Adam Szym’s Little Visitor & Other Abductions graphic novel collection from Oni Press is a triptych of otherworldly science fiction and horror stories concerning alien abduction and the negligence and malice that allows it to happen to unsuspecting individuals.
We spoke to Szym about his stories and how they all fit together around his central theme in our exclusive interview with the author.
How did you come up with the idea to create a triptych of otherworldly science fiction horror stories in a graphic novel?
Adam Szym: It was sort of accidental. I conceived of the title story, Little Visitor, after reading about the spate of copycat films which released all around the world after E.T. the Extraterrestrial’s incredible success. They’re uniformly awful with hilariously ugly creatures at their center, but there was something there worth mining. That story arrived in a very complete form in my mind, and from there more and more ideas for alien abduction stories came to me, and I knew I wanted to pursue a thematic collection.
Did you come up with one story first and then tailor the others to fit the first’s theme or was the theme the central idea at the start?
Szym: Working on Little Visitor made me remember how equally scared and compelled I was by alien abduction stories as a child. They were everywhere in the 90s, from The X-Files to cable TV documentary specials with cheesy reenactments. So once that dormant interest was awoken it was hard to stop coming up with ideas, building a collection became a natural next step. I still have a few great ideas for more stories in this vein, but they’ll have to wait a long time lest I become known as just “the alien abduction guy.”
I also found that abduction was a rich inciting event around which to center things which allowed me to dig into some fears and anxieties I have about the world.
How do you blend sci-fi and horror elements in the stories? Do you consider them more of one of the genres?
Szym: I definitely consider these stories to be more horror than sci-fi. The aliens are very much in the background of all three, barely seen at all, which was by design. The only story that veers more into the sci-fi realm is Frolicker, but even there the science fiction elements are backgrounded. I’m much more interested in the emotional experiences of the characters than the speculative elements, I guess, but those elements are important in their own way.
Which of your stories could you see yourself in and would you behave the same way?
Szym: God, I hope none of them! I don’t want anything to do with the aliens in these stories. But I think they all have elements that, unfortunately, rhyme with the real world. They’re very rooted in anxieties I have about where the world is going, how people treat each other and how systems treat people, so in that sense I can see myself, and many other people, in all three stories.
In terms of the art, how would you describe the style?
Szym: That’s a good question. All three stories have a very different aesthetic in terms of page design and flow, but I made a point to have the actual drawing feel of a piece between the three. They’re all dark, austere, and grounded, but each story has its own visual flavor, I hope.
Do you have a favorite sci-fi/horror anthology from any medium?
Szym: I don’t know that I have a favorite, but I recently read through Dark Horse’s compendium of Richard Corben’s work from Creepy Magazine and it’s pretty incredible and inspiring. The writing isn’t always great but it doesn’t matter when the art is that good.
In TV I’ll shout out David Prior’s episode of Cabinet of Curiosities titled “The Autopsy”. Incredible work, and if you read my book you can tell it’s very much up my alley.
In prose I can always recommend John Langan’s story collections, and also recently read and loved T.E.D. Klein’s 1985 collection Dark Gods. Those stories have been chewing on my brain a lot lately.
