SDCC 2024: Becky Cloonan Talks Working On ‘The War’ With Garth Ennis For Boom! Studio’s ‘Hello Darkness’

Hello Darkness — the horror anthology series from Boom! Studios — is an eclectic mix of terrifying ideas and worlds. From children picking up a “social virus,” to a special Something is Killing The Children tale, it is an exploration of all things horrific. But in “The War” by Garth Ennis and Becky Cloonan, the horror is something closer to home: the threat of nuclear conflict. At Comic-Con International: San Diego 2024, Comicon.com Editor-in-Chief Erik Amaya had the opportunity to talk to Cloonan about “The War,” working with Ennis, and the heavy topics couched in what might be the most grounded Hello Darkness tale.

Erik Amaya: I’ve never had the chance to talk to someone who drew a Garth Ennis script before. What is that like?

Becky Cloonan: Oh man, Garth is such a great writer and it’s masterful. I read it and as someone who started writing comics a little more recently, I feel like I always learn a lot from reading his scripts. It’s so funny. I think as an artist, I might approach the writing a little differently because I’ll write for the artist where I think Garth has a singular vision and is like, “This is how I want it to look.” I always think “Well, this person is really good at drawing intimate conversations or getting really into character stuff, or this person does really good action.” So I’ll put more of that in the story just to showcase that.

I was talking to Garth about it when we were in New York. We were at a bar and he asked, “How’s writing going and stuff?” We just started talking craft a little bit. And I was like, “Yeah, sometimes I just let the artist do what they want. I am like, Hey, maybe here’s a suggestion, but if you don’t want to do this, do whatever the hell, whatever works for you.” Because sometimes as an artist, I’ll get lost in the weeds and then I’ll have to change a script, change some panels. And Garth said “Oh no, I’m not like that. Whatever I write, I expect the artist to draw.”

And then when I started working with him, I would hear that in my mind echoing. “I expect the artist to draw … to draw … to draw …” So yeah, that put a little bit of pressure. He’s also legend and I want to do the script justice. His scripts are immaculate, you know what I mean? They’re just powerful, very well written.

So much of this first chapter is about the dread of war. What flourishes or compositions did you use to evoke that on the page?

Cloonan: The first chapter is very much setting up the friends and setting up their dynamic; each couple — it’s about four different couples — and so there’s eight people. I really wanted to get each character across. For me, that was the most important thing because of course, this is a Garth’s script, so everyone is happy. Nothing goes wrong, everything’s beautiful, nothing’s going to hurt [laughs]. So I wanted readers to really empathize with these characters or relate with them or be like, I know someone who’s like this just in their gestures and their expressions. So that way when things do start hitting the fan, you really feel it because you’re like, “No, I liked that character!”

As we go on, I think the tension just ramps up. The action kicks in. The dread, of course is there. It’s about maintaining that tension and never really breaking it. So it’s really getting into, for me, it’s the character moments that I really dig into and heightening that sense of dread through the emotions of the characters.

Since we start in that apartment interior, it’s not immediately clear where this is taking place — then we get the Britishism and, eventually, confirmation that we’re in New York. Did you both want it to feel that universal?

Cloonan: That’s how Garth writes. He knows that the readers aren’t idiots. You know what I mean? You’ll figure it out as you read it. And nothing has to be said right up front because it’s [established in] the place it becomes important. But right away, you don’t need to know that. You will learn it organically through the story, which I really like. It treats the readers as they are. They’re smart, they’re reading, they’ve got good comprehension. And I feel like a lot of our scripts are like that. He’s not spoon-feeding you. He’s talking to you like a peer, like an adult, and it’s very smart.

I know I’m the person in the the chapter who has to unplug every so often, and I do feel kind of guilty about it, but it’s also for my sanity. I have to just stop and say, “Okay, but it isn’t panic on the streets right now.” Where are you on that wavelength of keeping up with news and being plugged in?

