Sewer Mutant Interviews Cry for Dawn Co-Creator Joe Linsner
I just published an article on the rise and fall of Cry for Dawn, the influential Outlaw Comics/horror anthology from the late 80s/early 90s. Co-creators Joe Monks and Joe Linsner were kind enough to provide lengthy answers to my questions. There was far more material than I could use in the article, so I’m publishing their responses in full. Linsner’s interview is below. Monks’s interview is here. For his latest updates, follow Linsner on Facebook.
Sewer Mutant: How did you and Joe Monks meet? What made you decide to put a comic together?
I met Joe Monks in 5th grade. In high school we toyed around with the idea of doing a comic book horror anthology. After high school, while I was showing my work at conventions trying to get into the biz, I found out that you could print 5,000 copies of a black and white comic with a two-color cover for $1500. That sounded very achievable, so I turned to Monks and suggested that we actually do a horror anthology comic — for real. Not just putz around and talk about it, but really knuckle down and do it. It was only supposed to be a one-shot, because I had dozens of other things I wanted to do. A lot of my heroes, like Frazetta, Wrightson, and Corben had started out doing short horror stories, so it seemed like a nice place to start my career. I figured that if it all went to hell, I’d at least have a full comic to use as a calling card.
Sewer Mutant: Did you try submitting the book to other publishers, or was self-publishing always the plan?
The plan was to do it and then self-publish. But we saw no harm in shopping it around. We showed it to a few guys but were told crazy things like we’d have to wait two years for it to fit into their schedule. Stephen Bissette is a saint because he showed us all of the nuts and bolts of publishing, and told us the smartest thing to do was just do it ourselves. He even wrote us an intro for free, which was so cool of him to do. I owe him so much!
Sewer Mutant: What was the response like? It sounds like you sold through a lot of print runs without much if any media coverage.
When folks got a chance to actually see the book and flip through it, we always had a good response. We had printing overruns on our books of just a few thousand copies, and they’d always sell out. We had no money for advertising, so we did 10 gazillion conventions trying to spread the word. Those days were fun. At the same time I was using issues of Cry For Dawn to try and get work at Marvel and DC, but they just didn’t get it. I showed it to Dick Giordano and all he had to say was “there are too many talking head shots.” Well, if you actually read the story, you’ll see that there is a reason for that. I was young and dumb, and I thought that they would be impressed that I could handle the dull stuff, the talking head shots. But no such luck. My BIG problem was that I was totally out of step with the times. Mainstream comics were getting dumber, with tons of two-page spreads that did nothing to advance the story. And there I was focusing on tiny gestures in stories about inner turmoil. I should have known better.
Sewer Mutant: An ad for Angry Christ Comix mentioned that it included the “infamous” Birthmarks story… was that story particularly controversial?
A lot of folks thought it was gross, but that’s only natural for a horror comic. We tried to push the envelope. I like nonconventional horror stories — for example, to me Apocalypse Now is a horror movie. It has none of the cliches, but the whole movie is neck-deep with this overwhelming sense of dread — and that to me is what horror is all about. It is NOT Freddy Kruger, it is not Jason. That’s teenage spooky stuff. True horror is a dark mood where you feel like you’ll never see the sun again. The Exorcist captures that. Carpenter’s The Thing captures that. And so does Apocalypse Now. Kurtz even says, “the horror, the horror…” So the “Birthmarks” story was more about dread and anxiety than anything blatantly horrific.
I think we got called “extreme’ because of that dumb abortion story in the first issue. If I could do it all over again, I’d skip that story. Ironically, the first issue was originally going to feature a gothic fairy tale story written by my then girlfriend. But we broke up, and so I drew the abortion story instead (which will probably never be reprinted).
Sewer Mutant: I shared some of my criticism of Cry for Dawn, particularly your stories “Burns Brightest” and “Purity Through Fire.” Do you have any response to that? [See article for more]
About “Burns Brightest:” The point I was after in the story is that the protagonist Jules only starts to live and come out of his shell once he finds out he has A.I.D.S., which at the time was a terminal disease. He ultimately confronts the girl who infected him, and almost thanks her for opening up the world for him. He was going to shoot her, but decides not to. His revenge on her is dumping all of this into her lap. When he ditches his gun down a sewer grate, he lets go of his anger at the world. He won’t be “serial fucking” anymore. The last panel shows him heading straight towards a subway entrance while he stares at the sunrise — the idea being that he knows he is heading towards his death (the dark subway) , but he can still cherish the sun and every moment he has left. This story was a big departure for me, and I was interested in exploring subtleties. “How much can I get across without spelling everything out?” Also, I love non-conventional narratives, which is why Jules doesn’t get struck by lightning at the end of the story. He’s a victim as well. The whole situation is horrible, which is why I thought of it as a horror story. There is no ultimate clean resolution. I suppose the story wasn’t 100% successful, but lots of people read it and got everything out of it that I intended. It’s all a work in progress, but if I did that story today I might be more direct.
“Purity Through Fire” was a failed experiment. I have not reprinted it, and probably never will.
Sewer Mutant: Did you think of yourself as part of a “scene” with artists like Tim Vigil, James O’Barr, and Everette Hartsoe?
