Calla Cthulhu’s Sarah Dyer & Evan Dorkin Discuss Suburban Horror & Unexpected Career Paths

Dorkin: I’ve never self-published, actually. I don’t have the head for that. I came up in comics through small press publishers and zines while also doing mainstream work. I never saw myself heading anywhere, I never had a plan. Most of my friends and I feared comics would be dead by now. I definitely never expected to be doing animation work. Animation is great, but my focus is on my own comics.

Dyer: And while we don’t really pursue animation work, we still do it from time to time; we wrote the “Xingo” episode of the rebooted Ben 10—it’s in Season 2 in the U.S., but it’s aired overseas and is up online.

Paste: The two of your chatted with one of my Paste colleagues last year when Calla launched on Stela. How did you get from the digital vertical scroll to publishing in print with Dark Horse? And was it a challenge to adapt Erin Humiston’s work for traditional page layouts?

Dorkin: It was pretty simple, really. I’ve been freelancing at Dark Horse since 1991, and these days they’re my home base, collecting my old work and publishing Beasts. It just made sense for us to give Dark Horse the first shot at the print version of Calla.

Dyer: Adapting Calla to a traditional format definitely was a challenge; especially since we never wanted to restrict the digital version in any way. (We could have asked Erin to set it up so it was easier to print, and that’s definitely a valid approach, but we all thought it was better to do the best digital version we could and worry about formatting it later.) Once we knew we had a home at Dark Horse, their design department and our editor worked with us doing tests until we’d found a way to preserve as much of his layout and the story reveals as possible, and I think they did a fantastic job.

I will admit that I was not sure it would work! But when I saw the first pdf of the book I was thrilled at how well it came out. In fact, everyone’s work looks great! Mario Gonzalez’ inking was no problem of course; and Nate Piekos (of Blambot!) had worked to make the lettering very clear at any size. The colors did need a little adaptation, my original color designs and Bill Mudron’s excellent coloring had been done for backlit RGB so we did need to tweak it a teeny bit for print, but it translated really well.

Calla Cthulhu Interior Art by Erin Humiston, Mario Gonzalez & Bill Mudron

Paste: Now that you have a hefty tome complete, can you talk a bit about Erin’s work on the series and how the three of you conceived the looks of the Mythos beings that appear? The King in Yellow is particularly fun, as you hint that readers haven’t seen his true face quite yet.

Dyer: We really wanted Erin to create most of “our” Mythos, and he was pretty much unfamiliar with the visual look as it’s been established; so (with the exception of Cthulhu itself) we would give him some pretty vague notes and let him come up with a bunch of designs. We would try and boil any being down to what we saw as the essentials and just give him that. Our ghouls for example—we wanted to retain their pallor and suggestion of sharp teeth, but that was about all we told him. The King in Yellow is a really good example—the only visual I sent him was Robert Chamber’s original illustration, and we told him that we wanted the “tatters” to suggest something living like flames or tentacles, and to give him a staff and a deeply hooded robe with a masked face. He came up with several takes and the final version is just amazing.

Dorkin: I did a rough sketch of one monster for Erin because it was hard to describe, but that was as far as that went. Erin has an animation background—in fact he just joined Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age, Rio)—and one of the reasons we asked him on board was because of his character design and acting chops. That goes to the Mythos creatures, as well. For this project we made a conscious choice to steer clear of the way most Mythos art looks. I love that stuff, I’m a fan, but there’s no law that says the Mythos has to always look like a black metal CD cover.

Paste: Sarah, you mentioned last year that Evan was a wider Lovecraft reader than you are, and that you’ve been approaching it as “an anthropologist of the Mythos.” Does that hold true now that you’re further along into the series? Is that helping you pick and choose from Mythos aspects added by later authors?

Dyer: Yes, it is! I still haven’t read a single Mythos work since we got started on all this (although I may be forced to read one story soon for research purposes!)—I think that having Erin and I both come to the project with as little baggage as possible is a big part of why our world works the way it does. It really helps us all think outside the non-Euclidean box.

Dorkin: The funny thing is, Sarah actually has a good working knowledge of the Mythos as an outsider of sorts. I’m the cultist nerd, she’s the academic researcher. Like a Call of Cthulhu RPG campaign, only without the death and insanity. I hope.

Paste: Now that you’re in print with Dark Horse, what’s next for Calla? Are you exploring serialization again, or purely print OGNs from here on out? And will that change how the two of you and Erin approach the book’s visual identity?

Dyer: Well, we have the next two installments outlined and a long-term plan, but right now Calla doesn’t actually have a permanent home. I personally would love to use the same process and have both a vertical digital version and a print collection because those are different audiences and it’s a different experience. But we’ll just have to wait and see.

Calla Cthulhu Interior Art by Erin Humiston, Mario Gonzalez & Bill Mudron

Calla Cthulhu Interior Art by Erin Humiston, Mario Gonzalez & Bill Mudron

Calla Cthulhu Interior Art by Erin Humiston, Mario Gonzalez & Bill Mudron

Calla Cthulhu Interior Art by Erin Humiston, Mario Gonzalez & Bill Mudron