Unspeakable Horror!

I love vampires.  I never get tired of them.  Despite their ubiquitous presence in our commercial culture, I believe they resonate with human beings in a deep way, which explains their prevalence in folklore.  Vampires are the ultimate archetype of the shadowy side of humanity.  I also believe they are the ultimate harbingers of our subconscious minds.  This is why they are creatures of dread and darkness, and also why they are so sexy!  I think it is fascinating to see the wide range of vampires in popular culture, from romantic leads to rat-like vermin.  Just when you think the vampire has spent itself commercially, along comes another pop-culture phenomenon like Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series.  So I am very excited to be opening Vincent Price Presents, the new monthly horror comic series from Bluewater, with my vampire story "Welcome to the Family of Night."  I think it is the perfect tale to kick off Vincent Price Presents because I believe it truly follows in the tradition of Price's body of work, both in terms of gothic dread and dramatic flair. 

Here is the background of the story:  I was visiting a new gated community in the state of Washington when the story dawned on me.  Entering the gated community was like entering a different reality.  First of all, the trees had been all cut down, leaving a perfect maze of identical cookie-cutter houses and an abundance of colorful mini-playgrounds.  The playgrounds were everywhere.  The contrast between the wild, dense trees around the perimeter and the orderliness of the homes was really startling.  Then the thought occurred to me: what if all of the residents were vampires?  If so, then why so many playgrounds?  The peninsula is inspired by this gated community, although the peninsula in the story looks very different (for instance, it is up on a cliff by the sea). 

The story is also influenced by a weird little statistic that I heard: if vampires existed, and every vampire bit someone every night, and that victim then became a vampire, the vampire population would explode exponentially, and the world would be overrun with vampires.  You might have heard this statistic too, and some vampire writers have come up with vampire rules for this not to occur in their story-world, like not every vampire victim becomes a vampire.

I've always been a huge fan of nightmarish societies in literature, also known as dystopias, the opposite of utopias.  For this story, I decided to create a society where vampires have taken over society, and in order to prevent running out of people to drink (because of the exponential growth thing), the vampires have created a feeding class of people.  The possibility for allegory abounds here.  Basically, the vampires are the rulers, and the remaining human beings belong to the servant/feeding classes, which includes the soldiers.  Also, to add another twist, this story takes place in the distant future, and there are some sci-fi technologies at work.  I think it adds a nice new twist to the gothic-ness (or is that gothicity?) of the story.

For the protagonist of the story, a little orphan boy named "R," his first encounter with the vampire peninsula is filled with wonder.  R is traveling with a group of children in the back of a passenger van.  All of the children have been taken from the factory where they worked their entire lives (imagine a kind of futuristic Dickensian child labor).  The passenger van is traveling through a primordial forest, complete with demonic wolves, like something out of a fairy tale.  Then the van enters the compound's checkpoint, and they enter the strange world of the elite, luxurious vampire peninsula. 

Within the compound, R discovers a strange land of plenty.  All of the children, formerly living in squalid conditions, now have more food and toys than they ever dreamed of.  However, the director of the compound, and SS-like fascist soldier, informs the children that there is no escape from the compound.  Each child is placed in a home with new foster parents, but there is something terribly wrong with this arrangement.  I won't spoil any more of the surprises in the story. 

I am very grateful to Rey Armenteros for his gorgeous work on this comic.  His comic book illustrations are really works of art, and I think his unique style, which is simultaneously beautiful and grotesque, perfectly brings my dystopian vampire world to life. 

Visit the preview gallery, but be warned: there are a few spoilers inside the preview gallery.  

Click on the image of Vincent Price to order your copy of the premiere issue of Vincent Price Presents:

Vincent Price Presents #1 Price: 3.19