Tim Daniel and Michael Moreci made a huge splash in horror comics earlier this year when they unleashed the incomparable “Curse.” They proved themselves to be masters of horror, and built a very human story out of the tried and true werewolf lore, and today I’m happy to announce their followup series: “Burning Fields.”

BOOM! Studios has taken the men who made “Curse” such an incredible success and challenged them to craft something different and possibly more horrifying. Their back with Colin Lorimer and Riley Rossmo too, so the transition into this new world should be seamless. “Burning Fields” is a geopolitical drama with a monster mythos. Think Zero Dark Thirty meets The Thing and you’ve got the right idea.

The story follows Dana Atkinson, a dishonorably discharged army investigator, who is pulled back to the Middle East when a group of American oil technicians disappear under bizarre circumstances. With the help of an Iraqi investigator, what Dana discovers is unimaginable: a series of unusual incidents at the drill site lead her and her unlikely ally to discover a mythic evil that has been released, one that threatens both the lives of the entire region and the fragile peace that exists.

I was luckily enough to sit down with Tim and Michael to discuss the challenges of returning to the horror genre, the horror of war, and the inspiration for such an original premise.

Bloody-Disgusting: Is there any pressure on returning to horror after the incredible response to “Curse?”

Michael Moreci: I think so, yeah. Maybe even only on Tim and I, especially, in regards to how we approach our work. I think our fear is that people will be expecting Curse 2, and that we’re going to take the story of Burning Fields and place it over the Curse template. Neither of us are interested in going that route, as easy as it might be. What attracted us to Burning Fields is the ambitious story we’re trying to tell, and attempting to fall back on past success wouldn’t do justice to our goals or to the reading experience. We’d be shorting too much, and that’s not in Tim’s or my DNA. That’s part of why we work so well together—we’re both stubbornly committed to telling stories that shake things up, that push the envelope. We’re not comfortable unless we’re uncomfortable. And Burning Fields is a difficult, challenging story, like Curse, like my own series Roche Limit, like Tim’s series Enormous, but in its own way.

Colin’s exclusive character sketches.

Add those things together—that rigors of writing Burning Fields, the expectations coming off of Curse—and you have a pretty intense situation. But we feed on that; we love it.

Tim Daniel: No pressure, just a genuine desire to work in the horror genre again and allow Burning Fields to be its own thing. Stephen King has explored all manner of horror. Take two of his novels as example; The Stand and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. They could not be further apart story-wise, but the reading experience is pure King and pure horror. At this point in our careers, we should be able to provide readers with a resonant reading experience. Something that’s going to both challenge and reward, while being unique to itself. Certainly, neither of us have any desire to repeat ourselves. But, being that we’re in the horror genre with Burning Fields and having reassembled the Curse team, I hope readers are comfortable spending their money and time on the series knowing what they’ll get will be of certain level of quality indicative of Curse.

BD: The series is billed as military horror, which first had me double take, I think you two are the first to tackle the sub-genre. I mean Full Metal Jacket could be considered a horror movie, and even Apocalypse Now, but they were military stories first and horror second. I imagine you two want to focus on the horror but why use the military as a backdrop?

MM: Tim and I are effective as horror storytellers to the degree we’re able to accrue emotional investment in our readers. Curse had that—a story of a parent and a child as well as the frustrations many of us have with our broken healthcare system. That investment is far more important than any blood and gore you can deliver; without that sense of seeing yourself in the character, without that emotional core, the horror, ultimately, doesn’t matter. You need to be afraid of something first.

For Burning Fields, part of the core is the specter of this endless war and the horrors it has engendered. We aim to tell a very personal story with our protagonists, Dana and Aban, about loss, faith, and commitment to an ideal. But in a grander sense, we want to explore the reckoning of war. Now, there’s a million ways we can go with this, suffice to say. But we’re focused on the horrors and the gross abuse caused by the private military complex. This is a topic worth an encyclopedia of accounts (and I’d urge anyone interested to read Jeremy Scahill’s book on Blackwater for a peek into the absolute nightmarish world of PMCs), so we can’t even hope to be comprehensive. But if you want to understand how the idea of a noble war/conflict is a fantasy, look no further than an industry—a very lucrative industry—that is built around imperialism, greed, and the suffering of others, amongst other things.

That knowledge, that truth, tarnishes everything it touches. The perpetuation of war is bad enough, and it requires a certain amount of, for lack of a better word, patriotism to justify its existence. We’re all told to support the troops, to feel some sort of emotional connection to their service and sacrifice—but what does that investment mean when the growing number of those forces are essentially paid mercenaries who act without impunity and are responsible for countless horrors? That truth poisons everything, and there’s a price to be paid in it.

