Prologue p2

PeterAaronRose on March 7, 2007

This is our establishing shot of Rocky Hill, which was meant to contrast the concept of the idyllic small community with its quaint house, school bus and child, against an ominous backdrop of a dark and subtle unknown manifesting itself in the twisting branches and trunk of the two trees in the panel. In retrospect, opening up the book with a splash page of a big school bus was certainly a curious decision, but I always found them oddly terrifying as a kid. I recall driving Brent particularly crazy about the bus itself as I had a clear snapshot of an image in my mind from my childhood that I wanted to get on the page. In the end, he captured it brilliantly.

The quote contains the opening lines of The Conclusion to Part II of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's CHRISTABEL. I discovered Coleridge back in the college days while pursuing a lit minor in English literature that started a lifelong obsession with his works. If I had to pick a dream project out of the air, it would unquestioningly be to adapt CHRISTABEL, which is one of the first great horror stories of our age, to either comics or film. One day, perhaps.