All eight gore-tastic Night of the Slashers covers revealed!
including an exclusive reveal of the issue four covers, plus Star Wars: The High Republic - Tempest Breaker answers and a witchy double bill!
Hello there!
It's Night of the Slashers Day!
Issue 1 of our pulpy love letter to slasher movies begins its sinister creep into comic book stores today. It's a staggered release, depending on your comic shop's distributor, but I reckon that's appropriate for spooky season. The Slashers are on their way and there's nothing can stop them!
To give you a little insight into the Dark Arts of the comic business, if your store uses a company called Lunar for distribution, they'll have copies today. If they use Diamond, it will be next Wednesday, 9th October!
But you don't want to hear about distributors! You want art and, boy oh boy, do we have art for you!
To celebrate issue one, we're going to showcase ALL EIGHT COVERS of the monstrous mini-series, including two covers NEVER revealed before! Yes, you get to see them first because you're brilliant! And you'll also find some quotes from some of the artists too!
Here's what else is in the newsletter:
- NIGHT OF THE SLASHERS COVER GALLERY
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS: STAR WARS THE HIGH REPUBLIC - TEMPEST BREAKER
- WITCHCRAFT MOVIE DOUBLE BILL
Night of the Slashers cover gallery
So, let's dive into those covers, leading of course with series co-creator Paul Fry who provides the A covers for each issue. I asked Paul if he had a favourite and he said:
"I love all of them. Issue 1 or 3 covers are probably my favourite, but if I was pushed and pushed further… issue 3."
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start at the beginning with a cover that was a variation of the art we used to sell the book to publisher Magma in the first place...
I was so happy to have Robert Hack provide the variant for issue one. I've worked with Robert for many years now, our first collaboration going back to 'the Ewoks meet the Wicker Man' issue of Tales of Vader's Castle in 2018 (soon to be republished in a shiny new omnibus!)
Robert, who tells me that Sleepaway Camp 2 is his favourite slasher movie ("Marginally less problematic than the first, but it has this amazing sense of fun. A killer who isn't grim, a refreshing take on the slasher at the tail end of that era") says this about his retro-tastic cover:
I was contacted by the editors and asked to create a cover in the style of 1980's VHS box art. An opportunity I jumped at!
I love and collect obscure VHS horror, so this was already in my wheelhouse. And I grew up renting tapes in the heyday of 80's slashers, which has certainly put it's stamp on my art.
What I most wanted to bring to this cover was Lara's attitude. Juxtaposing the impending doom of the knife with an eyeroll. Bringing out her character before you even open the book.
Robert definitely does that!
What's in the box?
And so on to issue three with Paul answering the question posed at the end of Seven in no uncertain terms before my long-term friend and collaborator Ario Anindito unleashes a hound from hell!
Explaining more about his process, Ario says:
"The starting point is for me to get inside the creators' minds: what are they trying to tell the audience. I am fortunate that Cavan, my Godzilla brother, shares the same horror mind with me, and that I am a hardcore horror lover, so I have watched a lot of classic and modern horror movies. It really helped set the mood to create this cover.
Also, Cav and Paul helped by guiding me through the entire brilliant Night of the Slasher universe and characters. In the end, I want this cover to look eerie, scary and unsettling. I want people to remember the visual in their nightmares. And I want people to buy as many copies as possible, because this is really, really good stuff!"
Was there anything about this cover that was particularly challenging? Ario says:
"The challenge is always to deliver the terror. And it's quite challenging because here I am drawing the Police Chief. See? His face is.. almost non-existent. So I have to rely on the demon dog to deliver the horror. And if you were to see that dog's face in real life, it would be the last face you'd ever see!"
Gulp! Nice doggy? Nice... aaaaaargh!
As for Ario's favourite slasher, well, it's a question he struggled to answer:
"It's like trying to answer: "which is your favorite child?" I don't have any kids yet, but... I have so many slasher movies that I love. It's hard to pick just one. Maybe it's the original '74 Texas Chainsaw Massacre just because it looked so real when I first watched it.. heck, it still does! However, in terms of design, it has to be Jason Voorhees with his hockey mask!"
Holy Terror
Okay, it's time for Paul's favourite cover and it's a ghoulishly grim one!
Paul says of his unholy horror:
"Style wise, I was looking for fun and eerie for the series as a whole. Issue 3 has more of a Mignola feel, but as his covers are so good, I’m happy about that.
And another regular collaborator came in for issue 3's B cover, Vincenzo Riccardi who I've worked with several times since our Dracula File story in the 2020 Misty & Scream Special.
