Ambush Bug here. I had a chance to catch up with friend of AICN COMICS Brandon Seifert recently regarding his upcoming projects. Most know Seifert from his breakout hit comic book miniseries WITCH DOCTOR from Image Comics and Robert Kirkman’s Skybound imprint. This week, Seifert has the lead story in the HELLRAISER ANNUAL from BOOM! Studios. Here’s what Seifert had to say about WITCH DOCTOR and HELLRAISER…

AMBUSH BUG (BUG): Okay, so I’m here with Brandon Seifert. I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. What’s new for you? I know you finished up WITCH DOCTOR a little while ago and you also had the one shot, RESUSCITATION, that was one a couple of months back, but what have you been working on lately?

BRANDON SEIFERT (BS): Lukas [Ketner] and I are hard at work with the next WITCH DOCTOR miniseries, which is called “WITCH DOCTOR: MAL PRACTICE” and that’s going to be a six issue miniseries. I’m hoping it’s going to start after Halloween, like that would make sense. At this point basically the entire series is written and the first issue is done. Lukas is working on the second issue, but Skybound isn’t going to run with it until we’ve got three issues in the can, which I think is a good idea.

BUG: Yeah, definitely.

BS: That means that when the miniseries starts, you will ship on time. At least that’s the hope.

BUG: Very cool. Is that the new kind of norm now? To make sure that everything is on time and things like that?

BS: I can’t really speak for Skybound or Image, but the impression I get is that’s kind of what they are shooting for now, to have a around three issues in the can before they solicit the book, just to make sure that there’s a good head start in case there are any slow downs.

BUG: Sure. I wish other companies adopted that policy. It sounds like a really solid practice.

BS: Yeah, me too.

BUG: So with WITCH DOCTOR what’s it like now that you have had such a he success with the first miniseries and the one shot? What’s it like going into this second series?

BS: I think our focus on the first one was really on the monsters, because there’s a variety of monsters and a variety of medical biological takes on them. The focus on the second series expands that a bit and takes it back and rather than looking more at monsters, will look at magic and the things people can use magic for and the people who use magic. It’s WITCH DOCTOR, so there is a medical kind of metaphor there and in WITCH DOCTOR it’s like magic is medicine an the people who make magic and people prescribe it for private doctors, but not everybody who uses magic… Like not everybody who goes and buys a potion or a talisman or whatever is a magical practitioner, like some of them are just normal humans and it is kind of like… The idea that magic is a tool just like anything else and it can be used for really positive and beneficial things, but if you’re a douchebag you can also use it for some really horrible things and that’s what we are kind of looking at in this miniseries.

BUG: Cool. So is he going to have kind of an arch-nemesis or a villain in this one come up?

BS: He might. He very well might. There may very well be sort of an evil Morow kind of character in there, but yeah I should clarify when I say the focus is more on the magic than on the monsters, that isn’t to say that there aren’t monsters in it. I think there are actually more monsters in the second miniseries than there are on the first one, it’s just that the focus isn’t quite so squarely on them.

BUG: Yeah, because Lukas does those monsters so well.

BS: Yeah he does, yeah. There are some really amazing sketches that he sent me for this new one, really mind blowing horribly disturbing stuff that we are going to be doing that I’m really excited about.

BUG: Cool, very cool. So this is another six issue series? So you’re going to continue with the mini-series format with this character you think?

BS: I mean there really isn’t another option. We are not at a point in our careers where we can produce it as an ongoing monthly book and we want to spare everybody the frustration of having a monthly book that does not actually ship monthly. So the intention is we are both working on this full time and then as we finish the issues, we will put them out and try to get as many out each year as we can.

BUG: Cool. What’s it like with Robert Kirkman? Is he giving you a lot of leeway as far as what to do with the WITCH DOCTOR character?

BS: Yeah, Robert is really great. This is something that he’s told us from the very beginning. He want to pick us up for his comic company and it’s not because he liked the book and thought it would be better with his involvement, it’s because he liked the book and he liked what we were doing with it and he wanted to see us continue to do what we wanted to do with it, so at no point in this has he been like making arbitrary… I don’t know, I can’t think of a good example of it, but at no point is he coming in and being like “I think you should do this with the story or this with the character.” He’s just left us alone to do our thing and we do get a lot of support from him and there are things like “This doesn’t really make sense.” “Clarify this.”  That was one of his recent notes on a script that I sent in, “This story beat, the payoff for it isn’t as big as we felt like it should have been. It felt kind of anti-climactic” and I was like “Yeah, that’s fair.”

