You open the door to the record shop, and waiting for you is an old friend, or maybe someone you’ve never met before, there to sell you a record and tell you a spooky tale or two. That’s the experience you’ll get when you back Dead Beats 2: London Calling, the new anthology that launches on Kickstarter today from A Wave Blue World.
Published by Tyler Chin-Tanner and edited by Joe Corallo and Eric Palicki, Dead Beats 2 takes previous readers and new fans alike to the world of the Shoppe Keeper and her tales of musical horror. I was able to chat with Joe and Eric about the anthology, horror sequels and the similarities between comic shops and record stores.
Matt Lazorwitz: For those unfamiliar with the first volume, what’s the premise for Dead Beats 2?
Eric Palicki: Just like our first volume, Dead Beats 2 is a collection of short horror comics, all related in some way to music and all centered around the Dead Beats record store and its mysterious Shoppe Keeper. This time, our Shoppe Keeper is expanding! She’s setting up shop … er, shoppe … in London, England.
Joe Corallo: We were also very lucky to get Lisa Sterle back to do the cover again, despite her much busier schedule than last time. While she wasn’t able to come back for the interstitials, we lucked out again in getting Val Halvorson to illustrate them this time, fresh off of Finger Guns from Vault Comics.
Matt: Who are some creators that you’re excited to work with in Vol. 2?
Eric: In addition to some top names in comics — Ron Marz, Lilah Sturges, Jody Houser, Adam Gorham and more — I’m most excited to be working with Liana Kangas and Kyler Clodfelter. Both Liana and Kyler are returning talents from the first volume, and primarily known as artists, but in Dead Beats 2, they’re writing stories themselves.
Joe: Agreed! I had the honor of co-writing a short comic with Liana last year, and to get to be the ones to publish her solo writing debut fills me with joy. Additionally, I’ve wanted to work with Yona Harvey for a long time, and I’m so glad things worked out here. I’m a huge fan of Nancy Collins’ Swamp Thing run and Bill Loebs’ Wonder Woman run, so to have them involved means a lot to me. I also love that we’re going to be Quade Reed’s comics writing debut.
Oh! And having Jeremy Lambert involved, which means both volumes feature Doom Patrol alumni! OK, I have to stop now or else I’m just going to end up listing everyone.
Matt: Horror hosts are a classic part of the comics horror anthology. What makes The Shoppe Keeper unique?
Eric: The Shoppe Keeper has a unique morality, I think. She’s an eldritch entity, sure, but she’s not exactly evil, and she’s more than just a storyteller.
Joe: Exactly. I draw inspiration from comics like the short-lived Doorway to Nightmare, where Madame Xanadu debuted as a horror host. She wasn’t exactly evil, but a lot of people sure came into her shop and ended up dead.
Matt: What do you enjoy about working on and editing anthologies?
Eric: I enjoy the diversity of voices, approaches and styles. As a writer, I’ve learned a lot from working with people who don’t approach the medium of comics in exactly the same way I do. I also like using the platform to give creators who might otherwise have trouble breaking through (an opportunity).
Joe: Absolutely. I love putting these books together and having people of different experience levels all in one book. Like in the previous volume and other anthologies I’ve worked on, we feature publishing debuts, bringing veteran creators back out of retirement, and everything in between. I love that we can have someone like Che Grayson, who fairly recently got the chance to do a Green Lantern story in an anthology, and Ron Marz, who has had a legendary run on the title, featured together in one book.
Matt: Do you feel like comic shops and record stores are two sides of the same coin? To me, what makes for a good record store also makes for a good comic shop, but my experience with the former is far more limited than the latter.
Eric: Yes! And I think they could learn from each other in terms of what works and what doesn’t.
Joe: For sure! Two of my brothers are in bands, and one is a big vinyl collector who even had his collecting highlighted in an article recently. There is definitely a lot of overlap, a lot of excitement and wonder behind the experience of going into a shop you’ve never been in before to discover what they might have, and things that could be improved overall to strengthen the market.
Matt: Horror is a genre that loves its continuing series; I can think of three horror movie sequels that have just opened or will be opening this summer right off the top of my head. What are some of your favorite horror sequels?
Eric: For me, it’s Gremlins 2, which just takes the already ridiculous premise of the first and cranks it to 11. And Aliens, which is a non-horror sequel to one of the greatest horror movies of all time; I appreciate that James Cameron looked at the original and decided to do something completely different.
Joe: When it comes to sequels, I think of movies like Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors; Inferno, the sequel to Suspiria — Suspiria is the superior film by leaps and bounds, but I really do enjoy Inferno quite a bit — The Exorcist III, and Bride of Frankenstein. I also have quite a few guilty pleasure horror movie sequels I enjoy, like Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Child’s Play 2.
Matt: What are some things you learned doing the Kickstarter for the first volume of Dead Beats and your other campaigns that creators thinking about launching their own campaign should know?
Eric: Communication is key! Inform your backers of your plan and progress throughout both the campaign and after, and they’ll happily follow you all the way to the end of the journey.
Joe: Don’t burn yourself out, and have a strategy going in. You want to start lining up things like interviews (this one, for example), podcast and streaming appearances, and other forms of promotion before the launch of the campaign. You can use different apps to set tweets and other social media posts in advance as well, so you can schedule posts while you’re at work or sleeping. Most people run campaigns for 30 days, which is a long time if you’re stressing and losing sleep through it. Please take care of yourself.
Dead Beats 2: London Calling launches today on Kickstarter.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
