DF Interview: What ghost stories do ghosts tell? Cullen Bunn reveals the answers in ‘Ghostlore’

By Byron Brewer

We've all heard of ghost stories... but what stories do the ghosts themselves tell us?

An estranged daughter and her pastor father wander a haunted land; they only have the restless spirits, each with its own story to tell, as company along the way.
After a deadly accident of which they were the only survivors, Lucas and Harmony Agate can see the dead – an overwhelming amount of the deceased, all with their own warnings, cries for help, and malevolence alike.
But Lucas and Harmony aren't the only ones with this ability; there are other nearly-deads, some of which have malicious motivations!
Writer Cullen Bunn of Basilisk and Empty Man acclaim is joined by artist Leomacs (Basketful of Heads) and guest artist Brian Hurtt (The Sixth Gun) – the first in a haunting lineup of artists featured in each issue – to bring readers the most eye-opening spectral story since The Sixth Sense.
All I need to do is see three words: “Cullen Bunn” and “horror” and I’m on board. As such, I sat down with my old pal and Cullen told me about this new 12-issue limited series. Here’s what he said.


Byron Brewer: Well, Cullen, you’re back at it, weaving story threads of horror beyond imagination in this brand new book, Ghostlore. Tell us, O master of the macabre, how long have you been keeping this tale of terror on the Bunn back burner and what was its inspiration?



Cullen Bunn: While many of the concepts I pursue stick with me for years and years before they see print, Ghostlore is a relatively new creation. It rose from my love of ghost stories, anthology comics, and epic supernatural adventures. It also sprang to life from me asking myself the question, “What ghost stories do ghosts tell?”



Byron: I know that in each issue of this 12-issue series, artist Leomacs will be laying down the shadows for your stories. But there is also apparently a star-studded cast of guest artists who will be assisting on the stories. How does that work exactly?



Cullen Bunn: Leomacs is the maestro of our primary story, but with every issue, our lead characters will encounter ghosts who tell strange and horrific stories. These short stories will each be drawn by a different artist. So, with every issue you’ll be reading our main tale, drawn by Leomacs, and a short creepy tale of horror drawn by one of our guest artists!



Byron: Describe the creep-filled canvas, the haunting world you and the artists are preparing to drop readers into for Ghostlore.



Cullen Bunn: Ghostlore takes place in our world.

Sort of.
On the surface, at least, it looks like our world. But there are dark corners that most of us never see. A hidden world. There are ghosts in this hidden world. That’s a given. But there are many, many other surprises and horrors that we should count ourselves lucky that we never see.
Of course, we will see these horrors—as the ghost stories are revealed.


Byron: Introduce us to father and daughter protagonists Lucas and Harmony Agate. Who are they, what are their abilities, and how do they get to the circumstances that we find them as this book begins?



Cullen Bunn: Lucas and Harmony are an ordinary pair of people. Lucas is a reverend who is having trouble connecting with his daughter. Harmony is an angst-ridden teen who just wants to get away from her dad. A near-death experience, though, opens their eyes to a world of ghostly entities who are lurking around us all the time. They discover that the restless spirits around them want to tell them their stories. The telling of those stories seems to cement the ghosts into our world. And at that point they can be laid to rest. For Harmony, it is a peaceful transition. For Lucas, helping lay the ghosts to rest seems to be a little more violent. This difference in approaches drives an even wider wedge between father and daughter at a time when they are finding themselves in great danger.



Byron: What other characters are important to this tale’s beginning? And who are these “other nearly-deads” who seem to share the Agates’ abilities?



Cullen Bunn: Well, it’s a big world out there, and Lucas and Harmony are not the only people who can see and communicate with ghosts. We’ll be meeting quite a few of these folks. Perhaps most important among them is Shane Demos, a mysterious fellow who doesn’t want to help ghosts pass on like Harmony, doesn’t want to destroy them like Lucas. Instead, his agenda is something completely different and altogether much more sinister.



