While I wasn’t able to take on too many interviews while at San Diego Comic-Con, there were a handful of comic book creators that I was really excited to speak with. On the top of my list was Stephanie Williams, who has been having an especially exciting run of excellent comic book releases, Eisner nominations for “Best Writer” and “Best New Series,” and a number of new title announcements. I caught up with Williams at the Ignition Press Pavilion to discuss the must-read Roots of Madness, but we also talked about early horror movie experiences, upcoming releases, and more:
Congratulations on your Eisner nominations and all of the exciting SDCC announcements! For Daily Dead readers, I’m excited to dive into Roots of Madness. But first, I wanted to go back to the start of your love of horror. What are some of your first horror movie memories?
Stephanie Williams: It was actually the first Chucky. I was not supposed to watch it… I was four. I snuck out of my room and my parents didn’t know I was awake, peeking behind the couch. It gave me nightmares. It traumatized me. I would not play with my Barbies or anything after that.
But, there was something about that experience that I was like, “Oh, this is different. This thing that I’m watching is keeping me up at night.”
Moving forward, because I grew up in a household that was kind of religious—which is kind of weird that my parents were even watching Chucky anyway—we didn’t do a lot of Halloween celebrations. We did do something called Hallo-lujah Night at the church that we went to, which in itself was horror because the candy that they give out was like peppermints and oranges… and that’s it.
Creature features are something that I really enjoy. I was about six or seven [when I saw] Them… it’s the 1950s [movie with] ants, really big ants. Them and the black and white Tarantula movie are where I was just like, “I see other facets of horror. It’s not just scary redheaded dolls. It can be creatures.” Those were my very first interactions with horror. Very different reactions to both, but I just knew eventually it was going to be something that I just loved.
It wasn’t until I got into my adulthood that I was able to really explore horror in a way that I’m like, “This is actually something that’s very liberating.” I find that horror can be very cathartic because you’re talking about things that either scare you or that you’re afraid of, whether it be physically or mentally.
You can have these fantastical elements that bring people in, but you keep them interested with complex characters and emotions. It’s what I really love about Roots of Madness, which really does an excellent job of weaving grounded characters with the supernatural. What inspired the characters and story of Roots of Madness?
Stephanie Williams: It was a conversation I was having with my best friend. It was a Tuesday. We were talking about Madam C.J. Walker, as you randomly do on a Tuesday. I was telling him about my misconception about [Walker] in the third grade. I was like, “I heard ‘chemistry’ from my teacher and I just ran with that. Didn’t listen to anything else about her being the first Black woman to be a millionaire.” I was kind of stuck on chemistry because I liked science early on and that just really fascinated me. This woman was making her own hair stuff and I was like, “That is pretty cool.” Then, I later learned like, “You were a little wrong about her being a chemist, but she kind of was in a holistic way.”
For Roots, originally I was going to do a revisionist history of her story, but then I was like, “I’ll just do the character inspired by that misconception.” For my [Roots of Madness] character, Etta, a lot of these characters are named after women in my family, women who have passed down actual home remedies that I’ve either used or had greater plans for, so that’s one piece of it.
The other piece is that I love historical romance. Beverly Jenkins: I love her books, and she does a really great job of weaving in history in a way that is from a Black lens, so it’s not just focused on the trauma. There’s celebration there, with characters finding love and happiness, which I think was really important for me. That gave me the courage to set the story in the 1905 post-Reconstruction era and focus on this character who is trying to go beyond the limitations that her family has set on her for her own safety. Growing up, there were different things that my mom and my dad would tell me to keep me safe, but I was like, “Well, what if I use these tools to go beyond?” Which I’m currently doing right now as a comic writer. They would’ve never expected that.
Science isn’t always safe because grants get canceled all the time and things happen. It’s really using those tools of survival and taking them beyond, so that to me was the cosmic core of it all: What does that unknown look like? That’s a little scary because you don’t know. Will you fail? Will you do great things? Will you mess things up for someone else? Will you mess things up for yourself? [Roots of Madness] was really an exploration into that.
I was really fascinated by how the story dealt with the things you get passed down generationally, whether it’s actively or passively, and the butterfly effect of everything. We are, to some degree, the composition of all these decisions and events that happen, good and bad.
Can you talk about working with Letizia Cadonici and that collaboration? I’m always interested in learning how a story may have changed from its initial concept to when you two started collaborating together. Did that happen while working on Roots of Madness?
Stephanie Williams: That happens on anything that I work on. My outlines are there as a roadmap, but sometimes there are deviations because I’ve found as I’m writing stories, sometimes the characters begin to inform me in ways that I didn’t know. As you’re writing, you get to know your characters in a different way from the outline. Because the outline is setting the framework and the groundwork for them, but I feel like when you actually begin writing the story and it comes together, you’re actually getting to know them in action.
