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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