Interview with Ken Haeser
By: Action Aaron Burkett

Ken Haeser is a graduate of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, but fans now know him as the artist and co-creator of the creator-owned series, The Living Corpse. Despite the grisly façade of his title character, Ken is a friendly and familiar face in artist alley at most East Coast conventions, where he is always ready and willing to sketch for fans. The newest DF Agent, Action Aaron Burkett, sat down with Ken to learn more about this up and coming super star.

Aaron Burkett: When did you know you wanted to draw comics and where did you really get your start?

Ken Haeser: As far back as I can remember I’ve always been drawing but it wasn’t till I was in fourth grade and I found a copy of Blue Devil #1 on an airplane that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I must have read that thing a dozen times on that flight and it was love at first site with comics. After that I spent most of my childhood making my own comics in my room. I was lucky enough to graduate from the Joe Kubert School and have been doing stuff in comics ever since then.

AB: Who would you say were/are your biggest influences in your development as an artist?

KH: Man, that would be a huge list! I’d have to say Jack Kirby of course for his action and just making his art pop off the page. John Byrne because his revamp of Superman was the first comic I read regularly. Bruce Timm to be able to do so much with so little if you know what I mean. Joe Kubert just for pure storytelling and because he taught me so much in his class. I’d say I take something from every artist whether it’s how to do something right or how not to do something.

AB: What comics are you currently reading now?

KH: I read a lot of independents and horror comics now. Any time an Army of Darkness, Friday the 13^th or Nightmare on Elm Street comic comes out I’m there. Ultimate Spider-Man has been one my favorites since it started and of course Green Lantern has been great since Rebirth.

AB: Getting down to your own comic title, The Living Corpse, what’s on the horizon for him?

KH: We’ve got LC fighting the Nosferatu in issue #7 and in issue #8 is mostly about Lilith and also flashes back to the first night that LC returned from the grave. The Living Corpse animated movie is in full swing right now and the company that is making it (Shorleline Entertainment) is getting ready to go crazy with promotions and stuff like that so that’s really exiting.

AB: You’ve been drawing for The Living Corpse for several years now.  Has your approach to him and the other characters that appear in the title changed during that time?

KH: Oh, yeah. The characters have gotten to the point where they really start to write themselves. It’s gotten to the point where me and Buz will think of a story and a situation for LC and the characters in the book and we think it’ll go one way and when I sit down to actually write it, it’ll do a total 180 from what we thought. Like issue #5 where we wanted to do a big story of Living Corpse fighting Frankenstein’s Monster, but when I started to write it I realized that these two characters have a lot in common (both being reanimated dead) and would actually be friends. From there it pretty much wrote itself. I was writing some dialogue last week for Asteroth and he just started speaking through me and I sat back and said, “Man, Asteroth is a dick!”

But yea, the whole comic has been very fluid since me and Buz first started. Living Corpse was originally just going to be a one shot. We really wanted to do something different with a zombie comic that had never been done before. Pretty much every zombie comic has been a riff on the Romero movies where there are people holded up somewhere and they are surrounded by zombies. We didn’t want to do that because its been done to death. I was watching Return of the Living Dead and they had that scene where they had the zombie torso woman strapped to the table and they where asking her why she eats brains and she says that it stops the pain. I wanted to know more about what was going on in that rotting brain so we came up with the idea of a one shot that would be the typical “zombies surrounding a house” but it would be told from the view of one of the zombies. He would be like a drug addict that just couldn’t help himself. After that we just fell in love with the character and he demanded that we do more with him and The Living Corpse was born.

AB: You’ve been quite often seen at the conventions lurking in Artist Alley. Which character has been the most challenging that you’ve been requested to draw?

KH: As long as the person brings reference for something I’m not too familiar with, I really don’t have a problem. Some people come up with some weird stuff at the cons for sketches to try to stump us but we can usually pull it off. But I’d say the most challenging is something that I find boring to draw--- like someone asking for a car or a flower or something like that. Let me draw you as a zombie or a cool ass Spidey pic and I’m happy.

AB: If you had your choice, which character, or more importantly, which Title would you like to work on? (Other than your own, of course…hahaha)

KH: My two Holy Grail’s would be Spider-Man and Batman. After that I can die happy. Other than that, I’m a huge horror comic fan and would give my left one to do an Army of Darkness comic. I also would love to do Freddy, Jason and Darkman. And Doom Patrol--- I’ve got a big soft spot for them growing up on Grant Morrison’s run.

AB: Is there a writer out there that you would like to team-up with?

KH: Haven’t really thought about that too much since I write all my own stuff but it would be a lot of fun to work with writers like Grant Morrision or Jeoff Johns because they come up with some great.

AB: Take a look five years down the road.  Where do you hope to be by then?

KH: I would love to be a making a good living doing what I love being able to take my pick of projects. What could be better than that?

For more info about Ken, please visit: http://www.corpsecomic.com/

And you can also follow Ken on http://twitter.com/Kenhaeser

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