Horror-101

Alan Robert is the founding bassist and songwriter of the legendary alternative metal band Life of Agony and also fronts the punk band Spoiler NYC. The talented musician will  be expanding his artistic endeavors to the comic book world in March of 2010 when IDW Publishing puts out Wire Hangers, a horror miniseries which he created, wrote, and illustrated. He took some time to talk about the creation process behind the comic, being in a band for two decades, and the horror genre.

Horror 101: Your first comic book, Wire Hangers, comes out in March. How did you get into the comic book industry?

Alan Robert: I went to School of Visual Arts for college, and my main goal was to be a penciller for Marvel one day. Along the way, I got involved with the band stuff, and by the time I was ready to graduate college, we landed the Roadrunner deal. We were going to record River Runs Red, so I got sidetracked a little bit. But I still always had the passion to make the comics. Right out of college, I went on tour and never looked back. Along the way, I still had the itch to get the comic ideas out there, so over the years I was refining and refining this idea that I had. And it’s finally come to fruition. This year, I got really serious about it. It just got to the point that I felt like the story was really there, the characters designs were looking the way I wanted to do it, in the style that I wanted to do it. I went all balls out. I went and created art for about fifteen pages. I wrote entire outlines for the first miniseries with in depth character descriptions and the script for issue one.

It was just a weird coincidence that I had just started using Twitter, and I was starting to following some of my favorite comic creators, like Ben Templesmith. Ben was doing a book called Groom Lake with writer Chris Ryall, who — I didn’t know at the time — was also the editor-in-chief of IDW Publishing. Me and Chris hit it off right away, and before I knew it we were in discussions about IDW putting out Wire Hangers. And we just announced it this week.

H101: Tell us about the story of Wire Hangers.

AR: I don’t want to give too much away, because there’s a lot of twists and turns, but the main premise is that there’s a young, female reporter who is trying to make a name for herself, so she goes under cover to try and get to the bottom of a big epidemic that’s plaguing New York, which is people being snatched off the streets every night for about three months. Almost thirty people get kidnapped. She basically uses herself as bait to try and get into the hands of the abductors and get the bottom of the story. There’s a lot of things that she doesn’t forsee happening that take the whole thing into a different dimension. It gets pretty complicated, but with each character that you meet you realize how they’re all interconnected.

H101: You say you’ve been developing this story over a number of years. What it always that main story, or have you worked on others that you threw away?

AR: Well, as a kid, I put together a bunch of black-and-white comics that I just sold at the local comic book store, like photocopied, ashcan versions, but those were just done when I was a kid, about 18-years old or so. So I had other stories, but nothing was as totally fleshed out or serious as this one.

H101: The story seems pretty dark in tone. Did you try to make the art reflect that?

AR: Absolutely. Have you seen the trailer for it?

H101: I have. It looks great.

AR: That’s the style. I’m using a lot textures, a lot of different color treatments, and bringing in photography and other kinds of mediums to really fit the tone for it. It’s definitely not a traditional comic in that sense.

H101: Would you like to see it adapted for the big screen?

AR: That’s always anyone’s dream, I think, but right now I just want to focus on just making a great comic book series. If it ever became a movie, that would be fantastic. I’m not counting on it, but I’m not ruling it out. I have some friends in Hollywood that have already shown some interest in being a part of it, so you never know. Timing is everything, so all you can do it is hope for the best with this stuff.

H101: Is there anyone in particular that you’d like see involved?

AR: There’s an old friend of mine from the UK, a guy named Corin Hardy. He’s always done short films; he’s done Tim Burton-esque style films stop motion films. Really, super talented guy that I’ve always wanted to collaborate with. He’s done music videos for bands like The Horrors, Keene, and some other bands. He’s just a super talented guy. He wrote a horror story that just got picked up by Sam Raimi to produce called Refuge. I’ve been talking to him about Wire Hangers, so we’ll see where that goes.

H101: That sounds promising. In general, what are you opinions on comic books adapted into movies?

AR: I think there’s some great ones. Some of my favorites are The Dark Knight, Watchmen, Sin City, and Iron Man. But then you have kind of goofy ones like Fantastic Four, Hulk, and all the Punisher ones, which really hurts me because I was such a big Punisher fan growing up, and they just can’t get it right.

H101: That kind of parallels the trend going on in horror these days, which is remakes. How do you feel about that?

AR: I just saw the trailer for A Nightmare on Elm Street.

H101: What did you think of that?

AR: I have mixed feelings about it. As a kid, Freddy was one of my heroes, so to see it reinvented, all super slick and everything — I don’t know. I guess I’ll check it out. I like what they did with some of the other remakes, like Amityville Horror. I didn’t catch Rob Zombie’s Halloween yet, but I’d like to see that.

H101: It has its ups and downs. Did you see the new Friday the 13th?

AR: No, I haven’t seen that one.