Byron: Can you give us an overall view of the series, a sort of summary of what readers can expect when issue #1 hits the stands?



Cullen Bunn: This is a story that starts with a small, tragic incident and then blows out into a huge, sweeping horror epic. Our first issue is focused on introducing you to the Agates, setting them up for the creepiness to come, establishing that there is a strange and supernatural undercurrent to our “normal” world. From there, we rocket into a sprawling story that will take the Agates far from their home… and far from safety.



Byron: Talk about the art of Leomacs and what it brings to this new book. If possible, mention some of the other artists involved.



Cullen Bunn: Leomacs does such a great job of bringing Lucas and Harmony to life, of showcasing the emotion between these characters. And that says nothing about his horror and action elements, which are just amazing. As I mentioned, each issue will feature a “ghost story” that will be drawn by a different artist. And talk about a star-studded cavalcade! A few I can name right away include Brian Hurtt, Vanessa Del Rey, Danny Luckert, Jonas Scharf, Naomi Franquiz, and Jakub Rebelka! It’s a celebration of one of the things I like most about working in comics—all the incredibly talented artists I get to work with!



Byron: Cullen, what other haunts do you have coming from your keyboard that you can tell readers about?



Cullen Bunn: I’m working on a broad range of horror and dark fantasy stories right now. Glancing over at my project bulletin board, I see five other projects that haven’t been announced yet, including horror/comedy, action/horror, and some very dark body horror projects.



Dynamic Forces would like to thank Cullen Bunn for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. Ghostlore #1 from BOOM! Studios is slated to be on sale May 10th!



For more news and up-to-date announcements, join us here at Dynamic Forces, www.dynamicforces.com/htmlfiles/, “LIKE” us on Facebook, www.facebook.com/dynamicforcesinc, and follow us on Twitter, www.twitter.com/dynamicforces.

The pandemic affected most everyone in one way or another, but for actor Kyle Chandler it left him in a unique state of mind. The Friday Night Lights actor wouldn’t call it a depression or anxiety or even an agoraphobic reaction but rather a “strange haze in the air” that “kind of shook me up” and left him in ruminations. What got him out of it is his upcoming role as former test pilot and intergalactic space cop Hal Jordan in the upcoming HBO series Lanterns. Chandler talks about taking on the DC Franchise as "The old man upstairs said, 'Hey, I'm gonna give you a gift.' He threw me a bone, and I chewed that thing all the way through. Before I went out, I decided I'm gonna have fun. Damn the torpedoes." The veteran actor is paired with rising star Aaron Pierre as John Stewart in a prestige crime thriller likened to the hit HBO series True Detective. While the series has a cosmic origin, the approach to this first season at least is much more grounded as Jordan comes to investigate a murder in a small, midwestern town and brings along the new recruit forced upon him by his bosses, the Guardians. Stewart is the first recruit selected by the Guardians where all the other Green Lanterns were selected by the rings after the previous owner dies. Jordan doesn’t respond well to his new partner and that animosity carries over into their investigation. The series will take place in two timelines set ten years apart with the investigation starting in 2016 and then we see what is happening now. The series premieres on August 16th and while a second season has not been green lit yet, writer Christopher Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire) has been hired to work on scripts for season two… so DC Studios and HBO must like what they’ve seen. 

Long before Lin Manuel Miranda took the Founding Fathers to Broadway with the Tony Award Winning Hamilton, the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin sang about the birth of the United States of America and the musical led to an amazing musical called 1776. With this being the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, now would be a good time to watch this classic film that’s available on streaming services like Hulu and Tubi. The film adapts the celebrated musical by Peter Stone with an all-star cast that includes William Daniels (Boy Meets World), Ken Howard (The White Shadow), Howard de Silva (The Great Gatsby) and Blythe Danner (Meet the Parents). The film focuses on the days leading up to the Continental Congress debating and eventually declaring independence and gives us look at the chaos that existed leading up to the birth of the nation. While dealing with a serious topic, the film is laced with humorous moments and unforgettable songs while showing just how difficult it really was to get the thirteen colonies to agree and how different parts of the country had different priorities. Not too unlike the way the country is now. 1776 is entertaining and sneakily educational and I watch if every July 4th… which I’m doing as I type this article. 

