An Interview With V.V. Glass On ‘Scream! 40 Years Of Terror’

Exploring a part of the Paris Catacombs that isn’t open to the public might get you more subscribers, but is it worth the risk? That’s what Thibault and Diane have to decide in ‘Inverted Burial’, a new story for the Scream! 40 Years of Terror special by V.V. Glass. With letters by Jonathan Stevenson, here’s what Glass had to reveal about their frightening tale and setting it underground:

Rachel Bellwoar: While some of the stories in this Scream! special are based on existing properties (like The Thirteenth Floor and The Dracula File), ‘Inverted Burial’ is a wholly original idea. How did you get involved in the project, especially with an all-new story?

V.V. Glass: I’ve done some work with Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics before, in the same mode as this anthology – I did a bit of work on The Thirteenth Floor, and a couple of stories for Scream’s sister series Misty and Tammy & Jinty, among others. I’ve ‘subtly expressed an interest’ in doing as much horror stuff as they’ll let me, and the last time I (co)wrote something for a Rebellion anthology it was an original horror short, so presumably that encouraged them to let me do the same for this too.

Bellwoar: ‘Inverted Burial’ follows Thibault and Diane as they record an episode of their webseries, Cataphiles. Were you inspired by any particular shows?

Glass: I got most of their characterisation from urbex YouTube channels, which tend to be either high-production bro-tinged sensationalism or silent men with GoPros walking around the most unsafe looking places you’ve ever seen. Most of them have multi-million follower counts, especially the ones speculating about ghosts and radiation for clicks, so I thought that a small urbex channel trying to compete with the large lads might take unnecessary risks to get ahead.

That’s also why Thibs & Diane speak English on camera: non-anglophone channels don’t do as well!

Bellwoar: What made you decide to set this story in the Paris Catacombs and have you ever been these before?

Glass: I have the standard modern human’s fixation on underground complexes, so it was going to be set in one of those no matter what. It was actually a toss-up between setting it in the Odessa Catacombs and Paris, but I have a French friend who’s been into the restricted parts of the Catacombs a few times and could help with the details, whereas I don’t know any Ukranian cataphiles.

There’s also an interesting contrast between the accessible areas of the Paris Catacombs and the parts closed off to the public. The accessible ossuaries should be scary by definition, but everyone’s seen them in subreddits and on film, so at this point they’re really not. The inaccessible parts – which are just old sewers and tunnels – should be boring, but they have potential to be genuinely threatening because they’re unknown. So I liked the idea that these two Youtubers are unfazed by walls made of bones, but scared once they’re into the areas no-one’s over-documented.

And no, I have not and will not be going to any subterra death mazes.

Bellwoar: It all gets messy because Thibault and Diane want to make their content stand out on the internet. Do you think that drive for views is inherently dangerous?

Glass: Broadly that drive is responsible for a lot of low-effort and high-exploitation content, which is a net bad whatever you think about the internet itself. Usually when content creators are chasing fame (and views) they end up exploiting other people, and I’d say that end of things is more dangerous than a creator putting themselves in danger for views.

Not to yell at clouds, but when your motivation for producing anything is to gain or maintain an audience, rather than the process or product in itself, it’s going to end poorly.

Bellwoar: I love how you use the panels in this story to create a sense of claustrophobia. Are you someone who fares well in tight spaces?

Glass: No, why’d you think I made this in the first place! I’m reasonably alright with small spaces, actually, but small spaces underground are an entirely different thing. Being in a super deep crevice has a different sensation to it than getting inside the airing cupboard. For whatever reason you can feel the amount of matter above you, there’s a direct animal reaction of being trapped, or the possibility of being trapped.

Bellwoar: There’s also very little light underground. Did that create any challenges, art-wise?

Glass: It did create an ongoing problem of how much to show, and how to balance believability with ‘being able to see anything’.

When you look at footage of people exploring the Catacombs in real life, you can just about see their torchbeams and nothing else, but 6.5 pages of black with the occasional circle of wall wouldn’t be ideal, so I ended up with a lot of ambient light for the sake of Art. But that also created ways to control how and what the reader sees through in-panel areas of light and dark, which ended up being kind of a shortcut to dread.

Bellwoar: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, V.V.!

Scream!: 40 Years of Terror goes on sale November 4th from Treasury of British Comics.