DF Interview: Chris Ryall pits a discredited scientist and his companions against once-human husks known as ‘The Hollows’



By Byron Brewer

In an extra-length comic, writer Chris Ryall and artist Sam Kieth transport you to a dystopian near-future Japan, where spectral, once-human husks prey on the unfortunates who couldn't find salvation in the skyscraper-like trees that now dominate the decimated landscape. A discredited scientist works furiously to find a cure, until a one-eyed orphan girl and her pet, uh, urp force him to rethink everything he knows.

A fan of the 2012-13 comic The Hollows from IDW, I wasted no time in talking with scribe Ryall about this sci-fi one-shot from Image Comics.


Byron Brewer: Chris, this great one-shot, The Hollows, collects the 2012 comics of the same name by artist Sam Kieth and yourself. Tell readers a little bit about your concept for The Hollows.



Chris Ryall: The Hollows originally came about through long conversations with Sam about what we should do together as a follow-up to our Mars Attacks: First Born miniseries.

We kicked around the idea of a series that aimed to merge the inventiveness of a Miyazaki film with a zombie apocalypse. Now, I’m not saying we achieved anywhere near the artfulness of a Miyazaki film, but that was our guiding light going in.


Byron: Can you give the unfamiliar fans some idea of the world you and Sam are building here? What will be the canvas readers will be dropped into upon buying this special-sized one-shot in July?



Chris Ryall: The story opens with the same basic premise as so many zombie movies, especially Romero flicks, with the idea of the “haves” building upward and leaving those that society has deemed less important to fend for themselves below, but takes a different spin on that idea, both in terms of the visuals and the story.

Here, scientists have engineered massive super-structure trees for people to populate. Both as a way to try to stay in touch with nature and not just barricade themselves behind steel and concrete, but also to try to keep a type of elegance amidst a crumbling society.
Along those lines, they’ve also designed winged harnesses to allow them to fly down for supplies or to monitor the situation, and look for survivors. Which is where our story opens, and where everything changes for our lead scientist character.


Byron: Introduce us to your chief protagonist, a washed-up scientist laboring to cure his fellow once-humans whom have been mutated, if that is the correct term, into mere onion-skins preying on survivors of whatever armageddon has occurred. Who was he, who does he become, and what drives him to this challenge?



Chris Ryall: He’s Craig Kobayashi, who’s such an adherent to the old ways of doing things that he’s mocked by both his colleagues and, to lesser degree, his wife, too.

But he can feel the society he knew slipping away from him—well, it’s well-slipped already—so he does what he can to hold onto a piece of the world he used to know. A charming but futile gesture, based on the reaction from others around him.
But when he ventures down to the world populated by the Hollows below, he meets a group that gives him reason to believe again.


Byron: Can you spotlight the cyclopean orphan waif and her pet? Who are they and what relationship do they have to Kobayashi?



Chris Ryall: Lani, and her companion Urp (which is the only “word” he speaks, but somehow Lani can understand him through his inflection), survivors among the cracks as they are, are dubious of anyone from “above.” But just like Kobayashi recognizes something in them that he thought was lost, so do they see that he might be more than they thought.



Byron: Any other important characters we need to know, either among the “husks” or the humans who survive in the tall trees?



Chris Ryall: There are others around Kobayashi and Lani who help flesh out the story and drive it in different directions, but they (and Urp) make up the core of the characters whose story we’re following.

One note about the husks/the Hollows – one thing Sam and I originally discussed before this story ever took shape – was that we were both similarly freaked out as kids by an issue of Frank Miller’s Daredevil, the two drug issues, where kids on heroin were emitting this kind of vapor, this smoke, that just made the idea of an overdose so much more visceral when we were little. Like, do drugs really burn you out from within like that?
We wanted to keep that same kind of visual for the Hollows – they’re not flesh-eating zombies in the traditional sense, but instead they’re these hollow specters that pull peoples’ very lifeforce from them and absorb that in a vain effort to literally breathe new life into their husk-like bodies.


