Interview

Royal Blood: interview with Ian Culbard on the King in Yellow

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king-in-yellow-trade-coverINJ Culbard’s The King in Yellow was published by SelfMade Hero and after our review, here’s INJ Culbard on bringing Robert Chambers’ work to life…

TRIPWIRE: You have become well known for adapting work by the likes of Lovecraft and now Robert Chambers. What is it about this sort of work that continues to appeal to you as a creator? 6) The King in Yellow is a collection that dates from the first part of the 20th century. What do you think gives it a resonance for modern readers?

 

INJ CULBARD: Memetic horrors like Hideo Nakata’s Ring based on Koji Suzuki’s novel, or the Hungarian suicide song Gloomy Sunday really appeal to me. They have a schoolyard mythic quality to them.  Much like the Necronomicon in Lovecraft’s work. If you read it you’ll go crazy only rather than childhood lore these are learned scholars whispering these dire warnings.  I like my horror old school, the lurking terrors that will eventually catch up with you, like the lingering fear of death that people have.

This particular book was one I’d wanted to adapt when I finished Charles Dexter Ward which was the second Lovecraft book I did. But at the time nobody except Lovecraft fans had really heard of it. But now, of course, thanks to True Detective, its almost as if everyone has heard of it. So I pitched it again.

 

TRIPWIRE: The King in Yellow is a series of short stories rather than a single novel. What problems did this throw up for you when going about adapting Chambers’ work? And how did you solve these problems?

 

IC: The original book is a series of 10 short stories but only four of them have anything to do with The King in Yellow.  The rest are linked only geographically as they’re set in Paris. I’d always intended to do this book as one whole story, and initially I’d come up with ways those remaining stories could be included but decided against it in the end in favour of greater focus on the King in Yellow as it really wouldn’t have done those other stories any justice at all, and they’re great stories, they’re just not The King in Yellow.

While the remaining four stories are very clearly linked, what I needed to find was a protagonist who would provide a through line. It needed to be someone who was in the book already, not someone I made up just for the sake of this linked narrative. In The Mask and The King in Yellow there are character’s who both have the surname Scott. Both are artists. Therefore it wasn’t unreasonable to assume they were the same person. In The Mask, Jack Scott is a friend of the sculptor Boris Yvain, and in The Yellow Sign, Scott makes reference to a friend named Hildred Castaigne and refers to a tragedy that befell this friend when he read The King in Yellow. The long and short of it is I found a link between all the characters and that was really the key to figuring out how it all could work as one whole story. And not just character links. There’s also two triumphal arches in the story, one in Washington Square and one in Paris. The Washington Square Arch was modelled by Stanford White on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It’s less than half the height of its inspiration but it felt like a gateway between these worlds.

Ian-Culbard-Gosh-Soho-London-28th-May-2015-col-pic#1

TW: In terms of the look of the book, how did you approach drawing it? And how closely did you stick to the look of the characters as created by Chambers or did you have to take a few liberties with them?

 

IC:The eyes were the thing in this book. I removed the pupils from all but one character I think.  And I certainly would have taken liberties. Character’s aren’t always described. I think Genevieve is certainly how she appears in the book, but, Mr Wilde in the Repairer of Reputations is very characterful but the problem was he lived in this strange G.K. Chesterton type world with characters no less flamboyant than those you’d find in The Man Who Was Thursday. So, while I followed the description of him I added a touch to really make him stand out by removing his eyebrows.

 

TW: You have worked extensively with Self Made Hero. What is it about this company that continues to appeal to you as a creator?

 

IC: Quality. You’ve got Glyn Dillon with The Nao of Brown, you’ve got Rob Davis with The Motherless Oven, and that’s just the homegrown.  And not just the books, which are always beautifully produced, but the people who work there. SelfMade play such an important role in British comics, in much the same way 2000AD does and Deadline used to do. So, to be a small part of that means a great deal.

 

TW: You have adapted many other writer’s work over the past few years, so do you now have the confidence to write and draw something you have created yourself?

 

IC: I have and that book is called Celeste (published by SelfMadeHero in 2014). I also have a Future Shock out in 2000AD (prog 1933) which I both wrote and drew (lettered by Annie Parkhouse) and I’m currently working on another original graphic novel and have a short story in The Broken Frontier Anthology called Last Dance at Omega Point.

The King in Yellow is out now

SelfMade Hero

King in Yellow review

The King in Yellow

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