It’s embarrassing to have a “lost interview.” But at SDCC 2023 I was excited to get an interview with John Jennings, who had just wrapped up Silver Surfer: Ghost Light for Marvel. His earlier work included adapting Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred with Damian Duffy, and I’d become a big fan of his work as both an artist and a teacher. I sat down with him and writer Alverne Ball at the Dark Horse booth to talk about Shook! A Black Horror Anthology and then the week after SDCC I left for an overseas trip and… failed to transcribe the interview when I returned.
Since then, Dark Horse and Second Sight Publishing have announced a sequel anthology, Shook! Songs of the Dark Sirens for October 2025. Jennings has had an exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum, an interactive experience that encourages creativity and collaboration with all who visit. So last week when I found the audio file, I had to admit to my failure and get this conversation out there — not just because of my admiration for Jennings but because Shook offers horror stories with a powerful perspective.
So John and Alverne, my apologies for this too long delay. I’m so grateful we got to talk.
Derek McCaw: John, I’ve been following your work for a while now, but Alvern I’m not as familiar, but I’m sure I’m going to be. So aside from horror, is there an overarching theme for Shook?
John Jennings: Obviously from the cover there’s kind of an homage to EC Comics, right? 1950s EC, like you know, morality tales, but also since myself and Bradley and Marcus, who are the publishers at Second Site, are all from the South. It’s kind of like a Southern Gothic feel, too. That’s the thematic kind of connection there. It’s kind of tenuous in some stories, but I would say that those are the two main connectors outside of us being all like, you know, black male writers.
Derek McCaw: Right. We’ve got to acknowledge that. Alvern, tell me about your story or stories, because I haven’t read it yet.
Alverne Ball: There’s just one story, called “The Hill.” It is an adaptation of Saki’s “The Hill,” which I think was published in 1929. It’s basically a story about a woman who disbelieves in the god Pan and what happens when you don’t believe in gods.
Derek McCaw: Interesting. I’ve never encountered that story.
Alverne Ball: One of my mentors, Mort Castle, who is a great horror writer, I had him in a graphic novel class and he introduced me to this short story and it was something that stayed with me ever since. So it’s been on my mind for a long time. When Bradley and Marcus approached me about writing horror, I was like “I got two stories.”
One I had already written and then this other short story that’s based off this thing, and they loved it. I was like, alright, I’m going to adapt this into a comic story. That’s what we did.
It’s about a woman who marries this young African American man and she gets him to leave the big city and move out into the country. In the country there’s all these statues of Pan and she tells her husband that he’s foolish for believing in Pan. He says, “yeah, I’m from the big city, but one thing I don’t do is disbelieve in other gods.”
Through the process of the story, she learns that disbelieving in the gods is a very, very bad thing. So what I did, I tried to stay as true to Saki’s story as possible, and I think the only thing that might have changed the ethnicity of the characters.
Derek McCaw: John, what are your contributions to Shook?
John Jennings: OK, so I have a couple. One is called “The Breaks.” I’m a really big fan of hip hop and I’m a hip hop scholar.
The story is about a young woman who was part of a break dance crew. She has unfortunately contracted the AIDS virus and is passing away. She’s in this space where she’s kind of slipping between life and death, you know, and she’s kind of going back over the heyday of hip hop and that kind of thing and her time as a break dancer with this crew.
I was influenced by Jacob’s Ladder and I’m a really big fan of Jacob’s Ladder. And also it was kind of like talking about the death of hip hop or the shifting of hip hop or how cultures divide and shift around. That was the exploration I wanted to do there.
The other one is called “Lady of Rage” and it’s an anti-domestic violence story. It’s about a young woman who’s in a very horrible relationship, and she basically ends up discovering this part of her psyche that is extremely powerful and she kind of acts out against her aggressor. So those are the two Shook stories.
I wrote both of those. “The Breaks” is drawn by Charlie Goubile. It’s a story I’d written a while ago. It’s actually the first thing I wrote for another artist to draw, you know, and I had had the story done for a while. I just didn’t have a space for it. And so when this popped up, I thought it would be a good a good fit. “Lady of Rage” is drawn by Jermel Williams out of Chicago actually. And colored by myself and yeah, and it turned out pretty cool, I think. I’m excited about it.