Byron: This story takes place in a dystopian Japan of the near-future. Did you or artist Sam Kieth do any research on the present Japan to give scenes taking place there more weight? (I am a great fan if intricate detail, even in lands and times yet to exist.)



Chris Ryall: I always include a fair amount of visual reference and links in my scripts, but Sam is such a fantastacist (is that a word? I feel like it should be a word in reference to Sam) that he takes things in a direction that is much more stylized and interesting than anything a real-world link could provide.



Byron: Speaking of our epic artist, talk about some of Sam’s work herein.



Chris Ryall: Sam’s style has evolved in such unique ways over the years and that uniqueness, his ability to bend whimsy and horror and sensitivity, all comes into play in this story.

And his trees are just gorgeous. They’re like Seussian versions of Yggdrasil or something, just fantastic to look at.


Byron: Chris, what other projects with which you are involved can you tell readers about?



Chris Ryall: Ashley Wood and I are just wrapping up the final-for-now issue of Zombies vs. Robots Classic, and I’ve also been prepping the hardcover collection of Joe Hill’s Rain, a September release of Onyx by Gabriel Rodriguez and me, and a number of other new books by Ash and I as well as some other talented folks, too.

And finally, I’m launching a sequel to Groom Lake, a graphic novel I did a decade ago with Ben Templesmith, via Zoop. Nelson Daniel is the artist on it, it’s called Groom Lake: Grey Skies Above, and the campaign goes live in mid-June so hopefully that can get rolling properly soon, too.


Dynamic Forces would like to thank Chris Ryall for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. The Hollows one-shot from Image Comics is slated to be on sale July 27th!



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With another slow weekend at the box office, Sony’s new action flick Bullet Train raced to the top with a $30.1 million opening. The film, from director David Leitch, has quite the cast including Brad Pitt, Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, Michael Shannon, Sandra Bullock, Hiroyki Sanada, Bad Bunny, Karen Fukuhara, Masi Oka, Logan Lerman, and Zazi Beetz and industry experts think the film will likely reach $100 million while in the theaters. DC League of Super-Pets hung on to the family audiences, bringing in $11.2 million it’s second weekend while Nope grabbed the horror audiences with $8.05 million in it’s third week. Thor: Love and Thunder grabbed the fourth spot with $7.6 million taking it close to $700 million worldwide as it is likely nearing the end of its theater run and heading to Disney+ in the next few weeks. Minions: Rise of Gru slipped into the fifth spot with $7.11 million in its sixth and likely final weekend taking it to $334.5 million, very close to the original Minions $336 million total.     

Never one to pass up a chance to promote an existing or upcoming project, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson shared the post-credit scene for DC League of Super-Pets on his Instagram account. With the video, he also wrote: “The world is starting to simmer with excitement about the earths shattering SUPERMAN vs BLACK ADAM⚡️showdown one day. But until then… BLACK ADAM’S DOG ~ ANUBIS⚡️ has a few choice words for SUPERMAN’S DOG ~ KRYPTO. The definition and philosophy of ANTIHERO is quite intriguing… And YES… If you listen closely, I voice BOTH DOGS AND BLACK ADAM in this scene.” DC League of Super-Pets is in theaters now and features Johnson as Krypto, Kevin Hart as Ace, John Krasinski as Superman and Keanu Reeves as Batman. Johnson is also set to play Black Adam in the upcoming film of the same name along with Pierce Brosnan, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari and Quintessa Swindell. It will be in theaters in October. 

You’ve seen it before, a picture of a baby that looks surprisingly like a famous person? I know I’ve seen quite a few that look like Patton Oswald… he just has that kind of face. Well, on Wednesday a woman from Northern Ireland named Danielle Grier Mulvenna posted of photo of her nine-month-old daughter Cora smiling next to a picture of Zombieland actor Woody Harrelson and the resemblance is uncanny. But the best part is that Harrelson saw the comparison and responded with a poem he called “Ode to Cora”. Harrelson wrote, “You’re an adorable child. Flattered to be compared. You have a wonderful smile. I just wish I had your hair.” Mulvenna responded to the poem by saying, “You made our day. Can’t wait to show her when she’s older. You have a fan for live xxx.” 

