by Joe Schickman, Reporter

ComicsOnline pleased to share our latest feature with the creative talent at IDW Publishing! Hannah Rose May (Rogue’s Gallery) took us behind the curtain for a special look at the highly anticipated series: The Exorcism at 1600 Penn. Our ComicsOnline team is very excited about this release (make sure you check out our Advance Review of the first issue) and we hope you enjoy this piece:

CO: Before we hear more about this inventive new story you wrote, can you share a little about where your love of horror came from? What are your horror roots so to speak?

HRM: Growing up in Ireland, it’s hard not to find the supernatural and the superstitious hiding behind every rock, rill and stream. Banshees, faeries, and bog bodies sort of dominate your childhood psyche (or at least they did mine) when you’re surrounded by so much history and dramatic landscapes. My mama is also obsessed with all things witchy and haunted. I pretty much grew up on ghost stories.

CO: Were there any particular stories or horror tropes that helped inspire this work?

HRM: Movies like The Exorcist and The Ring are huge creative inspirations, they both use grounded horror and family dynamics as a way to pull you in and then scare the crap out of you. For this book, I really wanted to lean into the elements of a family that find themselves confronting something that is terrifying while also being unexplainable. We’ve all seen those movies about the family that moves into the dream home only to realize it’s actually a nightmare. We’re doing something similar in The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, it just so happens that this family is the First Family and that their new home is the White House.

CO: Vanesa Del Rey does the eye-catching art, you’re doing the fantastic writing, what was the process like working with this team on a project that held so much passion for you? How did everything come together and coalesce?

HRM: It’s been an incredible process getting to work alongside Vanesa and Jordie Bellaire. Redlands is one of my favorite books, it’s so hauntingly beautiful. To have that team have their hands on 1600 has been a career high for me. I’ve learned with this team that the best thing you can do is to just let them cook because everything they have delivered has exceeded my wildest expectations. I had told Heather Antos and the editorial team at IDW that Vanesa, Jordie and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou would be my ultimate dream team on this story and they made that dream a reality!

CO: Although The White House is considered to be the most famous house, it is also regarded as being the ultimate safe place, with top-of-the-line security, trained guards everywhere, constantly under surveillance, and the secret service shadowing the President and First Family 24/7. How did you craft the necessary sense of dread and terror in an environment like that, and/or what were the challenges and successes you found in the process?

HRM: Great question! Part of the reason I was drawn to the White House setting was knowing that it’s arguably the safest home in the world. Let’s be honest, there’s no better feeling than climbing into a cozy bed and knowing all the doors are locked and the security system is on. But then you hear a CREAAAAKING sound from down the hall that has you pulling the covers over your eyes. With 1600, we wanted to bottle up that feeling and spread it throughout our pages. Thankfully I’ve got Vanesa on art and she has done an incredible job of making every shadow and dark corner of the White House feel razor sharp and deadly.

CO: President Kelley Doyle is described as “…balancing global tensions and being a mother to two teenagers. While trying to stave off World War III…” of all those competing story threads, which is the most difficult for her to deal with and why?

HRM: Being president and a parent are arguably the two most important jobs in the world but with the presidency, you’ve got the benefit of an entire administration of professionals at your disposal. Anything you have a question on, there’s an expert there to help and guide you. That’s not so much the case with being a parent. That’s why it felt like putting the first female president in a situation like this was just the right trigger point for a horror story. Kelly is caught between dueling crises with each having impossible stakes. On the one hand she’s protecting the country and the world and on the other she’s protecting her children from something truly nefarious.

CO: Comics and fiction in general have an excellent ability to act as important and exciting allegory for our own world while imparting lessons to us that seem clearer in the fictitious landscape. With your story of demons and epic world fate stakes, what do you hope people take away with them from this story and its characters?

HRM: The big thing I want readers to take from this story is to understand that the people we put in power are just that…people! Like with Rogues’ Gallery which dealt with toxic fandom, 1600 also deals with obsession and palace intrigue. We elect leaders “of the people, by the people, for the people” and it’s easy to forget that they’re moms and dads, husbands and wives, sons and daughters. They have a responsibility not just to their constituents, but also to their family. I want people to read this book and to have a blast doing so but I also want them to recognize the intensity of the 24/7 news cycle, the vitriolic state of social media, and the effects these echo chambers can have on those who sign up for the ultimate civic duty – to serve.

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Special thanks to our friends at IDW Publishing for arranging this interview.

Check out our advance review of The Exorcism at 1600 Penn #1 at the link below:

Advance Review: The Exorcism at 1600 Penn #1

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