BUG: That’s great that he’s given you all of that freedom to do basically whatever you want to do with the character.

BS: Yeah.

BUG: So now you also have the lead story in the HELLRAISER ANNUAL that’s coming up. How did that come about? How did you get involved with that project?

BS: That was a thing where I just got a cold email about that from Boom! and what had happened was a friend of mine in the industry had talked to them and had been like “Hey, you should hire this guy to do some HELLRAISER stuff” and they were given WITCH DOCTOR, they liked it, and they got in touch with me. Initially when they first contacted me, the idea was that I’d do a short story in the annual and the HELLRAISER annual would have several different creative teams and I would be doing like an 8 to 16 page story, but over the course of talking to them about it, they ended up offering me the lead story, which ended up being a 23 page lead, which is kind of strange, because it started out 22 pages and then the only change that they asked me to make was to make the ending “a bit bigger” and I was like “Okay, can I have more pages to do that?” They were like “Sure, have another page.” I’m like, “Awesome.” So yeah, it was just serendipity and I think it worked out really well for all of us.

BUG: And this is the HELLRAISER ANNUAL, is that correct?

BS: That’s right, yeah. It’s coming out April 11th and I wrote the lead story, which is called “My Enemy’s Enemy” and then the other story, I believe it’s eight pages and it’s written by Clive Barker, so that’s pretty awesome.

BUG: That’s good company to be with.

BS: Yeah, exactly.

BUG: So were you able to talk with Clive about the concepts that you were working on in the story?

BS: I didn’t happen to have any actual direct contact with Clive, because he’s a very busy man and kind of in the middle of this process, I don’t know if you heard about it, but he had some really serious health problems earlier this year and I believe he ended up hospitalized for a bit and so I did get some notes that had been transcribed by his assistant from his hospital bed to me. Yeah, so it’s been kind of a crazy process.

BUG: So what’s your story about?

BS: Kind of what they are doing with the HELLRAISER series right now is that the existing Pinhead has kind of quit and gotten himself replaced and has become a normal human.

BUG: Replaced by Kirsty Cotton, right?

BS: That’s right, yeah. So Kirsty, who was the protagonist of the first few HELLRAISER movies and was kind of set up as the victim is now….

BUG: Or the final girl, I guess.

BS: Yes, exactly. The final girl is now the villain. Meanwhile the guy who used to be Pinhead, named Captain Elliot Spencer, he was a soldier in WWI before he became Pinhead. He’s human again and the story is kind of picking up after that and Kirsty… I don’t know if I should spoil this, but Kirsty is not actually in this story. There’s no actual Cenobites in this story, so we’ve got a completely different classic HELLRAISER villain in it and the idea was really to do a character piece with Captain Spencer to see a little bit of who this guy is and see where he’s at in his life now. He basically spent the entire 20th century in hell working for them and now he’s back and it’s sort of like “What does he want? What is he going to do?”

BUG: Cool. Yeah, that was probably one of my favorite aspects of HELLBOUND, the sequel to HELLRAISER when they did that little flashback with Pinhead and they showed like what he was like and how he kind of came across the box. Were you a fan of the films when they first came out?

BS: I was young when they first came out. I think the first one came out when I was like seven or eight years old, but I kind of got into horror late. I got into horror I think my senior year of high school and what I first got into was H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker and I watched those films so many times when I was in high school, so yeah it’s not something… I got into a little bit late, but it really was formative for me and it really is great to be able to play in that sand box.

BUG: I think I’m a little older than you and I remember when HELLBOUND came out. It came out on Christmas Day and I’m mom was so mortified that I went with my friends to go see the film. I was way too young to be in the theater, but they let me be in there. I think I was like 12 or 13 years old, but still it was some wild stuff. And that theater is closed down now for obvious reasons…

[Both Laugh]

BUG: Did you go back and read any of the old Barker series? Like THE HELLBOUND HEART? That’s the name of the original story, correct?

BS: Yeah. Yeah, I went back and I actually went back and I read a whole bunch of Clive’s stuff, like I rewatched the first four HELLRAISER movies. Three and four were no where near as good as I remembered them to be.