TD: War is horror enough. Easily, inarguably, humankind’s greatest self-created atrocity. The movie examples you cite definitely qualify in illustrating that notion. The fact that the basic components of Burning Fields made you already do a double take is exactly what we set out do. I think Mike and I like to find elements from the real-world which are genuinely horrific in nature; the threat of a parent losing a child, the rigors of war, etc. and then define and illustrate that horror through the presence of the otherworldly.

Dana.

BD: Tell me a little bit more about your protagonist Dana, who inspired her creation, what drives her, and what is she most afraid of?

TD: We see so much about “strong female lead” or “instantly likable female” or “badass female” and yet Dana Atkinson is somehow none of those things and all of those things without being a gimmick or coming off as blatant pandering to current trends. In that way, she strikes me as someone we could all recognize and identify with, her struggle to pursue justice is authentic. In my head, I see her as a combination of Kara Thrace (Starbuck) from Battlestar Galactica, Dana Scully from X-Files and Maya from Zero Dark Thirty. I mention Kara Thrace first since I absolutely love what Katee Sackhoff brought to that character – a genuine sense of grit and vulnerability. Dana is only one half of the Burning Fields equation though since we have an Iraqi Detective, Aban Fasad who serves as her foil. In fact, Aban is such a strong and vital presence you could easily say Dana is his foil as well. Neither character will necessarily dominate the story.

MM: Going off what Tim said, I never make a character to suit a trend or demographic—that’s cynical and, being honest, cheap. The protagonist in Burning Fields is female because that’s how I imagined her in my head—same as Laney being an African American. Character always comes first. We’re not checking any boxes.

Anyway…Dana is a character I really love and admire. What’s so compelling about her is her dogged intensity, her intransigent dedication to her code of ethics. You don’t find that often, people who draw their line in the sand and say “I will not cross this” and don’t, regardless of how easier it might make their lives. Having honor isn’t easy.

But that’s Dana—she’s the person who keeps everyone else honest, even as they grumble under their breath about her. But, at the same time, she’s not without flaw. Her stubbornness makes her a loner, and she fears a time when the world runs out of people like her, those vigilant ones watching the gate, keeping guard. She knows, in so many ways, she’s a relic, she’s difficult; her fear is the time when she goes unheard, or a time when she finds even herself compromising.

BD: Horror always seems to be about the core elements of escapism, loss of control, and a certain dose of history. “Burning Fields” has Dana returning to the military where she was dishonorably discharged, a return to her past, but what is she running away from?

TD: Mike gave Dana an amazing line of dialogue from Issue #3 that I think perfectly summarizes her plight, “Running from, running towards…it’s all the same to me these days.” My father-in-law describes this phenomena as the “mirror maze”– when the truth and the lie, the reality and the fiction merge and it’s impossible to discern between the two any more. We end up groping for anything we might think will rescue us from ourselves and that’s a deadly trap in itself. Dana’s been lost in the maze for a while by the time we meet her…she might not be running so much as searching for a wrecking ball to shatter the whole damned thing.

BD: Can you tell me anything about the mythic horror she unleashes?

TD: Since Burning Fields is set in the Middle East we have employed an ancient Mesopotamian myth from the region. The more we researched it, the more it yielded all manner of gruesome and outlandish possibilities for the story. So, it became more about stripping the myth to its core and weaving those elements into the story. To be clear, Dana’s not responsible for this happening and neither is Aban, who is equally important to discerning exactly what is transpiring in the area surrounding the oil field of Kirkuk.

BD: With “Curse” you worked with our expectations of the genre and the creature lore and actively defied them to create the most interesting take on a horror staple I’ve seen in a while. Are you aiming to do something similar in “Burning Fields” or are you creating your own mythology?

TD: Having found an avenue to explore in the very familiar and well-worn werewolf mythology of Curse was serendipitous. With Burning Fields, we’re presenting something very few people may have knowledge of, certainly I was not before embarking on this story, and that gives us a relatively blank canvas to fill. By the time Burning Fields comes to a close, we hope readers will see that we have done something very fresh with a horror convention that is in fact, regardless of the origin of the myth, actually very familiar.

MM: I think reinvention is a funny, though salient, term. The example I always use is Swamp Thing, how Alan Moore stripped that character down to its barest parts and tweaked the angle just a touch to give us something familiar but new at the same time. That’s what we did with Curse, taking the werewolf myth and boiling to the foundations of control (or lack thereof) and animalistic tendencies.

Burning Fields, on the other hand, is a totally different beast—I agree with Tim. It’s essentially a monster story. And what makes monster stories most terrifying? It’s that the monsters we fight are, for the most part, the ones that we create. We make monsters, thinking we can control them…until one day we can’t. It’s the monster that’s in control and, somehow, most of us don’t even notice. That’s Burning Fields.

