Since the day AHOY Comics began its voyage, the publisher has strived to break the mold. From presenting a new perspective on mainstream superhero comics with The Wrong Earth to providing a home for sublime satires like Second Coming, AHOY has given readers new worlds to explore. The company celebrates its fifth anniversary this September, and to commemorate this momentous occasion, It has gathered a who's who of industry greats to contribute to an ambitious anthology Project: Cryptid.
Project: Cryptid #1 starts the series with tales from the elusive world of cryptids, where Yetis leave a bloody trail in the snow and Mongolian Death Worms live in the comfort of the city. CBR quizzed creators Mark Russell, Paul Cornell, Gene Ha, Alex Segura, Liana Kangas, and Jazzlyn Stone on their work on the project and their love for all things cryptid.
CBR: AHOY Comics kicks off its 5th-anniversary celebrations with an ambitious anthology on cryptids. Can you talk a bit about your contribution to the project?
Mark Russell: Yeah. My book concerns a yeti who finds that the tourist traffic climbing Mount Everest has become a quality of life issue.
Paul Cornell: I've written "Wormy and Me," a short strip with the great monster artist P.J. Holden about one man and his Mongolian Death Worm.
Alex Segura: My story is titled "Diana Montalvan and the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," which is drawn by the amazing Steve Bryant. It's a Miami noir tale featuring my supernatural/occult investigator character, Diana, who first appeared in a prose pulp anthology edited by the great Robert Greenberger. Diana is approached by an old friend to help him recover a lost, rare woodpecker that just might be cursed if it exists at all. Can Diana overcome her curiosity and avoid a potentially thorny problem? The answer is NO. But you have to read to enjoy the ride.
Gene Ha: Sure! Zander Cannon wrote, and I drew "Ultraterrestrials!" Our hero, SlugsniperX, a bizarre science vlogger, invents a way to see normally hidden or invisible creatures that walk among us. He discovers that all cryptids, whether we think they're aliens or faeries or angels or Bigfoot, are the same phenomena: ultraterrestrials. Things go sideways when one moves into his apartment.
Liana Kangas: Join us in this issue for a wild short that is What We Do in the Shadows-esque with a little bit of hometown flair featuring one of our favorite cryptids, the Siren!
Jazzlyn Stone: What if The Siren was in a punk band? Can music be a catalyst for change? Is Yacht Rock the preferred musical choice of the cruel?
What about Project: Cryptid drew you to in?
Russell: I like the idea of weird animals stuck, trapped in our normal world because our sympathy naturally goes to them and all things strange rather than assuming they're monsters.
Cornell: I'm a Fortean, so I've been reading about cryptids all my life. Plus, AHOY is super great to work for.
Segura: I love the books AHOY puts out, and I've wanted to work with Steve and editor Sarah Litt for quite some time. So, it was a no-brainer! And I created Diana knowing I wanted to tell more stories in her world, so it all worked out.
Ha: Our editor, Sarah Litt. She gave Zander and me huge creative leeway on which cryptid we'd focus on and how we'd tell our tale. Sarah has vision and knows how to get the best from writers and artists.
Kangas: For me, it was our editor, Sarah Litt. I've been working with her since the start of my career, and she really gets me in a way where she trusts my writing and collaboration style. It's why I keep coming back to really killer side projects like this. She values my input, and I am super grateful for that.
Stone: The creative team was stacked. I knew we could all get creatively weird in a safe and fun environment. I've heard nothing but great things about working with Sarah, and I've always wanted to write for Ted (Brandt) & Ro (Stein). This project was a dream. Plus, getting to write about weird lil guys such as cryptids is always fun.
How challenging was it to create a unique world for your cryptid feature?
Russell: I think the secret sauce of my story is that it's not a unique world. It's very much set in our world but with one very otherworldly wrinkle. So, I think the challenge was creating a meeting point for the two that made sense.
Cornell: I'm still recovering. I had to go out into the wild and find a Mongolian Death Worm in order to study it for this short comic strip. People said I should cut corners, but as a comics collector, I'm very averse to even the phrase.
Segura: Not that hard? Diana's table was set because she'd appeared already. But I wanted to make sure the cryptid wasn't an obvious choice, so that took some doing.
