Snyder Discusses American Vampire

Comic Book Resources has posted an interview with Scott Snyder. (HERE)  He is the writer behind the American Vampire comic book series.  Oh. . . and he happens to have written fort he Batman comics as well.

Thanks to Bryant Burnette.

Scott Snyder: SK ‘One of the best writers of all time’?

Cover art for “American Vampire” No. 22 (DC Comics)

The LA Times had an interesting interview in September with Scott Snyder of American Vampire.  Snyder talks about working with Stephen King, calling him (as the article's title suggest) one of the best writers of all time.

Snyder says he first got hooked on King at camp when the counselor would read to them from Eyes of the Dragon.  He says it was magic listening to the novel unfold. 

How did Snyder end up working with King?  Here's a bit of that story:

 Working with him is a joy. How that came out was really weird. He read some of my stories and wrote a blurb for my short story collection after he had read them. I was just incredibly honored and thrilled. And then when I got “American Vampire” through at Vertigo and it was greenlit, they basically asked me if I would be willing to ask Steve King to do a blurb. After sending him the outline, he said, “Well, I’ll do you one better. I’d love to write an issue sometime, because I really love that character Skinner.” And I was like, “Well, if I tell them you want to write an issue they’re going to want you writing.” He was like, “Nah. They probably won’t because I never wrote a comic, and I don’t know if I’m any good. I don’t think they’ll really want me to do it.” I was like, “They’ll definitely want you to write that comic. I promise.” So, I called them on like a Friday and left a message: “I think Steve’s going to want to say he’s willing to write an issue.” Monday morning it was a call from the whole office: “Did you say Stephen King said he would be willing to write a whole issue of ‘American Vampire?’” . . . MORE HERE

Reading the interview makes me much more interested in American Vampire. 

King Gives American Vampire BITE

San Francisco Chronicle has posted an article by Associated Press writer, Matt Moore. The article is titled "Stephen King helps give 'American Vampire' bite."
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Moore writes, "unlike the wave of pop culture vampires in recent years - grounded, lovelorn, conflicted - Sweet is shiftless, selfish, utterly without redemption and pure evil.
King wouldn't have it any other way. Sweet, he said in an interview, is the "anti-'Twilight' vampire, the anti-Edward," a "dissolute Kurt Cobain" with a mean streak a mile wide and a sweet tooth for hard candy to match."
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Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/02/DDBL1GFRTJ.DTL#ixzz172dNEMWF

Vamps That Don't Scare

I like Stephen King's vampires. Of course, recent culture has made a hard U-Turn from the traditional formula of scary vampires. We can give special credit to the Twilight series; something my ten year old loves and I -- well, I love my daughters, so I endure it. But truth is, I like the scary stuff. The original, true, Dracula was pretty good.

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The Past Wasn't Always So Scary:

For all the recent complaining that modern, romantic, vampires are not very scary -- we should also admit that the past is chalk full of vampires that didn't scare. Vampire movies that were meant to scare! The 1960's -- 1970's pumped out some pretty big stinkers. I've been watching "Dracula has risen" (1969), and must admit -- I'm not one bit scared. Not even jumpy. My wife and I laughed when Dracula made his great appearance. And this seems to be true of the entire era.

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Of course, these Vampire movies always dodge back a hundred years or more. King did something brilliant by moving the Vampire to our world. (Well, our world via 1970's).

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Stephen King Weighs In:

For King's own views on the modern vampire crisis; the taming of the vamps, King has an outstanding short essay short essay for the first volume of the upcoming DC Comics titled "Suck On This." (I like that).

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Here's a great line: What should [vampires] be? Killers, honey. Stone killers who never get enough of that tasty Type-A. Bad boys and girls. Hunters. In other words, Midnight America. Red white and blue, accent on the red. Those vamps got hijacked by a lot of soft-focus romance." Ahhh, it's music to my ears.

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King saves his best lines for the end. He writes, "In the end, though, it’s all about giving back the teeth that the current “sweetie-vamp” craze has, by and large, stolen from the bloodsuckers. It’s about making them scary again."

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READ KING'S FULL TEXT HERE:

http://www.ew.com/ew/special/0,,20397912_20430023,00.html

See also: http://infocult.typepad.com/infocult/2010/10/stephen-king-goes-to-war-over-the-corrent-nosferatu-cropheres-what-vampires-shouldnt-be-pallid-detectives-who-drink-bloody.html