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[Interview] Aritst DaFu Yu Talks Drawing A Gorilla Beating Zombies To A Pulp

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“Rex, Zombie Killer” has a simple premise: a pack of animals, including a gorilla with a baseball bat, try to survive the zombie apocalypse. It’s nuts, it’s fun, and this is the kind of stuff you can only find in comic books. Big Dog Ink sent along their interview with series artist and co-creator DaFu Yu where he discusses the new miniseries, hitting stores in October. It’s clear that whoever did the interview is not a journalist, but there’s some interesting details about the series in there nonetheless.

Your art style in REX, ZOMBIE KILLER is very detailed, particularly the backgrounds. How long does it take you to produce a finished page?

DAFU: For REX, I’m both penciling and inking so it usually takes me between two to three days to complete a page. I put in about 12 hours of drawing per day, give or take. To keep things fresh and interesting for me, I work on several consecutive pages at once. I never draw a page from start to finish, I bounce around pages.

Can you talk about your approach to producing the art for REX, ZOMBIE KILLER? Are you working digitally or with old-school pencil and ink?

DAFU: Once I receive the script from writer Rob Anderson, I read it through once to see if I have any questions. Then, as I read through it a second time, I start laying out the panels in stick figures onto the script itself. Next, I take the stick figure layouts and flesh them out into thumbnails for Rob to approve. Although for the REX miniseries I decided to skip the thumbnail stage and do a loose pencil layout onto the actual 11×17 bristol board for Rob. This saves me some precious time.

As far as tools, I use 2H or HB lead pencils and I ink with Sakura micron pens and brush pens to fill in dark areas. So I am old-school when it comes to pencils and inks.

You’ve changed up your style slightly from the REX, ZOMBIE KILLER ONE-SHOT from last year, especially on the gorillas. How did you approach drawing the animals in the new miniseries? Are you drawing from your head? Or from some sort of reference?

DAFU: When the REX ONE-SHOT debuted last year, we received favorable reviews but I also received a lot of constructive criticism. One common criticism was my rendering of the gorillas appeared a bit too human-like. Here’s something you might not notice in the book from last year — Kenji the gorilla was standing and running sometimes like a human. It wasn’t until Rob pointed it out to me that I remembered that gorillas are normally on all fours! That’s why toward the end of the ONE-SHOT they were more gorilla-like, and why they are even more accurate in the new miniseries.

Honestly, it was my first time drawing gorillas and I didn’t understand their anatomical structure or mannerisms last year. So for the REX miniseries I actually did some more research and even bought some to-scale animal figures to help me. The gorillas are now more naturalistic looking in the miniseries.

Who do you consider your artistic influences?

DAFU: Wow, there’s so many, where do I begin? I grew up reading and collecting comics in the late 80s and early 90s, so I was heavily influenced by the Image artists, especially Jim Lee. Then in the mid-90s with the influx of Manga into American comics, I was influenced by Joe Madureira which led me to Masamune Shirow’s GHOST IN THE SHELL. Manga, in general, just helped me add energy into my comics and improved my facial expressions. And there’s so many more, such as David Finch, Art Adams, Frank Cho, Alex Ross…the list just continues to grow.

Who is your favorite character to draw and why?

DAFU: It’s definitely Kenji. What artist wouldn’t want to draw a gorilla with a baseball bat smashing zombies!? Or two big gorillas going to war?

But as I get deeper into the world of REX, ZOMBIE KILLER, I also have become fond of drawing Buttercup the Corgi mix dog. She’s just so bubbly and optimistic in a zombie-infested world. She gives everyone hope when there seems to be none, and she’s part of why I’m happy to return to the world of Rex and his pack!

REX, ZOMBIE KILLER #1 is available for pre-order right now at your Local Comic Shop. It’s listed in the August Diamond PREVIEWS catalog (Order number AUG131097) under publisher Big Dog Ink.

Comics

[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream

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Tender Beth Hetland Graphic Novel

Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.

“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”

Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.

Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.

Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re  reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.

Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.

Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.

Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.

Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion. 

Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.

‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.

4 out of 5 skulls

Tender graphic novel review

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