Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes’ Hobtown Mystery Stories Vol. 1: The Case Of The Missing Men arrives at Oni Press in a brand new color edition for the first time, bringing the odd teen detective story to a much wider audience.
With another two volumes of the paranormal mystery series on the way from Oni Press, we thought it was high time to speak to Bertin and Forbes about their eclectic and engaging tale in this exclusive interview.
For those unfamiliar with the comics, how would you describe Hobtown Mystery Stories?
Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes: Hobtown Mystery Stories is an ongoing horror-mystery graphic novel series that follows a group of kids who discover themselves—and what’s wrong with their little town. It’s a cross-genre story inspired by the pulp detective books of long ago (Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Tom Swift), but instilled with surreal, Ito-esque horror, humour and lots of heart. There’s a detective club, psychic visions, murderous men in yellow raincoats and paper plate masks, a hairy two-foot creature that can climb inside of people, secret societies at war for a hidden, mystical secret—and that’s just in the first book!
What were your initial experiences with creating the comic originally and what was the inspiration for it?
Bertin and Forbes: The idea really was to make a story that encapsulated everything we loved: strange regional folklore about little people and second sight, funny and unique characters, quirky and bizarre townspeople, and genuinely frightening inexplicable phenomenon. The inspiration came from having grown up together in a small town where ignorance was a virtue, strange and inexplicable things happened all the time, and all around you was the endless, haunting beauty of the forest. As corny as it sounds, we also made it for each other—with both of us adding things specifically to make the other one laugh, enjoy or be inspired by—and as a testament to our friendship itself.
The art style is very unique and captivating. How do you use your format/style to capture the mundane and the unusual?
Bertin and Forbes: Thank you! I’m glad you mentioned the mundane along with the unusual, because you need to show one for the other to mean anything. Where style is concerned, we try to do what best serves the story. It’s important that the setting feels real, that the characters are expressive, and that the art closely reflects what’s in the script. We like to do a lot of manga-style asides, where a single panel showcasing the setting might be its own page, like cutting to an image of the peaceful harbor at midday. That helps ground the story in the real world, to give us a sense of time and place. Cartooning is also important in the sense that we can make flexible characters that are sometimes more realistic looking and other times more expressive than a human ever could be.
What went into designing all of the ancillary materials like the menus?
Bertin and Forbes: We wanted to make sure these new editions had things that the original didn’t (including a page that was omitted from the first ones), and our editor Zack Soto suggested making a map. But it didn’t feel right to have it be something telegraphed and curated by us for the readers, so we went with something by Hobtowners for Hobtowners. The ‘menu’ is the kind of place mat you’d see at diner, a cheap tourism map with lots of funny little ads, complete with typos and coupons, that helps immerse the reader into the world of Hobtown.
Every business advertised has an important role in the story, both now and in the future, and offers up a whiff of the special sauce of what makes Hobtown Hobtown: kitschy weirdness, a sense of humour, and an imposing, menacing ignorance that colors everything. Our designer Sarah “Rocky” Rockwell did great work to make it look distressed and chewed-up, and also helped do the layout for all the other notes, sketches and ephemera.
You originally published Hobtown in black and white. How does your comic look in color and how do they change and/or enhance the content?
Bertin and Forbes: Having changed publishers, it felt important to offer something new to the reader, and color was a great way to do that. We had always intended the story to be in color but it ended up black and white out of necessity, so it feels like we’re sharing it as we’ve always seen it in our mind’s eye. Jason Fischer-Kouhi, our colorist, is enormously talented and managed to capture precisely what we saw: a world of drab greens and browns that can erupt into sickly rain slicker yellow when you least expect it. In terms of what it offers the reader, I think it allows details that were lost to pop, and enhances the extremely-detailed, delicate linework, too.
Hobtown is an excellent blend of realism and the supernatural/odd. How do you strike a balance between them?
Bertin and Forbes: One always powers the other, in some way. Nothing horrifying or frightening can really scare you if there’s no grounding force, like realism. Reality is what’s unzipped so that the uncanny can crawl out, but you have to be careful with it. When something shows up that’s not supposed to be there—like when Denny, one of our characters is watching a parade and sees a tiny, hairy gnome-like creature marching down the street along with the revellers—it’s more shocking if we’re already immersed in the real world, completely unprepared for it.
Will we be getting more editions from Oni Press?
Bertin and Forbes: We’ll be getting The Cursed Hermit in Fall 2024, and then The Secret of the Saucer in 2025. Hermit was already published with Conundrum Press in 2019 in black and white, so it’s a reprint (in color), but Saucer will be the first new Hobtown book in 5 years. It follows Dana as she loses control of herself, her friends, the detective club, and time itself. Told in reverse chronological order (beginning at the end and working backwards), it throws the reader into the deep end of the Hobtown pool and asks them to swim through the utter insanity of a violent riot, a saucer invasion, biker gangs, and a psychic gang bent on revenge! After that, expect two more: A Journey Into the Abyss and The Return of the Mini-Man.
Hobtown Mystery Stories Vol. 1: The Case Of The Missing Men is currently available in finer comic book shops everywhere.
