Joe Lansdale is a prolific author of horror stories, both short and novel-length, including Drive In and Bubba Ho-Tep. He’s also no stranger to comics, having partnered with Timothy Truman for projects featuring such characters as Jonah Hex and The Lone Ranger, and has even written for Batman: The Animated Series and other television series.
This spring, Dark Horse Comics is releasing his four-part miniseries, Pigeons from Hell, adapting a story by Robert E. Howard. It’s Lansdale’s first time working with artist Nathan Fox, and he recently sat down for a brief chat with ComicMix and a preview of the first issue.
COMICMIX: Thanks for agreeing to chat, Joe. This is not your first work with Robert E. Howard. You previously wrote a Conan miniseries. So tell me, what is it about Howard that you like?
JOE LANSDALE: Howard has always appealed to me because there is a raw storytelling talent at work, and he has a Texas background, and like me, he lived in a small town where the sort of profession he pursued was not entirely understood. I always thought he appealed to the little boy in all of us, and by that, I mean that part of us that loves a good raw story. He appeals to that aspect in all of us. Like Jack London, The Call of the Wild is eternal. I don’t think Howard had the same depth that some of London‘s work had, but it has the same primal element, if not the social element. Thing is, I don’t consider that bad or lesser, just different.
CMix: Did you ask to write Pigeons from Hell, or was it an assignment?
JL: I think it was mentioned to me by the film company that has Howard’s work, because I had written the Conan miniseries. It had been well-received, and I mentioned Pigeons From Hell, and it was thought an update might be fun, since Dark Horse had already done a literal adaptation, so, it just sort of snowballed from there and Dark Horse was for it. [It was] kind of an accident.
CMix: How did you approach expanding and adapting a prose work into a four-issue miniseries?
JL: I tried to use the original story as the frame, and I tried to bring younger contemporary characters into it. Howard’s work was of its time, and it could be casually racist, so I wanted to avoid that. I also added more mystical elements. Again, a perfect adaptation had already been done for the comics before, and there was a really good Thriller episode of the story years ago, though now it seems a little dated, so I wanted to approach it in a different manner. I think the story is still true to the original in most ways.
CMix: What is it about Howard’s work that you think still makes it relevant today?
JL: I think it’s the pure storytelling. You can learn to be a better writer with effort and time, but that is something that seems almost inborn, though I’m not sure how to explain it. But he has it, and the work is recyclable and constant. (more…)
Good news for fans of Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic. The out-of-print, first-volume collection of the series, Ctrl+Alt+Del Volume 1: Insert Coin, will be reprinted with a brand new cover. It will also be offered in a signed hardcover format limited to 500 copies. Previous editions of the hardcovers sold out quickly, so creator Tim Buckley recently gave his fans the heads up on his 
