Interviewing the Voice of Horror, Mr. Creepy Pasta!

By JonathanBarkan on June 10, 2016

The rise of creepypastas over the past several years has been nothing but meteoric. Whereas once it was near impossible to get a short story recognition, much less publication, the internet has allowed dozens of forums and websites to pop up and host these bite-sized horror forays. It is because of these people that the world was introduced to Slender Man, Jeff the Killer, and Eyeless Jack, as well as a swath of others.

Perhaps no one has been more critical and important in the rise of creepypastas than the self proclaimed Mr. Creepy Pasta, whose YouTube channel boasts over 1 million subscribers and has been running for over five years. Featuring narrations of some of the best that the genre has to offer, his channel has accumulated nearly 150 million views and spread the works of countless amateur authors, giving them much deserved recognition.

Now, Mr. Creepy Pasta is bringing the genre into a new realm by creating a 48-page anthology comic book that features two completely original tales with co-author Vincent V. Cava and artwork from Chris Oz Fulton. Bleeding HeartWorks and Teo Gonzalez. And to celebrate this endeavor, which he admits would, “…actually be operating at a loss if we just barely hit goal“, we’ve interviewed the voice of terror himself!

You can support the Kickstarter campaign right here.

Can you tell me about the comic and how the whole idea came about?

Vincent V Cava and I work on creating creepy pastas. Vincent has always been a fantastic writer and came up with some of the most gruesome and best written stories that I’ve had the pleasure of reading on my channel. In the past year we’d been working on writing other projects and scripts together. During one of those projects we started geeking out about comic books, Superman, Y the Last Man, and how it really influenced us and became a huge part of our lives as kids and adults. Then the big suggestion came up: “Why don’t we make our own comic book?” This was last year sometime, so it was kind of just a joke idea that was being batted around. But as our previous project drew to a close, the more serious we started to talk about it until we looked at printers and artists. More importantly, we started looking at what kinds of monsters and stories we could create for graphic novels, that no one had seen before.

What have been some of your personal favorite creepy pastas over the years?

That’s a hard question. I get asked that at conventions a lot and from fans and I never really have a straight answer for them. Vincent’s written some great stories in the past that really mix comedy and horror well. That’s been one of my favorite themes of creepy pastas so I always hold his work in high regard. Stories like “A Favor for a Favor”, became classics in the creepy pasta sub genre. There’s also many other well written classics from some noted authors like “Bedtime” by Michael Whitehouse, “Candle Cove” from Kris Straub, and “Black Out at Third and Main” by Aaron Shotwell. All these stories are amazing well written and go into a pretty extreme level of horror.

Right now, the Kickstarter for the comic has more than doubled the requested amount. Were you expecting this kind of reception or did the overwhelming support take you by surprise?

About four days into the campaign, the backer count just exploded. At the time, I was on the way to Phoenix Comic Con to make an appearance along side Vincent. We were losing out minds over text. Sending these joke pictures and numbers back and forth just excited about what was happening. I was really reserved with my expectation. Vincent knew that Creepy Pasta was going to be a big exciting topic, but I was really nervous we’d make maybe 100$ or so. But to see that we’re at 200% now is really amazing. And I know it means we can live this dream of finishing and putting out the comic book. And if we hit those stretch goals then I can have a bit more fun with some of the other projects that are tucked away for the occasion.

The two tales in the comic are entirely original but utilize characters already known to the Creepy Pasta community. What was it about these denizens that made you want to expand and add to their lore?

The Rake is really the only character that was established before the comic in a story of the same name by Brian Somerville. The Rake, was a really well done story about this mysterious creature that snuck in and watched or spoke to you in your sleep. With that much mystery behind the character, we just had to give it another look. We spoke with Brian Somerville and got his blessing on the character and just took off with the idea. We didn’t want to go extremely comic bookie with the character. We kept him pretty wrapped in shadows so the horror aspect of him isn’t lost. First and foremost, when looking at this comic, we wanted to keep it scary and gory. We’re not going for an extremely shocking gore factor, but we wanted stories that seemed terrifying and had twists that could seriously catch our audience off guard. Not to toot our horn too much, but I think that’s exactly what these stories will do.

Currently, the Kickstarter is for one 48-page comic that features two original stories and a wraparound with the “Blueman”. Seeing as how this campaign is already a success, can fans expect more issues in the future?

We’ve talked a lot about it, but the big question is how we can get that book to the fans. We enjoyed working on this book and we learned a lot about working comics from this experience. Obviously, from ideal to paper, this idea took us nearly a year and we don’t want to be the case with any future issues. We’re two guys who wanted to make something, not a publisher and not a comic distribution company. So the question is we have the funding to make one book, what’s the costs and the time needed to make a second, and how can we get it to people? What’s good is we’re already asking these question and discussing more issues so I think it’d be safe to say fans have something to look forward to.

What is your dream with this project? Where would you like to see this path lead?

We’ve discussed a lot about what we wanted from the comic book, since the idea first came up. What I think I’d really like to see is this become a small series of books. I’d love to see us put out a small series with a short overarching story of the Blue man and a collection of different artists and maybe even a guest writer or two. I want to make this comic book feel as closely related to online horror as possible and, like I’d mentioned to every one interested in getting involved, it’s always an effort of a group. Creepy Pasta is a collection of stories on the internet from hundreds, if not thousands of different people. If we want to make a series that does it justice then Vincent and I will be guiding and writing the stories, but we need to get more hands in on the artwork and more heads in on the horror aspects.

I’d love to be able to hold a huge, hard cover, collection of stories in comic form with the name Creepy Pasta stamped to the side of it one day.

Can you tell us about any other projects that you’re working on?

I’ve always got new stories coming out from amazing authors on my channel MrCreepyPasta. That’s my job hopefully for life, is to keep chilling stories being told there. I have a few ideas for some new projects if we can hit stretch goal that I think everyone’s going to love but those are a secret until the time is right. I know Vincent’s got some new books he’s working on as well, including a Young Adult Book series under the name Creepy Pasta. And he’s got his new book that hasn’t been released but we’re giving it away in the Kickstarter called “Pastel Colored Dreams and Human Flavored Nightmares”.