As I’ve mentioned numerous times during these blogs, it was really cool to see how Jerem and Shi would interpret the written material. Well, there was no interpretation up to this point bigger than this...thing.

I wrote it very sparingly in the script, like I write everything. When it comes to making something fantastic, in a film or otherwise, I feel like this gives whoever is creating it a large amount of freedom to do what they need to do. I’m a big believer that if you limit people’s creativity too much then you’re sucking the life out of what they are trying to do.

We had a lot of special fx in the Drive-In Horrorshow movie, so I was used to seeing my work adapted to the “real” world of a movie. As I write, I tend to imagine most of my stories existing in this “real” world, so naturally I imagined this thing in the most realistic way possible. In the script I just called it a small black beetle, and I imagined it as more of a cold, impersonal creature that seemed like something commonly found in nature.

In the comic book version, Jerem’s decision to give it eyes completely transforms what I had in mind, instantly giving it a personality - which is something that, for me, was entirely lacking (or at least thinly written) in the story. Eyes allow the audience to connect with a character - they’re one of the most important elements in any storytelling, and especially when it’s for something created from scratch by an artist (or artists). When I got to these pages, this creature was the thing I’d read that was significantly different than what I had in mind.

It’s cool, though, to see a different take on something I wrote. The story remains the same, and it’s interesting to see how these details change it while still retaining the essence of the tale. It’s like doing the foundation of a drawing where someone else takes it over halfway through - your framework is still underneath, but all of the specifics and artistic direction are their own.