Becky Cloonan on Curating the New Face of Horror in Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering
After receiving the 2024 Eisner Award for Best New Series alongside Tula Lotay for the erotic folk horror epiphany Somna, anticipation is running high for Becky Cloonan's next comic opus. That project happens to be Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering, a short story collection uniting some of the most innovative, unrestrained voices in emergent horror (and all around excellent cartoonists). The collection also offers a glimpse into Becky's next big project at DSTLRY.
Fellow Eisner winner E.M. Carroll (A Guest in the House), HamletMachine (Lucifer's Garden), Vanesa R. Del Rey (Scarlet Witch), Molly Mendoza (Skip), and Celine Loup (The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs). Set to debut the day before Halloween, 10/30, preorder Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering exclusively via Diamond from your local comic shop. To celebrate, Tula Lotay has also illustrated a harrowing new cover....
Ernie Estrella provided some questions to Becky about curating the perfect modern horror collection just in time for the Halloween season.
Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering Cover A by Becky Cloonan
Short story collections are so much fun; they celebrate the art of the short story, leaving the reader with just enough to want more, but also so delighted with what they got. Becky, what is it that has drawn you to being a part of these collections of late, culminating in one the you personally curated—Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering?
Becky Cloonan: There’s so many stories and only so much time. The amount of comics I’d like to make compared to what I can draw in a given month (while still maintaining a semblance of a sleep schedule) is a pretty unwieldy ratio. That’s where short stories come in—collections like this let me explore ideas I wouldn’t otherwise be able to get to, and I get to do it alongside creators whose work I absolutely adore!
The idea for Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering arrived after Somna—I wanted to take a breather before diving into my next solo book. (Ironically, Come Find Me offers a glimpse into themes and ideas from my upcoming new series, sort of like how my story in The Devil’s Cut with Tula Lotay was like a proof of concept for Somna.)
The stories in Come Find Me cultivate a Romantic, elegiac sense of decay and terror that would be at home in myths, folk tales, and Victorian novels. The horror in these stories is subtle, designed to worm themselves into your subconscious. Every page in this collection seethes.
Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering Cover B by HamletMachine
There's a real art to the short story because you have to be economical with your words and what you choose to illustrate, right? You don't want to fill the little real estate you have with exposition either. For example, when you look at a corpse, and all that's left are bones, you have to look at the clothes still on to tell you more of the story.
Cloonan: Absolutely. The idiom show, don’t tell is never more relevant than in these formats. Comics is inherently a graphic medium, and these are nice reminders to let the art tell the story, with dialogue and captions acting as lyrical beats that guide you through the story.
I like comics that don’t give you everything on the surface. I like short stories that let me decipher the nuance, where I can pick apart detail and draw my own conclusions.
Titles of short story collections are fascinating since they can have a life of their own when they're eventually collected. Titles have been far more interesting in recent years too, sometimes being full blown sentences, lengthy questions, or like this one, a call for action. How did you arrive at "Come Find Me"? And a follow up, is there a through line that connects the stories in Come Find Me, or perhaps a theme that ties them together?
Cloonan: "Come Find Me" is a line from a Sylvia Plath poem, The Snowman on the Moor. It’s a stark, haunting poem, and the line stuck out to me. It could be a command, a taunt, a tease, a dare, a temptation… It had a feeling reminiscent of Daphne Du Maurier’s short story "Don’t Look Now," or MR James’s chilling "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad." When in doubt, consult a poem!
The cartoonists I asked to contribute all have a similar vibe that connects the work on a visceral level I can’t really articulate! It’s a bit like making a mixtape—sure the art might not all look the same, but there is a chemistry in the art that binds these stories together. It’s not exactly folk horror, but it leans heavy in that direction. They all feel like stories you’d tell around a fire.
Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering Cover C by Jenn Ely
Because this is a macabre collection, and it's right in your wheelhouse, having drawn the demonic and dead as much as you have, do you find drawing the dead and demonic to be as or more satisfying than drawing the good and the living?
Cloonan: Yes. Yes I do. [laughs[
Let's delve into how you curated this collection. It's one thing to create a short or serialized story, but to assemble it, creator-by-creator, story-by-story, to me, seems like a whole other hat to wear. Were you inspired by Eric Powell's Four Gathered on Christmas Eve?
Cloonan: For sure. Four Gathered on Christmas Eve was so much fun to work on—Eric went above and beyond, tying the stories together literally with a conversation between all of us (you really need to read this book if you haven’t, if only for Eric’s brilliant cartooning!) I think my favorite collections have always been focused, shorter compilations, where each story has the space to breathe.
Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering really took shape after a few conversations with editors Will Dennis and Sean Edgar, who were both incredibly enthusiastic when I told them the idea! E.M. Carroll created one of my favorite graphic novels of all time in Through The Woods. HamletMachine (whose work I have loved for decades) has grown their own insidious, erotic library online (Hamlet has some amazing art in the Somna Cover Gallery!). I’ve been a massive fan of Vanesa R. Del Rey's moody, alluring art for years. I read Molly Mendoza’s comic Stray three times in a row when I first bought it, and Celine Loup—god where do I even start? I get goosebumps just thinking of her incredible The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs.
What went into that process and because you were heading this up, did you have any (editorial) guidance on the other stories?
Cloonan: Not much! I gave some input here and there where I felt like it’d help the story, but honestly almost everyone handed in stories that were ready to go! (I think I’m probably most critical of my own work hehe).
Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering Cover D by Eliza Ivanova
Let's talk about the other components of Come Find Me, especially for those who aren't as familiar with storytellers behind them. Tell us what drew you to that creator's work and your impressions of their Come Find Me story? Starting with E.M. Carroll's "The Warmth of the Hunt" which is about those moments after you're long dead, but all the blood, the moisture is gone from the corpse. It's told in a way that's so... terrifying!
Cloonan: E.M. Carroll makes timeless stories, that kind of transcend comics and read like visual poems. (You know how I feel about poetry.) Her story about vengeance in the afterlife and toxic lovers just seeps with mood and decay.
Molly Mendoza's "Down By The Water" seems like a simple tale of betrayal but it's quite sinister though.
Cloonan: Molly makes such lush, vibrant work--and yes…this story takes turns into body horror with a reveal I wouldn't spoil here. The insidious details laid throughout, I gasped! You’re gonna want to read this one a few times to let it all seep in!
Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering Cover E by Abigail Larson
Then we come to HamletMachine's The Devil's Trill, we see a man undergoing a transformation, a metamorphosis.
Cloonan: Nobody weaves gothic horror with modern sensibilities better than HamletMachine. It’s such a harmony of indie and manga sensibilities, blending erotica with gothic horror in a way that feels so easy. This is an introduction to a character they created a while ago, so hopefully we’ll be seeing more of him >:D
That feels like we've only scratched the surface of Come Find Me. What else can readers look forward to?
Cloonan:
Passion.
Regret.
Secrets.
Bargains.
Atrocities.
Despair.
Vengeance.
Often in that order.