Of Night of the Slashers, Vincenzo (who cites Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th as his favourite slashers) says:
"I wanted to make a composite illustration as if it were a film poster, inserting as many "slashers" as possible but without weighing down the composition more than necessary, so I opted to only insert Lara as a survivor. Oh, and I wanted to put in a lot of blood!
I decided to include a customized version of the title, drawn by me, only remembering during the process that I'm not great at writing, but I hope I did a decent job!"
I reckon he did, don't you?
EXCLUSIVE - Issue 4 unleashed!
Which leads us nicely to issue 4, the covers of which I am exclusively revealing here today!
Drum roll, please!
As always, Paul is first with a fun inversion of issue one, before Tony Fleecs brings us another VHS homage!
And that's the series!
I hope you enjoy issue one if you pick it up today! Let me know what you think and please post about it online! Every review and thumbs up helps!
Oh, and let us know your favourite slasher movie in the comments too!
Questions & Answers: Tempest Breaker
Contacting me via my Ask Me Anything page, Cavletter subscriber Vika says:
"Hello, Cavan!
I've enjoyed the newsletters over the course of the last year or so, and have found them to have fun bits of insight.
After having wrapped up the emotional rollercoaster that was The High Republic (2023), I'm looking forward to the story's continuation in Tempest Breaker, especially given the characters the audio drama will spotlight.
While I understand that you probably can't reveal much, are there any chapters/moments you're particularly looking forward to readers reacting to?"
Thanks for the lovely words, Vika! I’m glad you enjoyed the recent run of comics!
As for Tempest Breaker; well, you’re right, I can’t say a lot about the audio drama, prior to its December release, but I can’t wait for people to hear Lourna coming face-to-face with her former Eye of the Storm, Marchion Ro. It’s an explosive scene!
Events also move on for Keeve Trennis and her troubled master Sskeer and we return to a planet that has been very important for the High Republic thus far.
Oh, and there’s even a tiny cameo from me!
Thanks for the question, Vika!
Don't forget you can ask me questions by a) posting a question in the comments, b) replying to this mail or c) using the Ask Me Anything form on my website!
Witchcraft movie double bill
Before we go, I thought I'd kick off spooky season with a couple of early Halloween movie recommendations!
Last Saturday, I headed to the Bristol Imax with pal George Mann and my eldest Chloe for aWitchcraft Double Bill presented by South West Silents and one of my favourite folklore magazines, Hellebore.
Introduced by Bristol University's Professor Ronald Hutton, Häxan was such an odd movie, albeit one wonderfully accompanied live for the screening by musician Stephen Horne.
Part documentary, part drama, this silent curiosity is largely split into three sections. After a whistlestop lecture on what the medieval mind believed about heaven, hell and Earth, we are treated to the sights and sounds of witches young and mostly old having a right ol' knees-up with Satan and all his little then-contemporary.
We then switch to an utterly harrowing exploration of how innocent women were tortured by the church due to unfounded accusations of witchcraft. The tone lurches from gutchurning horror to an early example of Nunsploitation via a bizarre moment when a report of witches defecating on Christian alters is rather hilariously portrayed by actors wearing life-sized animal suits.
Medieval life done and dusted we fast-forward to the then-contemporary 1920s where a woman caught shoplifting is packed off to a spa for a strict regime of lukewarm showers to cure her 'hysteria'. Thus, director Benjamin Christensen questions whether our treatment of troubled women has changed over the centuries...
I’m not sure if the movie paired with Häxan answered that question but it was certainly an entertaining choice. I’d never seen 1960's The City of the Dead, a Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenburg-produced supernatural potboiler starring Christopher Lee, Doctor Who’s Black Guardian Valentine Dyall and the wonderful Patricia Jessel as 16th-Century witch-turned-sinister-hotel-owner, Mrs. Newless.
Overwrought, melodramatic but oh-so-moody, The City of the Dead is a slice of cheesy sixties fun with more than a whiff of Psycho (a similarity that had to be largely coincidental as they were released around the same time!)
You'll certainly never look at fog the same way again, and neither did the cast by all accounts as the filmmakers pumped paraffin into the vast quantities of dry ice used in the film to make it swirl in the most sinister manner possible. It looks great, but led to delays as the cast and crew were regularly unwell after spending time on set! A nightmare indeed!
City of the Dead is certainly worth a watch, especially as both Subotsky and Rosenburg would go on to found Amicus studios. American readers should look out for it under its US title, Horror Hotel!
That's all folks!
That wraps things up for this week! Don't forget to pick up issue one of Night of the Slashers and let me know what you think!
Until next time, look after yourself and each other,
PS: Did you catch author Erin A. Craig's Perfect Sunday? You can check out her recommendations here!
