on down the line, and some part had to be rewritten, that was me.

Wolfen: What kind of Vampires can we expect?


Park Cooper: Now that's a hell of a question. Religious stuff works. Sunlight doesn't kill instantaneously – there's a bit of a time delay, like it's poison. Fire works well, of course. More than that, you'll just have to read, because not all vamps operate in the same way… reflections are a little complicated, for example…

Or did you mean "will they enjoy attacking and eating people?" If so, the answer is "yes."

Wolfen: Who inspired your writing the most and why?


Park Cooper: I'll say Douglas Adams for clever wit, Ray Bradbury for personal honesty and openly using emotions in one's writing, and Roger Zelazny for tough-guy science-fiction/fantasy excitement.

Barb Cooper: Bradbury's horror works, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Patricia Highsmith, Dorothy L. Hughes. Comics-wise, the usual suspects: Moore, Morrison, Millar, Ellis, Ennis, Delano. I also think J.D. Salinger, of all people, influenced how I work with characterization. While Half Dead is more of a situation/action/situation/crisis book, you can see with Gun Street Girl that when left to my own devices, I tend to like to peel away at my characters to really see what makes them who they are. Characterization tends to dictate action/story to me most of the time. So Half Dead was a challenge to me because I wanted to do something different. I wanted the action to dominate and dictate where the story went. Working with an artist like Jimmy Bott who really shines with high adrenaline storylines was a challenge to me, therefore. I knew that Jimmy could do this high-energy stuff so I tried to make the story such that his talents could shine brightly while I could still write a story that I could be proud of being a part of.


Wolfen: Who or what was your favorite monster growing up?

Barb Cooper: I don't think I had a favorite monster. I liked ghost stories or than monster stories, honestly. Ghosts are much harder to fight than monsters because they're ephemeral and don't follow the same rules as monsters. Dracula, you can just stake him or let the sunlight get him. But what can you do against vaguely supernatural forces without substance? Having said that, I used to like to read books on monsters as a kid. I was fascinated by Boris Karloff as an actor and a human being. He was just such a nice gent in real life. I read tons of books on vampires when I was around nine or so.

Park Cooper: I have a funny story I can tell here. When I was a kid, like in the first grade, I had what turned out to be an insane dentist. I had a strange tooth coming in very crooked, I guess it would have affected my other permanent teeth coming in if allowed to continue naturally, so I was taken to the dentist to have it removed early. Well, while I was in there under laughing gas, which I found to be a rather nightmarish, hallucinogenic experience for some reason, the guy pulled six other teeth without telling my parents or me he was going to do so. "They were baby teeth and were going to come out soon anyway," I remember him saying afterward. Apparently he thought my canines were fine, but that meant that for a while I not only went through teething again, with all my permanent teeth sort of hurrying to catch up (teething is very annoying – I had to sort of gum rubberbands and stuff in class to ease the discomfort), but I looked a little like a cute little vampire for a while… I had fun playing chase with kids on the playground – they weren't delusional or anything, because there I was in broad daylight, but I was certainly the chasee, and they got to happily yell "vampire, vampire!!"

You know what? When you're a vampire, it can be fun to watch hefty, well-fed first-graders try to run from you. Didn't work that into Half Dead, though.

Wolfen: What is your Favorite Horror Movie?


Park Cooper: We like Asian horror, such as Inner Senses, certain moments in The Ring (the overseas versions)… but Barbara should really tackle that one…

Barb Cooper: Oh, God, I'm blanking! I like atmospheric horror, Val Lewton stuff like the original Cat People. Loved Night of the Demon. The horror movie I've seen the most is Kubrick's version of The Shining. That's a film you can go back to again and again because old Stan really cranked the weirdness and ambiguity factors up to eleven. I'm still geeking out over a ghost story film Park and I saw a few months back written by Nigel Kneale, daddy of Quatermass. Smartest ghost story film I've ever seen, which is saying a lot. My favorite moment from a horror film is from a less than totally successful adaptation of my guy Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. In the scene, Mr. Dark of the carnival is telling a boy's father that if the dad betrays the child that Mr. Dark will give the father back his youth. He has this book of the guy's life in his hand as each page is ripped away, another decade of the guy's life is down the drain. The father feels the hand of age and mortality upon him. Dark gives the father a taste of death, just a small one, mind you. And I think that scene has stuck with me longer than a lot more successful adaptations of great horror films.

Uh, would you say that Sunset Blvd. is a horror film? I mean, every time I watch that sucker, I keep seeing it that way, with old Norma Desmond as the ultimate psychic vampire who ultimately goes mad because the guy she decides to suck the soul out of, cynical old Joe Gillis, just doesn't seem to have a soul to lose. And then there's a film like The Servant, which is psychological horror, of a type. I have a weird tendency to see horror in films and books that you can't honestly call horror, but I see them that way. I mean, I forced my husband to read Wuthering Heights the other day because I had to test out my theory on another human being that the book is actually not a gothic romance or even a ghost story, but a vampire story. He agreed with me. Poor guy has to live with someone like me who sees things in stuff that other people don't. I just ask him all the time, "Is it just me or…"

Wolfen: Can we expect any sequels for Half Dead?

Barb Cooper: There's talk of it. I'd work with Jimmy and the art team again in a second if all goes well. But really, it's the reader response that will fuel a sequel, if it happens. I know that both Jimmy and both of us would like to up the weirdness factor a bit in the sequel. I like weirdness. We need more of it in comics. That element of "what the hell is that?" is what I love in some of my fave comics (and movies and books). That "didn't see that coming" element is what I hope to achieve with a work like HD.

Park Cooper: It really depends on the sales, which in part depends on the pre-orders, so please keep in mind that that pre-order deadline is coming up quickly. Half Dead has been "certified cool" in the current issue of Diamond's Previews.

Wolfen: Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to talk about your book. Keep us up to date on all your projects! Good luck with the book!

Here are some links for our readers to visit:

Half Dead's site:
http://www.halfdeadcomic.com

The Wicker Man Studios site:
http://www.wickermanstudios.com

The Gun Street Girl site:
http://www.panel2panel.com/gsg-archives.html

Talk about the Half Dead Comic Book Interview.