With Supergirl underperforming at the box office there is a rush to point fingers… as often happens when it comes to big studios like DC, Marvel and Star Wars. Will there be similar handwringing with the latest Minions film coming in about $17 million below it’s expected opening… probably not. But The Hollywood Reporter has exclusive details about what happened with the Milly Alcock project that seems to pit director Craig Gillespie against James Gunn and the studio. The criticism of the film varies with complaints about the editing, the musical choices, the depth of character for the villain to the changes from the source material. The new report focuses on a few of those and talks about the test screenings happening back in March of this year. Gillespie was given free reign on his film until test audiences had their say and the best the film was able to do was score in the 60s. This led to the studio getting involved and creating their own cut of the film. Gunn brought in Guardians of the Galaxy editor Fred Raskin to re-edit and Jeremy Slater of Godzilla X Kong to work with screenwriter Anna Nogueira on a few new scenes. Then Gillespie’s original cut, edited by Tatiana S. Riegel from Cruella, and the new cut were both shown to audiences to see which would faire better. Neither film stood out too much with the studio version scoring about two points more than Gillespie’s. While the director’s cut came in about 11 minutes longer and scored higher on the villain and the music, two things complained about in reviews, the overall score favored the studio cut and it was chosen to be the theatrical release. Though reports don’t say what the specific scores were, it does say the highest score reached among all the testing was only 70 out of 100. While this may sound like a behind-the-scenes struggle and signs of studio interference, things like this happen all the time in Hollywood with the goal of putting out the best film possible and had the film had a higher opening, this probably wouldn’t be news at all. An on-line movement is now building to have the “director’s cut” released even though a handful of people claim to have been in the audience for the Gillespie cut and claims that the film isn’t that different than what was released to theaters. Perhaps the deleted scenes will be included on the Blu-ray release. 

DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation used this week’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival to signal a broader push into animation, unveiling three new series built around some of DC’s most recognizable characters. The slate includes Absolute Batman, Joker: Laugh Riot, and Krypto, each aimed at a different corner of the superhero audience. The boldest announcement may be Joker: Laugh Riot, described as DC Studios’ first anime series. Produced with Sola Entertainment and directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, the show imagines a Gotham where Batman has been murdered and the Joker hunts for the killer who robbed him of his greatest obsession. That premise turns the usual Batman-Joker dynamic inside out, pushing the Clown Prince of Crime into uneasy detective territory. Absolute Batman adapts the recent comic by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta, reimagining Bruce Wayne as a working-class hero rather than a billionaire crimefighter. Snyder is expected to serve as executive producer and showrunner, while Dragotta will produce. The series’ “no manor, no money” approach positions Batman as a more grounded figure facing wealth, power, and corruption from the outside. Rounding out the lineup is Krypto, a children’s animated series centered on Superman’s loyal super-dog. Developed by C.H. Greenblatt, the project gives DC a lighter, family-friendly entry alongside the darker Batman and Joker titles. Together, the announcements show DC Studios treating animation not as a side lane but as a flexible creative engine. From anime to kid-focused comedy to a radical Batman reinvention, the Annecy slate suggests DC is betting that familiar icons can still feel new when placed in unexpected formats and tones. 