I was a big fan of Letizia prior to [us working together]. The moment that my editor was like, “Hey, would you be interested?” I’m like, “Yes,” because I could see Roots in her art style. She just really brought it, so much so that for the final issue, there’s two different versions. There was one version that’s completely different that I originally wrote, and then I read it and I was like, “Well, let me write another version and see how that pans out.” When she did the layouts for that, I was like, “Okay, this is going to be the one.” It was all informed by her art.
It’s such a fascinating process. Something that not everybody thinks about is that it’s rarely just a script handoff. In a lot of cases, it’s a back and forth and weaving of ideas into something that you two couldn’t have created individually. It’s magical.
Stephanie Williams: You’re in conversation with your collaborators. I think some of the best comic work comes out of that when you’re in conversation with your collaborator.
It’s always a treat to me when I get either layouts or pages back and the artist has either combined a panel or put an additional panel, or the facial expression or the action is a little bit different. I’m like, “I would’ve never seen it that way, but I’m so happy you did because this makes sense to the story.”
We talked a little bit about your horror past, but how about the present? What are some of the horror that inspires you or that you’ve been really excited about?
Stephanie Williams: I just saw Obsession, Backrooms, and Send Help. Obsession, I love. I don’t need to see it again; one time was enough, but I loved that the entire time I was uncomfortable. There was never a moment during that movie where I felt like I could relax. I enjoyed being unsettled. Same thing with Backrooms. Even though liminal spaces are endless, at the same time, I felt claustrophobic and that was an emotion I wasn’t expecting to feel while watching that. Both of those storytellers are very young, and for them to have such a commanding presence through their work, I found that very inspiring. Together is another movie that I recently watched. It was weird, but I really enjoyed it. Send Help was hilarious, and shout out to Sam Raimi for being absolutely disgusting but at the same time making it work. Those are some of the things that I’ve watched recently, and I’ve been like, “I want to do more horror.”
Speaking of… are there any upcoming horror projects you can talk about?
Stephanie Williams: Yes, Any Given Smile. I’m tapping into the Smile universe through IDW Dark and their partnership with Paramount. It is the Smile entity coming to football. I’m a huge sports fan. People don’t know that, but they’re going to know it now. It’s funny because around the time that I pitched it, that was before a lot of the sports gambling scandals started to come out, and my book is kind of focused on sports gambling and the Smile entity weaving its way in through that. I’m very excited about it, and that comes out September 23rd.
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Roots of Madness is currently available via Ignition Press as a 6-issue miniseries, with a collected edition of all six issues on the way in September:
When traditional remedies meet a new frontier of science — can long kept family secrets help the world, or doom us all to cosmic oblivion?
In a terrifying body horror reimagining of Madam CJ Walker’s life, Etta Knight must break a generational curse or succumb to the maw of madness!
At the turn of the 20th century, a young Black woman named Etta Knight picks up the tradition of her late mother for creating special medicines using natural ingredients and secrets passed down from generation to generation. Her mother has passed on a book of recipes and formulas, but it’s also full of strange symbols and dark musings that she doesn’t quite understand. Within her community, one of the problems she hopes to fix is counteracting the poisonous and abrasive solutions women of color are sold for straightening her hair.
So, when the Meridian Fellowship reaches out and offers her a spot at their institute in Savannah, GA, to use their facilities to do her research, Etta jumps at the chance. She packs up her mother’s book and heads to the school, but what she finds there is a secret society and a campus surrounded by natural wonders that may point the way to understanding the more mysterious parts of her mother’s work…if dark forces don’t claim her first.
Inspired by the life of Madame CJ Walker, this alternate history combines tradition with the supernatural for something truly modern and unique.
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And be on the lookout for Any Given Smile! The first issue releases on September 23rd from IDW Dark.
Scaring comic shops this September is ANY GIVEN SMILE, a frightening five-issue story crafted by Eisner Award-nominated writer Stephanie Williams, GLAAD Media Award-winning artist Pablo Collar, and featuring colors by Triona Farrell and letters by Ariana Maher.
The year is 1995 and all eyes are on the American Arena League football championship game. The Sharks gear up for the most significant event in the AAL’s 20-year history, and their sudden-star backup quarterback is feeling the pressure from his teammates, his fans, and his debts to the city’s gambling underworld. A string of suicides hits the community hard, drawing a suspicious sports journalist deeper into that world to examine their connection to the big game. No one can trust anything or anyone as a mind-bending and mysterious Smile Entity and its horrifying visions threaten their payouts, their sanity, and their lives…
