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James Wan Describes the Sea Creatures He Created in ‘Aquaman’ [Interview]

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Every time James Wan gets a big budget action movie, people joke that he’s going to turn it into a horror movie. They said that when he got Furious 7 and they said it about Aquaman. But in the case of Aquaman, they were kind of right.

While Aquaman is a big, visual effects comic book bonanza, Wan was able to scratch his creature itch by creating the undersea characters of Atlantis.

“The race of underwater Atlanteans came from the comic but in terms of the way they look, it was all designed from scratch for the movie,” Wan told Bloody-Disgusting. “It was all adapted for the movie.”

Some of the main races of Atlanteans you’ll meet in Aquaman are the Trench (above), the Brine and the Fishermen.

“[I used] Geoff Johns’ run New 52 as the springboard to then go off and design the world, design the characters, working closely again with all these artists to shape the way they look,” Wan said.

“I knew going into this that the Atlantean race, the Xebelean race would be more ‘surface dwelling human looking’ but I wanted the other nations, the other kingdoms to look more like underwater people. I started embracing the idea that there’s a race of people that are merpeople, mermaids and mermen. Then there’s another race like the Brine which are basically giant crab people, a race of crustaceans basically. Obviously, the Trench are more classical sea monsters. That was fun, designing each different look for the different worlds.”

By default, Aquaman has to give most of its attention to Aquaman (Jason Momoa), but there are whole movies’ worth of stories about the other creatures of Atlantis.

“It’s not just how they look physically,” Wan said. “What do their cities look like? What kind of ships would they ride in? What kind of animals do they have? A lot of thought and a lot of time was spent in the tiny little details that even though it might not be in the overall narrative of the story, they’re there in the visual designs. I really wanted to create a world that’s uniquely its own. In the same way when you watch Star Wars you go, ‘This is its own world.’ It doesn’t feel like it’s part of the world that we’re from, right? Same for movies like Lord of the Rings as well. Those movies were obviously in the back of my head in terms of world creation and what they did. Going into this, everything about this I designed from the ground up, from Atlantis, the sea creatures, the machines to the ships and vehicles, all the sea monsters. They were fun to do.”

Wan even gave the Silver Age character Topo the octopus a blink and you’ll miss it cameo.

“In the Silver Age, Topo is a pet/friend of Aquaman,” Wan said.

“He does really funny things. He plays lots of musical instruments, just weird and wonderful stuff like that. So I was like, ‘How can I just have this guy make a cameo but in a fun way?’”

H.P. Lovecraft gets a shoutout in Aquaman too. Look on Aquaman’s father’s table for a Lovecraft paperback.

“Definitely I’m a big Lovecraft fan,” Wan said.

“A lot of the sea monsters in this were very Lovecraft inspired. It just felt like the right thing to do, a fun thing to do.”

Don’t expect a cameo from Lovecraft’s famous sea monster though. “There’s no Cthulu if that’s what you mean,” Wan said.

You should, however, scan the ocean floor for other James Wan Easter eggs, but Wan would not admit to throwing some inside jokes at the bottom of the ocean.

“I don’t know what you mean and I deny anything and everything,” Wan laughed.

Aquaman opens Friday, December 21.

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[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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