H101: It was a pretty fun one. What was the last horror movie you saw that really impressed you?

AR: Um… The Descent.

H101: Great choice.

AR: Yeah, that one took me by surprise. Everyone was really talking highly about it, so I ended up renting it, and I thought it was great.

H101: They have a sequel to that coming out as well.

AR: Yeah, I saw that. That looks good too.

H101: What about your favorite horror movie?

AR: Well, I’m a little bit bias to Jaws, just because it made such an impact on me as a kid, but Amityville Horror would probably be up there too. As a kid, I wanted to see Amityville Horror. I think it had just come on HBO at the time. My folks were like, “Alright, you’re old enough to see an R-rated movie. If you want to sit down and watch it, you’re allowed.” So I waited up late, and it came on. I’m sitting on the floor watching the TV, and as soon as the opening sequence came on with that music, I was scared shitless. I ran into my room, but I can still hear the whole fucking thing through the wall. So I was sitting in bed, terrified from that movie, and I didn’t even get to watch it. [laughs]

H101: Your band, Life of Agony, celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. Congratulations on that.

AR: Thanks.

H101: How is everything going with the band?

AR: Good. We’re going to the UK in a couple of weeks. We’re headlining Damnation Festival with Therapy opening, so that should be pretty cool. It’s just a fly in, fly out thing for us. We have some other shows booked on the East Coast that will be announced next week. We’re also working on a DVD celebrating the twenty years. It’s a long process, but the footage looks killer.

H101: Are you working on a new album any time soon?

AR: We’re talking about it. These days, we play it one day at a time. Everyone’s got so many things going on that it’s really hard to commit to do a whole album. We’ve talked about maybe doing an EP, things like that. It’s hard to commit to something that big.

H101: Do you any tips for bands looking to maintain longevity?

AR: I know it sounds generic, but just be true to yourself. Don’t be following any kind of trends, because as you know, they come and go. Unfortunately, the timeline for a band these days isn’t as long as people would think. If you’re not in it for the right reasons — for yourself, to make music, and put smiles people’s faces; whatever is your motivation. As long as its authentic, if you fine people that respond to it, just keep doing what you’re doing, because if you try to be something that you’re not, people are going to see through it eventually, and that crowd isn’t going to hang around.

H101: Well said. You also front the band Spoiler NYC. Tell us about them.

AR: It’s always been a longtime dream of mine to play in a real punk rock band. Somewhere along the lines on tour, I had my buddy out with me as a bass tech, and he’s a big punk rock fan too. We grew up together, and we always talked about it on the tour bus, “We should start a band on the side and make some tunes.” While we were talking about it, a friend back home had died from leukemia. He was a young guy; he wasn’t even thirty. He passed away, and I started writing some songs about that, but that didn’t sound like Life of Agony songs. They sounded straight up punk rock, in the same vein as Social D or Rancid or even some kind of Sex Pistols influence there.

When I got home, I started putting together more and more songs with my friend, Chris [Silletti, guitar], and sure enough, a couple of months later we had a whole record. We recorded the first album in a bunch of different spots. We recorded with Danny and Billy from Bioharzard at their studio. We recorded at Method of Grooves studio with Joey Z. We shipped all the tracks out to LA and they got mixed by Greg Fidelman, who produced a Life of Agony record. He actually did a lot of work with Rick Rubin on the Slipknot album and Metallica’s record. We were really psyched about the record. It came out in 2007, and now we just started our second album with producer Ken Lewis. He’s a lot of hip hop stuff, he’s worked with Lenny Kravitz, Beastie Boys. He’s won seven Grammys. He’s been nominated for like twenty-three. He has them all in his house. It’s pretty impressive stuff. He’s got great ears, and he gets great tones. There’s two new songs that are on the Spoiler Myspace page that will be on the album. We’re talking to a bunch of different labels right about who’s going to release it.

H101: Do you have an estimate as to when we’ll be able to hear that?

AR: Definitely next year. I’m thinking probably about August.

H101: You’ve obviously got a lot going on on the musical front and the artistic front. Do you think you’ll do another comic in the future?

AR: I don’t know. I’m gonna see how taxing this is on my schedule. Right now, we’re looking really good. It comes out in March. Issue one is complete. My buddy, Nelson Decastro, is doing covers for it. We just met last night about it. He’s really well-known in the comic circle. He done a lot of great, great cover art and paintings for Marvel, including Marvel Masterpieces, and some stuff for DC, like Adventures of Superman.

H101: Nice. Do you have any closing remarks for the readers of Horror 101?

AR: If people are into creepy shit, they should definitely check out the trailer for Wire Hangers [see below] and check out the site, WireHangersComic.com. There’s gonna be a bunch of new posts in the coming weeks with new artwork.

H101: Sounds good. Thank you for your time.

AR: Cool. Thanks, Alex.