For our Horror Week conversations segment at Capes and Tights we sat down with comic book artist Lukas Ketner to discuss his role in creating some of our favorite horror comics.
Lukas Ketner is the artist and co-creator of Witch Doctor, the hit launch title for Robert Kirkman’s Skybound imprint at Image Comics. He was a 2009 nominee for the Russ Manning Award for his Witch Doctor work, which has earned praise from fans and creators alike. Other work includes stories for Dark Horse Comics’ Creepy Comics and Supersized: Strange Tales From a Fast-Food Culture, along with covers for BOOM! Studios’ Hellraiser. He has twice won entry into the Communication Arts Illustration Annual for his album artwork. He survived a successful full-body transplant from his hometown in Anchorage, AK to Portland, OR in 2000 where he currently resides.
More recently Ketner has illustrated the Count Crowley series of comics written by David Dastmalchian at Dark Horse.
JS: What was your journey into comics?
LK: Most of my first comics experiences came from the Loussac Library and Bosco’s Comics in Anchorage, AK where I grew up. I was an illustrator for years in Portland, OR before taking a real swing at making my first comic, mostly due to meeting other comic artists in the area. Robert Kirkman happened across my first comic (Witch Doctor with writer Brandon Seifert), and he helped us release more of the series via the newly formed Skybound.
From there, I’ve been very fortunate to draw comics for the last 10+ years. Count Crowley is my latest series with writer David Dastmalchian, and it scratches all of my classic horror itches in a really wonderful way. I also recently had my first writing credit on a story I drew for Dark Horse’s Headless Horseman Halloween Annual.
What is your horror genre journey? Is the horror genre something you have always been attracted too?
Oh absolutely, I’ve always had a great love for horror, although much of it was verboten early on. I was surrounded by monster movies as a kid, and I was finally allowed by my parents to see Alien when I was 10ish – mostly because my dad recognized that it was just a great movie regardless of whether it was age appropriate (thanks Dad!).
Sci-fi and fantasy are big for me too, but horror was the thing that clicked the most with me on my first comics projects style-wise. It’s helped me work to improve my sense of lighting and mood from the get-go, and getting slowly better at that stuff over the years has been a very rewarding thing about making horror comics.
What are some things that can make or break a good horror comic book?
I think like most genres, you have to play to the strengths of the comics medium. You can’t really nail the same kind of sudden jump scares that you might get from a movie, or the lengthy exposition text from a novel, so all of the other storytelling options become all the more important to lean on. You can create a fun spooky adventure with surprising reveals, or create an oppressive mood of mystery and dread with images that stick with the reader long after they’ve put the book down. There’s a lot of tools in the comics toolbox, and success comes when you’re aiming to prove that “the comic was better than the _____ adaptation”, but with your own material.
What do you look for in a horror comic, either creating or reading?
Following from the last question, mostly memorable story ideas and imagery. That’s the stuff that really sticks with me. A lot of my favorite horror comics have those things working so well together with their own unique ingredients that it’s hard to find a similar experience anyplace else.
What are some of you all-time favorite horror books, comics or movies?
Frankenstein is life-long love for me in all mediums, and it was one of the first books I can recall reading as a kid. Hellboy, The Goon, all things Swamp Thing, Xenozoic Tales, and horror anthologies like Creepy Magazine and House of Mystery.
On screen, I think The X-Files still has some really excellent horror stories, and I regularly revisit them. I’m watching Scavengers Reign right now, and it’s one the best things to ever hit my eyeballs. Books about the horror of the unknowable like House of Leaves and The Southern Reach Trilogy are favorites as well.
Why is horror storytelling important to you and is creating comics in the horror genre something you hope to do for a while moving forward?
I love that horror can be just as satisfying whether it’s shallow fun or deeply affecting depending on the story you want to tell. You can get your bloodlust fix at Crystal Lake or shine a sincere light on human nature in a terrifying way and all things in between. I’ll always come back to making horror comics, and all the stuff I have planned for the future have some measure of horror to them. There’s a horror to just about anything if you squint.
Thank you so much for all your beautiful work in comics, specifically horror comics! We are huge fans of Lukas Ketner, keep it up!
Thanks Justin!