BUG: No… (Laughs)

BS: Yeah… And I reread a bunch of his BOOKS OF BLOOD and EVERVILLE and a bunch of his other novels, because I mean I still have all of that stuff on my shelf, it’s just been years since I checked it out. It was really cool to get back into that.

BUG: So does this mean you might revisit the HELLRAISER series down the line a little bit?

BS: If I’m lucky, absolutely. Actually having worked in it once, like I had a really good experience with this and I’m really happy. Basically they let me tell the story that I wanted to tell and they let me tell it in the way that I wanted to tell it and then afterwards they told me I had done a really good job, so that’s the best possible work experience and I have a number of other HELLRAISER stories and kind of Barker-verse stories that I would love to do, so hopefully this will not be the end of it for me.

BUG: That’d be great. So do you want to stick to horror or is that too much pigeonholing you as far as what you want to write? Or are you happy just writing horror?

BS: Honestly I am very wary of being pigeonholed. I already feel like I’m getting pigeonholed as if not the horror guy, then kind of the paranormal or supernatural guy and I love that stuff, but like I said I came to horror really kind of late. It’s not my first love. Science fiction is my first love and I think a lot of that… WITCH DOCTOR is a very science fictional take on the supernatural and paranormal kind of stuff, so as much fun as I’m having doing these paranormal projects and horror projects, I am really wary that people are going to think that that’s all I want to do or just associate me with that stuff. So I’ve got some other stuff that I’m working on that’s hopefully going to branch out and give people a larger view of what I can do, but then on the flip side of that is I also have a whole bunch of supernatural crossover pieces that are kind of the same thing as WITCH DOCTOR that I really want to do, so it’s weird. We’ll see how that goes.

BUG: What type of sci-fi stuff did you grow up really liking and getting into?

BS: Well my two favorite novels for about ten years after high school were IMAJICA by Clive Barker and SNOW CRASH by Neil Stephenson. So that kind of gives you an idea, like I love most of his earlier books, like by the time he got to THE BAROQUE TRILOGY trilogy that was where he kind of lost me, but I love that stuff. That’s traditionally been some of my all time favorite stuff. I really do love a variety of science fiction. I got really into BATTLESTAR GALACTICA earlier this year. I love the first MATRIX… So there’s a variety of stuff that I want to do with science fiction, both sort of more grounded kind of real world with a twist kind of stuff and the more fanciful kind of far future things.

BUG: That sounds awesome. I’m really looking forward to reading this HELLRAISER story. I haven’t read it yet, but when it does come out I am going to pick it up and hopefully that will lead to more HELLRAISER for you. That would be great to see what more you have in store for us and also I’m a huge fan of the WITCH DOCTOR series, so just to hear that there’s going to be more of that coming is great news for me and I’m sure a lot of people, too. Well, is there anything else you want to tell the Ain’t It Cool News audience while we have you here?

BS: I’m going to be a guest at the Stumptown Comics Fest, which is April 28 and 29 in Portland at the Oregon Convention Center at the end of the month. I’m really excited about that and I just got confirmed as a guest to another festival here in Portland, but it’s not a public thing yet, so I can’t say what it is. I can say it’s “not a comic thing, but it’s related” and the people who are interested in my comics are definitely going to be interested in it.

BUG: Cool. Well it sounds good. Thanks a lot for taking the time out to talk.

BS: And thank you!

BUG: Look for Seifert’s HELLRAISER ANNUAL from BOOM! Studios in stores tomorrow and be on the lookout for the WITCH DOCTOR: MAL PRACTICE miniseries this Fall from Image Comics’ Skybound imprint!

Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole/wordslinger/reviewer/co-editor of AICN Comics for over ten years. He has written comics such as MUSCLES & FIGHTS, MUSCLES & FRIGHTS, VINCENT PRICE PRESENTS TINGLERS & WITCHFINDER GENERAL, THE DEATHSPORT GAMES, WONDERLAND ANNUAL 2010 & NANNY & HANK (soon to be made into a feature film from Uptown 6 Films). He is also a regular writer for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND & has co-written their first ever comic book LUNA: ORDER OF THE WEREWOLF (to be released in October 2012 as an 100-pg original graphic novel). Mark has just announced his new comic book miniseries GRIMM FAIRY TALES PRESENTS THE JUNGLE BOOK from Zenescope Entertainment to be released in March 2012.