In the 5-issue horror comic Exorcism Island, the worst instances of demonic possession are all sent to a special island. Writer Jordan Thomas and artist Chris Matthews, who have known each other since childhood and previously worked together on Mugshots, spoke to Cemetery Dance about what led them to teaming up, their inspiration, and how to be both horrifying and highly entertaining.
(Interview conducted by Danica Davidson)
CEMETERY DANCE: You’ve been friends since you were eleven. How did that lead to collaborating on this project?
JORDAN THOMAS: The collaboration started back around 2019 when Chris asked me if I had any comic scripts he could have a go at to scratch an art itch that his animation day job wasn’t satisfying. From there we started the Mugshots universe, first on Kickstarter and then with publisher Mad Cave Studios. From that point on, we haven’t stopped working on ideas together. Exorcism Island was one of two we started developing whilst wrapping up work on Mugshots, and it happened to be the one that grabbed the attention of the fine judges of quality at Comixology.
Chris, what was it about comics that led you to contact Jordan about working together?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I spent a good few years bouncing around different industries in the art world without ever really finding anything that grabbed me. I knew I wanted to do my own projects but I’ve never been that great working without any deadlines or accountability. At the time Jordan was just getting into the comics world I was working on an animation project that was struggling to achieve the look it was going for with the time and budget constraints. This got me thinking about how I would have done it. That became the style we used for Mugshots.
What was your process for working together on this?
THOMAS: I had the idea of an exorcism story set on an isolated island and Chris was into it. Chris fairly quickly put together a kind of tone setter image to start to feel his way around the idea, whilst I worked on the story. Then with the basics of the plot in place I scripted the opening and Chris drew it and we worked on how the colour palette could help us separate time and location. Once that was all in place and Comixology picked it up, it was really just standard. I write a script, Chris does layouts based on that, we play around with those a little and then he does the finished pages.
Chris, what more can you tell us about the process of going from script to finished page? What do you enjoy the most about the process?
MATTHEWS: The most important part of the whole process is thumbnails, everything after that should be relatively easy (It’s not, it’s really hard. Always). The aim is to lead the eye around the page using the shapes in each panel, while also ending up with a page that’s balanced in the gestalt rather than just a bunch of panels that don’t have any continuous rhythm. Easier said than done, though.
What was the inspiration for Exorcism Island?
THOMAS: I was thinking about some kind of supernatural, perhaps possession-based story, and then I had the image of an isolated location with a collection of cabins set out in the shape of a crucifix and everything else just grew out of asking, What? Why? Who? And what next? From there.
Chris, visually where did you take inspiration from for this series?
MATTHEWS: It was mostly an attempt to see if I could make a comic that resembled a Saul Bass poster — the color choice is pretty obvious, but the main focus was to make it as graphic as possible without losing the subtleties needed for storytelling.
What do you mean when you say the work is both horrifying and highly entertaining?
THOMAS: Just that, you will be both horrified and entertained throughout the story. The events are hopefully unsettling and a bit scary, but there’s room for some fun with the relationships between our odd assortment of beleaguered priests forced to co-exist on an island in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of people they’d don’t necessarily get on with and a dozen or more demonically possessed humans who mainly want to kill and abuse them.
What do you think stands out about this series?
MATTHEWS: For me it’s Jordan’s dialogue. He builds out a three dimensional character so well. You really get a sense that it’s just a group of very flawed people trying to do their best in a pretty hopeless scenario.
How did you make this comic as scary as you could?
THOMAS: I like slow build tension in horror, so I tried to write a script where, when something creepy or gruesome was coming up, we would see these snap shots of action, pages with lots of panels, and then leading into a large impactful image to reveal the awfulness that has occurred.
Chris, horror in comics means you don’t have the tools of a film, with an eerie soundtrack and jump cuts. How did you bring horror to your artwork in the series?
MATTHEWS: That was actually the biggest challenge for me. This kind of style doesn’t really lend itself to granular detail. The focus was mainly on the general feel of the comic overall. The deep orange with the black, I think, can be visually quite oppressive, so I tried to lean into that. Almost like it became a character of its own.
THOMAS AND MATTHEWS: Thank you for talking with us. We really hope readers dig each issue of Exorcism Island!
Enjoy these preview pages from Exorcism Island #1!