Ha: It's set in a place I know, a Midwestern college town. I grew up near Notre Dame and spent much of my 20s in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University. The hard part was summing up the concept of an ultraterrestrial in a single cryptid. Her form had to hint at various cryptids, but nothing that could be nailed down. She's a bit of a mermaid, a faerie, an alien, a plant elemental, and much more, but clearly not any version of these anyone has seen before.
Kangas: I'd have to say that we leaned heavily on Ro & Ted here. Jazzlyn and I pulled from what we knew. But kudos entirely to our art team! I think this creative team's vibe coincides with a lot of our personal work outside of work for hire, [so] it was really easy to be all on the same page creative-wise!
Stone: Agreed. When you have a good creative team, the most challenging part is keeping up. We had a lot of "Yes and..." between the script and art. That is a testimonial of how great Sarah's editorial direction was.
How was your experience working with your fellow artists on Project: Cryptid?
Russell: I try to include a lot of art notes in my script, which cuts down (sadly) on the need for a lot of back-and-forth and discussion of the story, but which (hopefully) makes life easier for the artist. In this case, I think it worked. I really love what Jordi Perez came up with.
Cornell: I'd say P.J. [Holden] is THE artist involved, but his thumbnails immediately got across the acting and the action. The Worm is an eyeless tube. And yet he took on my direction, "Make it look mournful," with gusto.
Segura: It's been a blast! Steve [Bryant] has a wonderful style that harkens back to the classics, so it felt like a great fit. And we both love noir stories with a dash of the surreal.
Ha: I haven't seen anyone else's story, so I'm as excited to read the book as you.
Kangas: We love Ted and Ro's work SO MUCH. We were lucky enough to finally meet them in person last year at Thought Bubble. So when Sarah asked [about] our dream collaborators, they were at the top of the list!
Stone: Working with them was a dream list item for both of us. It felt like we asked Sarah to pass a note to Ted & Ro with, "Do you like us? Check Yes, Check No." I felt that level of giddy excitement waiting for their response.
What are some unhinged cryptid stories or incidents you have come across?
Cornell: The Mongolian Death Worm emerges from its burrow and then kills things with lightning! It's hard to see how such a hunting strategy would evolve. But then, there are electric eels.
Ha: When I lived in Bloomington, one of my best friends was a UFO researcher. They'd often visited her home as will-o'-the-wisps, and she'd seen aerial phenomena multiple times. I've never seen aliens, UFOs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. I have had my butt pinched in a haunted bar when there was no one near enough to do it. For readers of my comics series, Top 10, with Alan Moore, I got a Ghostly Goose!
Kangas: Unhinged or ABSOLUTELY REAL and unsettling? Haha!
Stone: I grew up in the Rocky Mountains, and now live in the PNW. I have seen some shit.
What other cryptids would you like to explore if you ever have the chance?
Russell: I would love to do a story about Leviathan from the Bible. The original Jaws.
Cornell: When you say "explore," I mean I could lose myself in a Yeti. I have another story later in the anthology's run, and it involves fairies.
Ha: The dark side of faerie, and specifically, Peter Pan. If you read the original book, he's a terrifying psychopath who enjoys killing unsuspecting sailors for fun. Or anything that Zander Cannon wants to throw at me.
Kangas: Jazzlyn and I have an extensive wishlist of dream characters and intellectual properties we'd love to write. However, we're of the belief that we could be into concocting some eerie lifeline backstories to common day cryptids to blur the lines of supernatural and everyday!
Stone: When there isn't a strike, I write tech horror for television with my other writing partner, Mellow Brown. I'm fascinated by modern cryptids that are connected to technology. So that, or a weird lil guy like Sasquatch.
"Ballroom of Death" shows what happens when human arrogance meets nature's great equalizer. How did you tap into the elusive nature of the Yeti to make the world of men and cryptids collide?
Russell: In a lot of ways, it's more a story of how the sherpas who have to climb the mountain to make a living come to an understanding with the Yeti. The Yeti, therefore, is as much a force of nature as the mountain. And, in the end, nature always wins.
"Wormy and Me" is wacky fun from the moment it opens. What made you go with the satirical tone of the story where cryptids and humans coexist?
Cornell: That's basically Tuesday for AHOY. And thank you. I myself am wacky fun.
Project: Cryptid #1 is on sale now.