When developing this – and in your work as a larger whole – did the words or the images come first? Can you separate them?ĮC: That line in particular, I definitely thought of the image first - though I can’t exactly remember where it came from. A number of these are particularly haunting – my favorite, perhaps, being the image of the narrator accompanying the line “And I fell asleep in their mouth, with spools of their hair for my pillow.” The sparse, but precise, words are poetic in their juxtaposition with the images. HL: One of the elements that separates “Out of Skin” from the previous stories that I’ve featured is the graphic and gruesome imagery. They’re all vaguely interconnected stories taking place in the same setting, same general time period, and all deal with a “deep, dark forest” that transforms either the narrator or someone close to them. That said, the fairy tale setting and general tone of the writing was by design, as I wanted this story to fit in thematically with two earlier stories that feature the same atmosphere - “ His Face All Red” from 2010, and “ Margot’s Room” from 2011. Before this I had been toying with the idea of a tree with hands for leaves - one appears in a panel in an earlier horror comic I made, “ His Face All Red” - but the inclusion of the flesh house (and the flesh buckets, and the body pit, and all the rest of that good stuff) and even the design of the main narrator’s appearance didn’t come about until I started thinking in depth about how I relate to my own body and how I move through the world in it. Was “Out of Skin” – with its ghost-haunted forest and vengeful spirits – based on a pre-existing story? What was its spark?Įmily Carroll: No pre-existing story really, or at least not one that I chose consciously - actually, if I had to trace its origins, I would say that it grew out of a conversation I’d been having with a friend of mine about our bodies, and how we relate to them (hint: not especially well). Hellnotes: Many of your stories have a particularly timeless feel, like a fable or half-remembered fairy tale. If you haven’t read them yet, go ahead and check out “ Out of Skin” and “ The Hole the Fox Did Make” because **SPOILERS FOLLOW.** By paring down the words and, as Emily says, letting the “artwork actually work,” both stories build in a unity of effect to create compelling myths that seep out into the world beyond the confines of the frame. While Emily’s website has many great stories to explore, Emily and I discussed two that seem to come from very different dark poles: the gruesome and hallucinogenic haunted woods of “ Out of Skin” and the stark, contemporary ghost story/nightmare of “ The Hole the Fox Did Make.” While these two couldn’t be more different at first glance – theme, setting, even art style – they share the same deep attention to detail and hauntingly poetic turns of phrase. Her most recent book, Through the Woods, was just announced as one of the Stoker Final Ballot nominees for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel. However, Emily’s deep body of horror work embraces many different styles and forms. Like many readers, my first encounter with Emily’s work was her 2010 classic horror tale “ His Face All Red,” which seems to make the rounds every Halloween in creepypasta threads and serious discussions alike. Welcome back to DEEP CUTS! Today, as a fitting capper to Women in Horror Month, we welcome the amazing Emily Carroll to talk about not just one, but two, of her creepiest webcomics.
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