INTERVIEW: ‘Hailstone’ begins with unending snow, a missing person, and a fight for survival
Image courtesy of comiXology / Provided by Superfan Promotions with permission.
Hailstone, the new comic from Rafael Scavone, debuts on comiXology Tuesday, May 11. There will be a total of five issues, featuring illustrations by Rafael de Latorre, colors by Wesllei Manoel, letters by Bernardo Brice and edits by Bis Stringer Horne. The first issue’s cover is by Latorre and Rafael Albuquerque.
The setting is the time of the Civil War, and there is a seemingly endless snowstorm wreaking havoc on the people of Hailstone, Montana. After a girl named Mary goes missing, Sheriff Denton Ross and his deputy go searching for answers in the wilderness, but what they find will test their ability to survive.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Scavone, who has been writing comics since 2014. His work includes Wonder Woman, All-Star Batman and Hit-Girl, plus Hidden Society for Dark Horse and Funny Creek for comiXology. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style
How did you first get the idea for Hailstone?
The idea for Hailstone: The Lost Children came two years ago. I was with Rafael Albuquerque and Mateus Santolouco, my friends and partners at Stout Club, brainstorming for upcoming projects. We were looking at old files and folders, and found some initial concepts of a story they had discussed more than a decade ago but never really [made] it happen. Those concepts triggered my mind! I was always a fan of the western genre, and when I learned their original idea was a horror-western, I fell in love with it immediately. I asked them to let me play with their initial idea, and they had me carte blanche. I picked some characters and common elements of the story, and started writing a new one. It came out completely different from what they thought 10 years ago, of course, and it was a very cool experience to write having their past creative cauldron as a starting point.
What’s it like to have Montana as your backdrop to this series? Is the setting an important part of the story?
Montana is a perfect location for many kinds of stories — not only by the breathtaking landscapes, but also due to the historic background. If you go back to the 19th century there’s all the wilderness of a distant frontier of a nation on the making. For me another fascinating aspect of that area is the presence of Native American people in a time when their traditional way of life was starting to be extremely impacted because of the frontier expansion towards the West.
The setting is an important part of the story, but not in a usual way. Isolation, famine and fear are the real forces behind Hailstone. This is why a small town in the mountains, locked in a snowy valley and distant from the main towns back in the 19th century seemed the perfect location for me. Also Hailstone takes place in 1864, during the U.S. Civil War, but I didn’t want to have this historical context kidnapping the story as a whole. So this was one extra reason to locate the fictional town of Hailstone far from the conflict, up in the North.
How would you describe your main characters of Sheriff Denton Ross, deputy Tobias and Mary?
Denton Ross is the troublesome sheriff of Hailstone. He carries some scars from his past deep in his heart, and this ends up reinforcing his sense of justice within the townspeople he pleads to protect. He doesn’t want to fail them once again. There’s also a terrible trauma in his family, which will resurface as the story goes on.
Tobias is a young and brave deputy of Blackfoot heritage. Since the story sets pace he’s alongside Sheriff Ross to find out what happened to Mary, the missing girl. He also has a strong sense of justice towards the people in town. He’s an important link in this story.
Another remarkable character is Captain Spencer, who commands the military factory in Hailstone. He’ll also become an important piece in the puzzle to unveil what’s behind those mysterious troubles.
Mary isn’t one of the main characters, but her disappearance is the last drop in the terrible situation people in that town are facing.
Was having five issues for this story freeing or limiting? Do you believe there are more stories to tell within this world?
I believe an author will always say they’d like to have more room to play with the narrative and the diverse elements in that world, but I do think the five-issues format is great to tell a creator-owned story without falling to the temptation of sharing with the readers everything that’s in your mind. So five issues was a perfect fit for presenting this specific story set in Hailstone — which doesn’t mean while I was writing it I hadn’t started imagining all possible future stories that dramatic town can hold.
Our plan with Hailstone is to tell three closed horror stories that share the same location. It’s a similar approach Alan Moore did with Northampton in his Voice of the Fire. I already have two extra stories outlined for it — one set in the 1950s and the another one going back to the 19th century, telling how and why the first white settlers went to that place before it was even named as Hailstone. There’s a big mystery behind this place we created, and in each of these stories we’ll drop clues to tie it all in the last story. I hope we have the chance to tell them all in the near future. But this first book — Hailstone: The Lost Children — is a story with a solid end.
What was it like to collaborate with artist Rafael de Latorre?
A delight! I’m a lucky guy because I’ve worked only with amazing artists since I started writing comics, and Rafael de Latorre is one of them. I’ve been following his work for a long time, especially his run in Animosity, and we’ve been looking for a chance to team up for a creator-owned project for some time. When I started planning Hailstone and imagining the atmosphere of the story, it was obvious to me he was the perfect artist to work with in this project. I love his art style, and he aced it with the uneasy mood he added to the story as it goes deeper and things start to get weirdly tense in Hailstone.
When did you first fall in love with comics?
It’s hard to say because as far as I can remember, comics have always been part of my life. Since I first learned to read, my mom used to throw comics on my lap every week, and then I floated through all those many worlds, characters, stories, drawings, colors, everything. It seemed like a kind of magic to me. Comics are a perfect medium because you can tell any kind of story with them. When one reads comics they can travel from a blood-soaked war zone to a strange party in some alien world, by simply turning some pages, and the readers are inevitably accomplices of the creators because part of the magic in this medium happens inside the readers’ minds. I know I’m suspect to say it, but there’s no other medium that works in so many levels of human perception as comics do.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Hailstone by Rafael Scavone will debut Tuesday, May 11 on comiXology, the leading digital comics publisher. Click here for more information.