The official twitter account for She-Hulk posted a series of images that when you just look at the post, makes up the logo for the series. But when you click on each part of the logo, it shows additional part of the images that include Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Tim Roth as Abomination, Benedict Wong and Wong and finally Charlie Cox as Daredevil. While all the other images were things we’ve seen in the trailer, the image of Daredevil is the best close up we’ve seen of the character in his new yellow and red outfit. The image, seen below, shows that while a different color, it doesn’t look too different from his Netflix outfit but word is that by the time he shows up in Echo and his own series, he’ll have new threads, so this might be them just using the existing costume for this series. 

Tim Roth is the second actor from the 2008 Incredible Hulk film to return to the MCU. The first was the late William Hurt who turned up in Captain America: Civil War as General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross and would appear again in Avengers: Endgame and Black Widow. Roth, who played Emile Blonksy aka the Abomination in the early Marvel Studios film popped up for a cameo with Benedict Wong in last year’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and is seen in trailer for the upcoming Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law which debuts on August 18th. While Hurt and Roth are the only two actors to reprise their roles, the titular character and his alter ego of Bruce Banner have been a mainstay of the franchise for year with actor Mark Ruffalo replacing Ed Norton as The Hulk staring in the Avengers movie. In an interview with Forbes, Roth talked about working with Ruffalo.  "Yeah, I was like, 'You've changed.’ It's kind of fun. We used to hang around and muck about between takes, and we had a nice time. I very much respect Mark as an actor, so even under those bizarre and wonderful circumstances, that one was a treasure." He also talked about returning to the character after a decade and seeing his co-stars working clued him in on what to do. "Once I started shooting on it, I didn't know how to go about my business, and it was a bit disconcerting. Tatiana Maslany is incredible, and She-Hulk is a comedy, and she's bloody good at comedy but, to be fair, she's pretty, pretty good at everything. When Mark Ruffalo showed up to do his stuff that I was involved in and saw the two of them interacting, it was a penny drop moment for me, and I went, 'Oh, that's what we're doing. Oh, okay,' and then I knew what to do. Basically, on the first segment I was involved in, I got some serious direction from them about we go about our business there, and then it was all playtime. It was a lot of fun." 

Still reeling from the sudden cancellation of his film, Batgirl co-director Adil El Arbi shared a photo on social media of himself with stars Leslie Grace and Michael Keaton in their full costumes from the film. The $90 million film was axed even though principal photography was completed and a cut had already been shared with a test audience. The reasoning for the cancellation is said to be that the film isn’t a high enough quality to release in theaters and that is the new direction the company is taking with DC Film projects. Warner Bros Discovery is planning to use a special tax write-off option that have during a short window after a merger. Batgirl and the sequel to Scoob! are both being used in that way as the company believes they will make more money back as write-offs than they would recoup by spending the money to finish and market the films. El Arbi and his co-director, Bilall Fallah, have said in a statement that they were “shocked and saddened” by the news and have received support from fellow directors Edgar Wright and James Gunn as well as Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige who the pair worked with earlier on the Ms. Marvel Disney+ series. By taking the write-off, WBD will not be able to release the film in anyway that might make a profit including releasing it on HBO Max. 

Matt Smith, former star of Doctor Who, talks about his upcoming role as Prince Daemon Targaryen in the Game of Thrones spinoff series for HBO, House of Dragons. In his interview with Rolling Stone, he wondered if all of the sex in the series was necessary. “You do find yourself asking, ‘Do we need another sex scene?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, we do.’ I guess you have to ask yourself: ‘What are you doing? Are you representing the books, or are you diluting the books to represent the time [we’re living in]?’ And I actually think it’s your job to represent the books truthfully and honestly, as they were written.” His personal opinion? “Yeah – slightly too much, if you ask me,” he said. But did he ask himself if we needed him dancing shirtless in Morbius? Probably not. 