BD: What’s it like to be working with Colin again? How much influence does he have on the story?

TD: Colin is a consummate story-teller who is vastly underrated in the field. He also happens to be a thorough professional. No matter what we script, he’s making decisions that not only execute the story perfectly, but up the ante on almost every single page. Hopefully, one of these days we can do a script-to-page process feature that will reveal just how good he truly is in crafting a page.

MM: I can’t say enough good things about Colin. He’s a pro’s pro, a workhorse, talented as can be, and a terrific man. I love our rapport, being able to write scripts and see his work as I go; it enables some great ideas and makes the process so smooth. He’s an underrated storyteller and artist—it’s hard to find someone with the prowess, and dedication, he possesses.

BD: What is your collaborative process like as a co-writing team?

TD: We’ve figured out the nuts and bolts – divide responsibilities, conquer tasks, draft outlines and scripts, revise, draft, revise, meld. But now, more than ever, Mike and I are challenging each other on the art side of the process. There’s no cheats. Neither of us will allow the other to rest on our laurels or skate through a scene or even single line of dialogue for that matter. It’s beautifully brutal. What’s truly rewarding is that moment when we hit upon something we know is working and the energy level pumps up past ten on the gauge. I dig that more than anything, because I know were doing what we do for one reason, the pure appreciation for storytelling.

MM: I think that’s the big thing, the aspect of upping our game. In an industry where so many jobs are won by reasons other than merit, Tim and I—and I’m patting us on the back, I know—have spent more effort polishing our craft, not our personas. Look, we’re both good enough guys (sort of), but all we really care about is growing as writers and delivering on the promise we make to each and every reader to deliver a story worth the price of admission. Everything else is just noise. With that shared goal, we’re able to hone and do what needs to be done for the story and nothing else.

BD: What are you most terrified of with “Burning Fields”? What parts of your own fears are on the page?

TD: Private military companies…I’m really uncomfortable with entities that operate seemingly outside or above the widely acknowledged covenant of military practice and accountability. There is definitely a “who’s watching the watchmen” feel to the entire enterprise of a privatized military. Ultimately, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before one of them (or several) obtain enough power to thumb their noses at the United States because it’s just too difficult to keep ideology pure when you introduce profit margins. Then we’ll find ourselves fighting ourselves and that’s civil war…that’s terrifying.

MM: Everything Tim said, plus my own fears about doing justice to a very, very delicate situation. We both did so much research and studying to making sure the book is as authentic as possible, specific to this place in the world. We studied Kirkuk, the Qur’an, local customs, regional news as it broke, and the history of private military companies. This is, to say the least, a heavily researched book. And I’m proud of that, but also fearful. I don’t want to come off as cavalier or insincere because, yes, while we are trying to get it right with all the legwork we’ve done, this is still popcorn entertainment. What’s happened in Kirkuk and other similar places is very real; the terrible things done by private military mercs are endless. I think we’re being as mindful as can be, though I fear there will be that person who calls us out on inaccuracies or insensitivity.

BD: What are your favorite horror movies? What inspired “Burning Fields” the most, and where did the idea come from?

MM: The Thing, without question, is all over Burning Fields. I love that movie, first and foremost, but I also love the idea of this sickness, this virus, that is psychological more than anything. It’s a disease that compromises who you are as a person. And that’s a point I was getting to earlier—we’re supporting troops in these PMCs, and these war corporations are, without question, no effing good. They’re not. They go in and they poison wherever they go and, in turn, sully our own souls with their motivations (war for profit) and actions. And, of course, there’s something more concrete happening in Burning Fields about an evil being awakened and that evil spreading wherever it goes.

TD: A partial and ever changing list of favorite horror films: The Mist. The Thing. The Conjuring. The Descent. You’re Next. Frankenstein. The Wolf-Man. The Hunger. Monsters.

Burning Fields germinated with Mike. He sent me a three sentence email. I loved it immediately and responded to the idea. A few days later it was still stuck in my head, rattling around and taking form. Assembling itself. I sent Mike back a revision, adding on a piece or two and off we went. He responded in kind with even more detail and one such note was the location of the story – Kirkuk. Amazingly, he was throwing a dart at the map and we then discovered to our amazement that this place has been in almost constant conflict for the better part of a century as a hotly contested, oil-rich region of Northern Iraq. In fact, he just topped himself last week when he sent me a one word email. And that’s started us down a new path for what hopefully becomes our next project… My personal list of Burning Fields ingredients: The Thing, Jarhead, The Conjuring, The Descent, Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker and True Detective…