Cloonan: My dad, when I was growing up, he would make me read the World Nation section in the paper every morning. And then he would quiz me on what was going on in each area. I was 10-years-old and I knew who Gorbachev was. Or all of these political figures. I just learned that this is what you do because you should just stay informed. And I do believe that’s important. There’s a few news sites that I’ll read just to keep up with things, but I also … I took Twitter off my phone. I still have my account and it signed in on one device that I don’t really use, and I only use it to retweet stuff basically. Instagram I still use, and I think there’s so much noise … it’s hard because there are so many places you could get your news, but I think you can get lost in it, and it’s so easy to do. There were points in my life when I was watching C-SPAN because I was like, “I got to know what’s going on, but it’ll just make you mad.”

So I try to not get lost in it because, like you’re saying, society hasn’t collapsed completely yet. And when it does, I hope people still read comics because I’m still going to be making comics.

While the other stories in Hello, Darkness employs what I’ll call it “fictitious horror,” what we find in “The War” is very close to reality.

Cloonan: Yeah. Uncomfortably close to reality. It’s terrifying.

Is that something that’s going to continue as it goes on or will it be a little bit more speculative?

Cloonan: “The War” goes to a very, very, very dark place. It’s maybe the darkest comic I’ve ever worked on. It’s upsetting, it’s disturbing, it’s harrowing. And after I read the script, I was like, “Oh my God! First of all: how am I going to draw it and do this justice and bring the weight of these scripts to the drawn page?” So that’s no pressure for me [laughs]. It goes to a place that’s imagining what happens in a nuclear war. But as Americans, I don’t think we have that lived experience. Japan’s the only place that has lived through that and look at how it’s affected their culture. You can see that subtext and that “still working out these feelings” through the art and the even anime — it’s supposed to be lighthearted and everything, but then you can see it’s in a lot. I don’t think we have that, and this book touches on what would that be like for us. Where would we be? What does it take away from us? Where does it leave our humanity?

It feels real, and I think that’s the important part.

Is it tough to hew that close to reality or is it kind of nice to be “Okay, a car is a car or an apartment a familiar environment?”

Cloonan: I hate drawing cars, so it’s miserable for me [laughs], but it’s kind of nice to have Garth throwing stuff at me that I don’t like to draw. As a draftsman, I have to turn that off and be like, “Okay, I need to draw this car, even though I hate doing it.” I think that makes me a better artist. And if it’s left to my own devices, of course I would only be drawing horses. And then it’s like, do people need that? I don’t know [laughs]. So it keeps me on my toes and it sharpens the blade a little bit.

With “The War,” you’re thinking about so many different things also. You’re trying to make it real, but also I am thinking about pacing and the cinematography of what angles am I choosing for the shot and what does Garth want? And how does the dialogue feel? What’s the pacing of the dialogue and how can I emphasize that with the angles I’m choosing? And so there’s so much going through your head as an artist and it’s hard to parse out exactly what you’re thinking at any given point in time because you’re thinking about so many different things and how to make this story work. What’s the page turn going to be like?

This is a tough one: can we actually ever learn from our mistakes?

Cloonan: No. No, no. Not at all. We will never learn. I’m positive we can get better, certainly, and I think we can progress as a society and treat people more kindly. But look at history. Oh my god, we’ve been making the same mistakes for, I dunno, 10,000 years. Does written history go that far back? But you hear about old ancient Egyptian papyrus and stuff, and they’ll find it’s a letter that was written by a teenage son to his mom, and it’s the same stuff [as now]. He’s like, “Oh, I don’t have new clothes. Everyone’s making fun of me because you didn’t give me new clothes. You’re so stingy.” It’s the same stuff that people are afraid of. When you look at ancient Roman graffiti, it’s the same stuff that you see now.

My favorite is the cuneiform tablet that’s basically a bad Yelp review.

Cloonan: Yeah, yeah! Humanity … we’re just, we’re the same. We’ve evolved to the maximum point that we can evolve, I think. And it’s a matter of, I dunno, harm reduction at this point.

Is that an anchor for the story or is it just kind of its own little moment for these characters in the first chapter?

Cloonan: I think it’s a character moment. You’ll see there’s a lot of growth between characters in such a very short amount of time. Each issue is half size, basically — between 11 and 14 pages. And you can see character growth. You can see there’s drama. There’s a lot of tension between these characters. So seeing how Garth does that is pretty incredible. He’s managed to make all these characters feel like individuals right off the bat. And then, I’m just trying to add as much weight as I can give to make this as good as possible.

Hello, Darkness #1 is on stands now. “The War” continues through issue #7.