Geoff Johns is a name usually associated with superheroes, and particularly with DC, where he penned groundbreaking runs of Green Lantern and Aquaman alongside artist Ivan Reis, as well as the now classic Blackest Night crossover. Now the pair have reunited for a new ongoing horror title, Hyde Street. Published by Ghost Machine – the imprint that Johns co-founded alongside a host of other big name creators – Hyde Street is a twisty, unpredictable comic that's part Twilight Zone-style anthology, part ongoing mystery featuring a cast of sinister "Residents" like cynical ad man Mr X Ray and the evil boy scout Pranky.
Newsarama sat down with Johns this week to talk about the new comic, reuniting with Reis, and his desire to create a fresh roster of "characters you wouldn't normally expect to see anchoring a horror book."
Newsarama: Geoff, congratulations on the launch of Hyde Street. It's a really unusual and intriguing horror comic and I wondered if you could talk us through how it came together?
Geoff Johns: I think all of the Ghost Machine books start with the writer and the artist talking about what they want to explore. They're all genre, but they're not superheroes. Ivan and I were talking about our love for horror. I've always loved the Universal Monsters and The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror, but I also love exploring characters too, and so we started to talk about how everyone's got secrets, everyone has a dark side, everyone's made choices that weren't the right choice to make. So then it was like, OK, how do those choices affect your life? And can you escape them?
We started to build characters like Mr. X Ray and Pranky, and this place where anyone who's ever done something wrong can end up. It could exist in your city – you could turn a corner and just be on Hyde Street, and you might meet somebody like Mr. X Ray there who would lead you down a path and see if you make a choice that would put your soul on a path of destruction. That's the tip of the iceberg for what the book's about, but it's really about how one bad choice can completely derail your life and and the right and wrong ways to recover from those choices.
How did you come to reunite with Ivan on this one?
Johns: We always wanted to work together again. When we started developing Ghost Machine he was at a place, I think like a lot of us, where he felt really happy with everything he'd done, but he wanted to do something new. And so when we started talking, I said, "I really want to do a horror book." He's like, "That's where I started. I'd love to do that." So that's where it came from.
The first issue introduces us to all these mysterious characters: Mr X Ray, Pranky who is this evil boy scout, and it hints at this larger force behind everything, the Scorekeeper. What can you say about these characters?
Johns: Each of these characters, like Mr. X Ray and Pranky and Dr. Ego and all these others that are hinted at have all been charged with delivering and damning souls to this being, who is the architect behind this, the Scorekeeper. You'll meet the Scorekeeper very soon – you might not know their entire story, but you will meet them.
One of the things that Ivan and I really wanted to do was create really unique, different horror characters – characters you wouldn't expect to see anchoring a horror book, like a boy scout from 1955 or a failed advertising executive from 1966. There's this aerobics instructor from 1983 and all these characters, one from every decade, that stretches back over a century. They're called the Residents, these people that are fixed there. The other souls aren't quite as valuable, I would say. They're delivered for a purpose that we'll find out later.
It sounds like you've developed a pretty thorough mythology for the book?
Johns: The characters still surprise me when we get into their backstories. There's something that Pranky does in #2 that I was not prepared for. He just started doing it on the page and I was so excited because it's like, "Oh my God, he's talking to me!" I thought one thing was going to happen and he just starts to go off on this rant. And it's really a kind of a funny, dark rant that I didn't plan for until I was in the middle of the script.
December's #3 is going to be a Christmas special, right?
Johns: Yeah, I don't know if I call it festive as such, but it's got some Christmas in it. It's about someone dressed as Santa Claus that takes a wrong turn onto Hyde Street, and what happens to them.
Hyde Street is a part of the Ghost Machine imprint, which is about to celebrate its first anniversary. How are things going over there one year on?
Johns: We're all feeling really good. Every year we do a summit before New York Comic Con, which is our anniversary. Last year it was super exciting and nerve-wracking because we hadn't launched and we were keeping it secret. I still can't believe it didn't leak, but that's because all all of us are really tight. There's a little over 20 of us now at the company, mostly creators, but we're all really happy with the reception to it, with the sales on the books, with the quality. Last year, when we all got together, it was a life changing experience. A lot of us didn't know each other that well and some people had never met each other before. Now it's totally like going back to school or summer camp, where you know everyone and you can just pick right back up.
Ghost Machine has created a lot of new characters in a really short space of time...
Johns: One of the things we just released was this great piece by Gary Frank that has all our characters on it. He did a piece when we announced the book, and it had like Geiger and Redcoat and Rook. And he's added all the Hyde Street lineup, Pranky and the Matinee Monster, and he's added Hornsby and Halo. That's really what we set out to do with Ghost Machine in general, and Hyde Street specifically, to introduce new characters that you could follow. So although Hyde Street is in many ways an anthology, it's also like Green Lantern in that it's building a bigger story, a bigger world. It's a monthly book that's going to take us on a pretty unique and frightening journey through the choices we make in life.
What are you most looking forward to readers experiencing with this series?
Johns: I'm looking forward to people meeting the strange residents of Hyde Street and learning more about them and and I'm looking forward to surprising people. I don't think Hyde Street is going to be what they expect. That's my hope.
Hyde Street #1 is out now from Ghost Machine / Image Comics.
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