Derek McCaw: For both of you, what draws you to comics? I can’t quite explain to anybody why I love this as a medium. But what is it for you?
Alverne Ball: For me it’s the magic. When I teach comic book scriptwriting, I always talk about the real magic of comics happens in between the panels. Because when you think about action, you see action or the beginning of action in one panel and then you see the end result of that action in the next panel. What our mind does is readers that we create that flow of action from A to B. So for me, it’s always been about the magic of what your mind can create and where comics can take you. Comics can take you almost anywhere and everywhere.
I love the idea that there’s so many varied stories. One day I can be reading Batman if I want to feel, you know, very heroic. Or I can go pick up Rodney Barnes’ Killadelphia and get scared and be spooked, you know. It’s just like all these different aspects that I think comics as a medium brings that other mediums just don’t do it.
Derek McCaw: As we’re sitting here in the Dark Horse press booth, we can say “…or you can read Turtle Bread and learn how to bake, you know, and deal with mental health issues.” Do you agree, John? Because you’re a professor…
John Jennings: Yes. That’s one of the things that’s my day job. Yeah. One of the things I love about the comics is the immediacy of them, you know, and the kind of subversive quality to them. Basically, if you have a story you can make an image, a sequential image in some fashion either by photography or by drawing or some way. Anybody who has a story can basically create a sequence and take it down to a copy shop and become a publisher. It’s very immediate. Of course, it’s a lot more complex than that. But still, though, at the heart of it is like I have this idea, I can affix it in a sequence and put it out.
You know, the other thing I love is comics are inherently symbolic and almost surreal to a certain degree. Every aspect of the comic book page has the potential to tell a story from the panel structure to color to the font that you use. Everything carries meaning. And that’s very different from lot of media.
Derek McCaw: And it carries meaning on a subconscious level. You say that to people and they’re still like, “eh, it’s just comics.”
John Jennings: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Derek McCaw: I mean I know it’s changed to some extent, but still there’s that perception. And I don’t get it.
John Jennings: Right, right. I saw this interview with Method Man and he said, “ you just know.” Method Man from Wu Tang Clan, he’s a massive comics fan. A massive comics. He was like “I knew I was a comics person from birth.” He opened a book up and pretended to smell the comic. I was like, Oh yeah, he’s a comics guy.
Derek McCaw: That is the funniest thing, you know someone loves them when they share the love of the smell. Which I know is the weirdest thing to say…
John Jennings: No, because this is a piece of.. it used to be alive, right? A piece of wood. It was growing. You know what I’m saying?
Something about it, it’s like the physical artifact, and that’s something about comics, too. You have the story readers, but you also have the artifacts, the people who want to collect it and have it and share it.
Derek McCaw: Do you remember the first book you picked up?
John Jennings: Let me see. It has to be something like, probably a Superman or something like that. Oh, you know, it was probably like Thor. My mom got me on comics because she liked the fact that it encouraged me to read more, you know? And I was already reading a lot, but she was like, oh, he loves this comic thing, you know?
Alverne Ball: For mine, it was an issue of Spawn and how I actually got into comics was that I walked into a Toys-R-Us and picked up a Spawn figure and flipped it over and saw it was based off a comic book. I was like, wait, somebody’s making toys of this crazy idea. As a kid, as a teen, it was like these are the toys I’ve always wanted! There’s a book based on it? And there was a comic shop a couple blocks from my school, and one day I decided to get off the bus and go. I got into comics about 16. But I hid it for a long time from all my friends. I didn’t think they’d understand.
Derek McCaw: Kids today they don’t know the trouble we went through.
Alverne Ball: Yeah, I thought I’d get beat up.
Derek McCaw: Ah, the four-colored closets that we were in.
John Jennings: Until now, my friends.
Thank you once again to John Jennings, Alvern Ball, and of course Dark Horse Comics for arranging the interview.
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