The following is an interview with Eric Palicki regarding the return of the critically acclaimed punk rock horror series, Black’s Myth, to AHOY Comics with the all-new mini-series, Black’s Myth: The Key to His Heart. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with Palicki about revisiting the world and characters of Black’s Myth, the shared creative process of working with longtime collaborator and artist Wendell Cavalcanti, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: With your new series returning to the world of Black’s Myth, where will readers find their favorite werewolf PI Janie Jones “Strummer” Mercado in this new installment of her story?
Eric Palicki: We catch up to Strummer, she’s finally feeling comfortable in her own skin, having accepted her place as part of LA’s secret community of supernatural creatures and now taking on cases for entities within that community. In issue one, which is a largely done-in-one to reestablish the world and familiarize new and old readers with the current status quo, we find Strummer and her partner Ben looking for a missing teenager. Of course, all is not as it seems in Strummer’s version of LA.
In short, we gave Strummer something approximating a happy ending in our first volume, and this being noir and horror, we going to pull the rug out from under her. Privately, I’ve likened this installment to Strummer’s The Empire Strikes Back. Neither Strummer nor the reader is prepared for what’s to come.
BD: You will once again be partnering with artist Wendell Cavalcanti to bring the world and characters to life. Do you find that you have developed a creative “shorthand” with one another throughout the development process?
EP: Wendell and I have been working together for more than a decade, on the three books people know–Black’s Myth, Atlantis Wasn’t Built for Tourists (Scout), and now The Key to His Heart–and on dozens of short comics, aborted pitches, false starts, and great books that haven’t found a home yet. At this point, yes, there’s an almost psychic connection, but the best parts of our collaboration–the BEST!–are the moments when Wendell surprises me, when he sees a page or panel in a way I never could as a non-artist. I love working with Wendell, and I hope we can make comics together forever. (Hint hint, Ahoy; let’s get started on Black’s Myth 3 already!)
BD: How would you describe your process in crafting the mystery for Strummer and Ben to unravel? I would imagine that crafting the narrative and staying 3 steps ahead of your reader is quite the challenge!
EP: If I’m being honest, I think I craft passable mysteries, but the real strength of these books lies with its characters. I’m much more interested in creating scenarios to see how Strums and Ben react than I am in crafting puzzle boxes to fool the reader. This volume, for example, once again focuses on Strummer’s one-time client Rainsford Black and sheds a bit of light on what drives the character we first met in the first volume.
All of that said, I draw a lot of inspiration from classic detective stories and mysteries, old and new. I love The Maltese Falcon, the primary inspiration for volume one of Black’s Myth, as well as The Thin Man, Columbo (and I love the homage that is Poker Face!), Chinatown, and Angel Heart. I think Black’s Myth and The Key to His Heart inform and complement each other in the same way as Veronica Mars seasons 1 and 2.
BD: As with all of AHOY’s releases, Issue #1 includes incredible bonus content. What will readers have in store in terms of extra prose stories and variant covers?
EP: The extra material in Black’s Myth is curated by the Ahoy editors. The decision of what to include is above my pay grade, but I’m all for it. I read all the material, and I think those extra pieces have been uniformly entertaining. Anything that adds value to the book is welcome in an age where cover prices hover at four or five bucks. I love how Ahoy wants to give readers some much for their entertainment dollar.
BD: Lastly, what would you like to tell fans who want to learn more about Black’s Myth: The Key to His Heart?
EP: As I mentioned early (Thank you for giving me a chance to chat with you, by the way.)…as I mentioned earlier, this first issue of The Key to His Heart is a done-in-one adventure and designed to remind returning readers of where Strummer is now and to introduce new readers to Strummer and Ben and the crazy punk-rock-horror-noir-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink world these characters inhabit. I hope readers will give us a shot, I hope they’ll stick around for the surprises to come, and I hope they enjoy the world, characters, and story enough to seek out our first volume.