Not at the time, but in retrospect, I suppose we were. We all knew each other and would chat at cons. We’d swap stories about terrible printers and that sort of thing. There was a HUGE valley between us and the mainstream guys. I’ve gotten to know a bunch of mainstream guys over the years, and I found it very shocking that they never looked at proofs or talked to editors about changes in the printing. All of us guys were on the front lines of publishing and were forced to deal with the raw nuts and bolts of how to get a book printed. Many mainstream guys only ever deal with their editor. They submit their pages and then a printed comic magically appears. It’s a very different experience of being in the comics biz. So I guess we were all of the kids left outside in the rain. And all of our opinions were very strong — we had individual viewpoints, and the mainstream wanted nothing to do with that.
Sewer Mutant: How did you meet Robb Horan and how did the decision to have him do a TV commercial come about?
He had graduated from the NYU film school, and was an aspiring director. We met at a convention in 1990, and he saw cinematic potential in Dawn and Cry For Dawn. The dream was to do an anthology movie like Creepshow, with Dawn acting as hostess. It made sense to start off small with a short film. A commercial seemed both fun and practical. A nice little visual teaser. So we all called in favors and worked like dogs and made the thing for a few grand. That was a fantastic learning experience. The final clip actually aired in a few markets, which was pretty cool. We would offer it for free to comic stores who would pay for the airtime and put a blurb at the end “available at Joe’s Comics” or whatever. It was a first stab, a first attempt. One of these days I want to get Dawn on film, for real. In the very least a short film. I’m been approached a lot of times over the years for a Dawn movie, but no one so far has respected the source material. I’d rather live with no Dawn movie than an awful Dawn movie. O’Barr got very lucky with The Crow — they really wanted to translate his work. Not every book gets that kind of love.
Sewer Mutant: And Greg “Dark One” Williams? How did he get involved with CFD?
Horan discovered him, and he was just a tornado of talent. He fit in with us because he was good enough for the mainstream but was too weird for it. That chasm is what drew the Cry For Dawn guys together. Kevin Taylor, Lance Tooks, and Richard Kane Ferguson are all VERY accomplished artist/writers. We were all just out of step with the mainstream in the early 90s. We all found a home under the Cry For Dawn umbrella. I love all of those guys — they’re so incredibly talented! THAT was the brotherhood I felt at the time, all of us Cry For Dawn artists. A strange gravity drew us together, and for a short period, Cry For Dawn published all of their books. I’m still proud of the books we put out, and I still feel that brotherhood. We’re scattered all over the globe now, Kev and Lance are in Europe, Ferguson paints gaming cards and hasn’t done any comics in years, and Greg dips in and out of the field. But they’re my brothers. I feel like we went through the “comic book wars” together. We shared something truly special, and I love them for it. I have nothing but good things to say about anyone in that bunch. BTW, I bet if you asked O’Barr, he’d say that he feels a similar kinship with Vince Locke and Guy Davis. They were the Detroit crew, and we were the New York crew. They all did fantastic work, all outside of the mainstream, and were all published by Caliber. Looking back, it’s amazing what great artists the “mainstream” kicked aside.
Sewer Mutant: Are you willing to talk about why you and Monks parted ways?
We grew apart and wanted to do different things. Running a small business with very little cash flow is really tough. We couldn’t keep it tougher, so it all ended. He was still into horror, and I had gotten it out of my system. Cry For Dawn was a very cathartic experience for me. After 9 issues of horror, I felt the venom leaving my soul. I love so many different types of stories, and I wanted to explore. I’m still exploring. Also, I grew to really dislike the rep we were getting. We’d go to a con, and someone would always say, “Man, you guys are fucked up! You’re totally whacked out, man!” That was amusing at first, but I did not want that to be my whole career. I love some crazy comics, always will, but I also love adventure and romance. Far more than horror, I love the world of mythology, and that’s where I felt Dawn pulling me. It’s right there on the covers to Cry For Dawn, starting with #3, where Dawn is holding up Lucifer’s Halo. That was the seed which grew into the first Dawn graphic novel. So a parting of the ways was inevitable. Plus as we matured, it became very clear that our political views were miles apart.
Sewer Mutant: Speaking of politics, the issues raised in Cry for Dawn seem more relevant now than ever, with the reversal of Roe v. Wade and certain graphic novels being banned from schools and at least one creator facing an obscenity suit.
I still hate all censorship, and I’m in shock that we’re going backwards on Roe Vs Wade. The controversy over “critical race theory” is an embarrassment to our nation. Slavery happened. Racism happens. There’s no denying it. And Maus should be allowed in every school in America. If a 6 year old wants to read Maus, let them — there is nothing salacious or gratuitous about it. Frankly, I think most young kids would be bored by it, but if they have an interest, let them read it. I’m in favor of keeping pornography away from kids, but I wouldn’t restrict much else.
Sewer Mutant: How did you end up working with Robb and Sirius? Was he in the process of getting Sirius started already, or was that setup specifically in response to CFD shutting down?
He was planning on doing his own thing because he had been in the comic biz since he was a teenager as a distributor and retailer. So he knew how to run a business. I thought about starting my own company, but I wanted to pull back from the running of a company and just concentrate on my own comics. At Cry For Dawn I did ALL of the production art chores on every title we published — putting together the ads, pasting down the typesetting, laying out the mechanicals. It was a mountain of work. At Sirius we had artist and computer whiz Mitch Waxman doing most of that because the world was switching from analog to digital — desktop publishing was becoming the affordable norm. So it made sense at the time to join forces.
Sewer Mutant: What are you working on now? Can we expect to see more Dawn in the future?
I’m working on a special project with Dawn that I can’t talk about, but after that I’ll be doing the fourth Dawn miniseries — finally.