How well is Supergirl going to do in theaters? It’s really hard to say, especially if you are reading on-line takes. Since the tickets were made available for presale, the opening projections have moved all over the place with initial thoughts being between $40 - $50 million, then after a few really positive days it jumped to $60 - $75 and has bounced higher and lower to where now they’re saying $50 - $60. The film is set to open against a popular Toy Story 5 that will be on its second week and likely to stay at the top of the box office if it has an average second week drop. Bottom line the expert seem to be having a hard time locking in on this one. What about critics’ thoughts? The film was screened for reviewers and while originally embargoed until next week, the studio lifted the embargo for reactions a week early and now you can see what they thought. Not their full reviews, but their short initial reactions and if you look online most sites are claiming they’re “mixed”… unless you go into the comments and read them yourself. Even sites like Deadline are saying that yet of the reactions they list, the positives outnumber the negatives three or four to one. There is consistent praise for Milly Alcock, Jason Momoa, the action and the heart of the film. The villain is often called bland and the pacing gets called out, but to call it mixed is a stretch. The problem is that like everything in life, film coverage has become political. Sites use negative headlines to get attention and with DC Studios particularly you have a split fan base between what is happening now and those that prefer the previous films… which means that narrative gets created to further their own cause. The truth is, Supergirl will struggle a bit with a film like Toy Story 5 going against it, the character is not popular on her own and is a derivative of a bigger character and in a lot of ways, the previous incarnations, while entertaining, did nothing to make the character stand on her own. Regardless of how it does, there will be a narrative claiming success and another claiming failure. The only way to judge the truth is to see the movie yourself and decide… but that’s really how we judge all movies isn’t it?   

We’re just weeks away from the release of the first Supergirl movie in over 40 years and with ticket presales well underway, experts are making their projects on opening weekend. After the initial sales started happening, most sites were predicting anywhere from $45 to $55 million domestically, but after a few days of higher-than-expected numbers, some sites have adjusted up to as high as $60 to $77 million. This would put the Milly Alcock lead film right in line with the last few Marvel Studios films (except Deadpool and Wolverine). While there has been some debate, Deadline claims the film’s budget is $175 million and the breakeven point would be around $315 million. Other sites claim it’s as high as $425 million globally to call it a success. Only DC Studios and its co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran know what would make this film a success for them, but with trying to rebuild a franchise that had been pretty much run into the ground with underperforming films like The Flash, Aquaman 2 and Shazam 2, having a film that makes most of its money back and is a critical and audience success could be more valuable. Coming off the success of last year’s Superman film, DC is hoping that Craig Gillespie’s vision will continue to excite fans and keep building the new DCU to higher and higher heights. The success of this film and this universe may be driven more on word-of-mouth than box office numbers and the studio appear to be confident enough in the film that they have already had media screenings over two weeks before the film’s release. Yes, there is still an embargo so they can have those reviews come out closer to when the film is in theaters, but you can probably tell the way the project is being covered whether or not it was well received.   

A new rumor is shaking up what fans are expecting from The Batman Part 2. On the same day that writer/director Matt Reeves posted that filming had begun, insider Jeff Schnieder posted about how everything we knew about Sebastian Stan’s role in the project was wrong. Sites had been reporting that Stan would be playing Harvey Dent/Two-Face and while that had never been confirmed by Reeves or DC Studios, people took comments from Stan as confirmation such as how he would be playing, “multiple roles” as a hint at him playing the split-personality of the Batman villain. But the new report claims that Stan is not Dent but rather the serial killer Victor Zsasz and actor Bryan Tyree Henry would be playing Dent. Other insiders have some out since and claim to have collaborating information. Zsasz is an interesting character, a killer who notches a mark on his skin for every kill. He’s been portrayed in live action a couple of times including on Gotham and in the Birds of Prey movie but has never been the main focus of a story. This would match up to Reeves saying that the film would be exploring a story never done in film before. It doesn’t really match up to Stan’s comment about “multiple roles” or reports that he was already working with make-up to figure out the look. Reeves is not confined by what is in the comics so he could make major changes to characters, even to the point of making Zsasz a divergent personality of Harvey Dent that manifested prior to the acid attack causing Two-Face to emerge. It’s also possible that Schneider’s information is slightly off and instead of playing the serial killer, Stan could be playing Charles Victor Szasz who is also known as Victor Sage or The Question. How’s that for a twist? The bottom line here is that Schnieder is hearing this from an insider, and it has not been confirmed by any official source and I wouldn’t put it past film studios to start leaking false information to protect a movie that is just starting to film. I think this one stays in the, “take with a grain of salt” category and we wait to find out more. 