This past week, the Spider-Verse as we know it was transformed! EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE #1 marked the beginning of a new era of Spider-Verse storytelling with a new status quo for Araña, the roaring debut of Spider-Rex, and more! And things are only just getting started as each issue of this new limited series will contain more thrilling additions to the Spider-Verse mythos in the form of new heroes, fresh journeys for iconic favorites, and the rise of a dark threat that could end the Spider-Verse for good. The series will serve as the foundation for Dan Slott’s next Spidey epic, beginning in October’s SPIDER-MAN #1.

Here's what fans can expect from the third issue in this exciting saga, EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE #3, on sale September 14:

· What if Felicia Hardy became a Spider-hero? Dan Slott teams up with artist Sumeyye Kesgin to answer that question with the debut of super thief Night-Spider! Check out her sleek look, designed by artist superstar artist Kris Anka, in a special design variant cover!

· Introduced in the hit Deadpool: Samurai manga and fresh off her recent appearance in Deadpool: Black, White, & Blood, Sakura-Spider strikes out on her own! Learn the origins of this breakout new hero in a story by her creators, Deadpool: Samurai creative team Sanshiro Kasama and Hikaru Uesugi!

· Author Nikesh Shukla makes his Marvel Comics debut alongside a squad of the best artists in the business including Mark Bagley, Paco Medina, David Baldeón, Gerardo Sandoval and Abhishek Malsuni with the return of fan-favorite hero Pavitr Prabhakar, AKA Spider-Man: India!

Check out all the covers for EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE #3 plus a first look at interior artwork, and stay tuned in the weeks ahead for more news about what’s to come in EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE!

Frank Miller Presents (FMP), the new publishing imprint created and curated by the titular comic book legend, will publish its first title to specialty comic book stores served by Diamond Comic Distributors on Wednesday, August 17 in what FMP calls a "surprise drop."

The original 32-page Ashcan Edition comic book features two stories: Frank Miller's Ronin Book II by Miller, Philip Tan, and Daniel Henriques, and Ancient Enemies by FMP publisher Dan DiDio along with Danilo Beyruth and Alex Sinclair. The special comic will also feature sneak previews of other upcoming FMP titles.

The FMP Ashcan Edition will have a suggested retail price of $1 to readers and collectors but will be sent to comic book retailers free of charge as an introduction to the new publisher.

The 10-page Ronin Book II story recaps Miller's original Ronin series published by DC in 1983 prior to The Dark Knight Returns and catches up with Casey McKenna as she "travels across the ravaged landscape of America in search of the new Ronin."

The 17-page Ancient Enemies story is a prequel to the upcoming series, which is about a "thousand-year-old galactic war before the primary combatants arrived on Earth and threatened all existence." (via GamesRadar)

Just two days after Warner Bros. Discovery made the stunning move to cancel the HBO Max film Batgirl, an unapologetic CEO David Zaslav sought to reassure Wall Street there is a cohesive plan for the future of DC, Variety reports.

“You look at Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman — these are brands that are known everywhere in the world,” Zaslav said during an earnings call Thursday. “We have done a reset. We’ve restructured the business where we are going to focus, where there is going to be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC. We believe we can build a much more sustainable business.”

DC has long wished to emulate the success of the Disney-owned Marvel Studios, which Kevin Feige has built into the highest-grossing film franchise in history. Zaslav recently brought Feige’s former boss, retired Disney film chief Alan Horn, on as an adviser. During the earnings call, Zaslav suggested DC would try to emulate the Marvel playbook.

“It’s very similar to the structure Alan Horn, [former Disney CEO] Bob Iger and Kevin Feige put together very effectively at Disney. We think we can build a much stronger, sustainable growth business out of DC,” said Zaslav. “As part of that, we are going to focus on quality. We are not going to release any film before it’s ready. … DC is something we can make better.”

“We are very excited about them. We’ve seen them. We think they are terrific, and we think we can make them even better,” Zaslav said in terms of marketing and distributing the upcoming films, which also include The Flash, starring controversial actor Ezra Miller.