DC Studios and their co-head James Gunn have talked about a lot of potential series and films with some of them being mentioned and then sort of forgotten about. One of those seemed to be Paradise Lost, a Wonder Woman prequel series showing life on Themyscira before the birth of Diana. Though after its initial mention, the project hadn’t been talked about in a while and someone asked Gunn its fate. Gunn insisted the project was still in the works and now we are seeing some possible confirmation. Back in 2024, two names were attached as writers on the series Kira Snyder and Janet Lin and now, according to the WGA website, both are set to work on Paradise Lost for 2027-2028. Snyder is known for writing and producing on The Handmaid’s Tale and The 100 while Lin has credits on Bridgerton, Cursed, and Bones. There has been talks recently about trying to fast track a new Wonder Woman film and while there is no confirmation, rumors persist that the character may debut in Man of Tomorrow, so seeing Paradise Lost finally moving forward would make a lot of sense. 

Sony’s new Spider-Noir series has out done the MCU when it comes to fans. According to Forbes, the new Nicholas Cage lead series with him playing a 1930s variant of Spider-Man has garnered the highest audience score of all Marvel related television projects on Rotten Tomatoes. In the new series, Cage plays detective Ben Reilly who used to be the web-swinging hero called The Spider but hung up his mask after the death of his fiancée. Audience have really taken to the series that is available in both color and B&W, giving it a 93% (a point higher than when Forbes did their article) and even scored well with the critics at 92%. While the critic score is impressive, other Marvel projects have done better such as X-Men ’97 with a 99% score and Ms. Marvel with a 98% among critics. But on the audience side, 93% is tops beating out shows like Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil (Netflix) and WandaVision. While there has been no word on a second season, it would be hard for Amazon and Sony to ignore results like this. 

James Gunn, co-head of DC Studios and writer/director of the upcoming Man of Tomorrow film, was back on social media this week answering questions and one in particular stood out. A Threads user named “boyturizmo” asked, “Will we ever see General Zod, Doomsday, Dr. Fate, Black Adam, Ultraman (with his Crime Syndicate) or Darkseid?” Gunn replied, “Two of them in not too long…” This of course led to a ton of speculation on which two and where? Now the obvious one is Darkseid, and while Gunn has said his DCU isn’t building toward a big Thanos like battle with Darkseid, the character is going to be appearing in the upcoming animated series Mr. Miracle. The series is in production with comic writer Tom King onboard as the showrunner and he recently showed off a clip to interviewer Brandon Davis, who did not share what he saw. Mr. Miracle is an escape artist raised on Darkseid’s planet Apokolips who falls in love with a warrior woman named Big Barda and they escape to Earth. Though no casting has been announced for the series, Gunn has stated that the animated series are cannon to the DCU and actors cast in the animated shows, like Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., would carry over into live action like Grillo did in both Peacemaker and Superman.   As for the second character we will see soon, it is possible that Gunn could bring back more characters from the DCEU and have Dwayne Johnson return as Black Adam or Pierce Brosnan don the helmet of Dr Fate once more. And Ultraman could return from the black hole he was sucked into… but I think the most likely possibility will be in flashbacks to Krypton, possibly in Supergirl, where we could see General Zod cameo in a scene with Jor-El (Bradley Cooper) and Zor-El (David Krumholtz) discussing the fate of the planet and how to handle it. This would be a great scene for world-building… though part of me really wants Brosnan back as Fate.