AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Samantha Strong is a bear with a terrible burden - a need to kill. That may seem normal for an apex predator. But in the small, quiet town of Woodbrook, populated by animals, this is not normal, and Samantha has been killing for a long time. This is the setting for "Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees," a gruesome graphic novel. Think "Dexter" meets "The Berenstain Bears." The first volume saw a new killer threatening to ruin Samantha's situation. Now a new volume has the sister of one of Samantha's victims hot on her trail.
Patrick Horvath is the author and illustrator of the series and joins us now from NPR West in Culver City, California. Patrick Horvath, welcome to the program.
PATRICK HORVATH: Thank you so much for having me.
RASCOE: On the surface, it's a very cute book. But very quickly in this series, you show these gruesome killings and dismembering by Samantha. Where did you get the idea to mix such a cute depiction of such violent murders?
HORVATH: Yeah. It all kind of came from a random drawing that I'd made of a anthropomorphic bear walking down, like - in a hillside with a bloody axe on their shoulder. The idea kind of popped in my head of, like, well, what's the, like, before and after of this little image? And I was like, you know what'd be interesting is if you had, let's say, like, Busytown from Richard Scarry's books, if anybody's familiar...
RASCOE: Yes.
HORVATH: ...With "Richard Scarry's Busytown." He's a children's author. Lots of anthropomorphic animals. Busytown's very quaint - right? - very...
RASCOE: Yes.
HORVATH: ...Wholesome.
RASCOE: Yeah.
HORVATH: And I was like, what if Busytown had a serial killer? That was the first thought that came in my mind. And I was like, that would be so messed up. And then, a little bit after that, the idea that kind of, like, what if there was more than one killer in the town and it took a killer to catch a killer? And then at that point, I was sort of, you know, off and running with the idea.
RASCOE: It's pretty twisted to think Richard Scarry and multiple serial killers. But...
HORVATH: (Laughter).
RASCOE: Samantha is a serial killer, but her main rule is she doesn't kill within her own small town. She travels to, like, nearby major cities to find her victims. I mean, she can be really robotic. Not robotic, but, like, she's a killing machine, right?
HORVATH: She's cold-blooded. To me, that was sort of the challenge of even having her as a main character. I was like, well, how are we going to make this a character we want to follow? It's interesting because, like, in the broadest sense, her life - her very carefully constructed life - is essentially turned upside down because of this other killer that shows up in the town...
RASCOE: Yeah.
HORVATH: ...Right? But the idea of having a - your life upended felt very universal. I feel like everybody can totally relate to 2020 being, like, a big upheaval. And so I mean, like, in that sense, that's kind of how I went about it. And it felt like with Samantha, she seems like she'd be a great friend until she isn't.
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: Well, have you always been obsessed with serial killers and, like, how they operate?
HORVATH: I - yeah. I have another life where I was writing and directing indie horror movies, and it definitely came back to serial killers a couple times. Just - there's something very troubling and compelling about serial killers and how they kind of show up in pop culture - right? - in these different ways, and then also in our real lives. Like, it's terrifying and at the same time becomes, like, a specter in, like, our everyday lives in a weird way.
RASCOE: Samantha talks about this feeling that she's always had to take things apart and put them back together. She works in, like, a hardware store. But she really is talking about, like, killing and dismembering people, which is depicted very gruesomely in your art.
HORVATH: I mean, that's shown up in my art throughout. The earliest thing I can trace it to was I saw the music video for Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More," like, really young. It's a riff off of "Alice In Wonderland." And there's this scene where it's, like, the tea party with the Mad Hatter, and Alice is there on the table. But Alice is also, like, made out of sheet cake, and they're, like, serving her up. It's just cake, but it was so upsetting to me when I was a kid. To be honest, I feel like that has sort of been stuck with me and has, like, ended up weirdly, like, evolving into this weird fascination.
RASCOE: Do you think that everyone has this dark or hidden side that people just don't reveal? I mean, not being serial killers, obviously, but...
HORVATH: Sure (laughter).
RASCOE: ...This nature that everyone else doesn't see.
HORVATH: Yes. I - but, I mean, I don't even necessarily think it needs to be dark, but it's interior. I realized, like, as I was putting the book together, like, oh, this is, like, a book about interior lives. Even in this idyllic little town, like, everybody's got something going on in their lives.
RASCOE: Yeah. The new volume is subtitled "Rite Of Spring." It takes place eight years later, after the first volume. And the town has recovered from those murders in the first volume, ones that Samantha did not commit.
HORVATH: And now, like, eight years have gone by. And now we're, like, smack dab in the middle of the '90s, and the internet is becoming a thing. But it also opens her up to the idea of, like, what she does has an effect. And she understands that it has an effect. But, like, she never really has seen anything like that 'cause it's so random, because all her victims are so random. And so to stumble upon - by virtue of, like, message boards that she finds on the internet, she sees, like, the sister of a victim that we've seen from the first book, and that you've seen, like, how the last eight years have essentially twisted up this person. And then to see that effect on somebody, I feel like, is so new for Samantha that it's, like, fascinating for her.
RASCOE: Introducing technology like the internet, people can learn about all these different murders. They can make links. And they do say that there are less serial killers now because of...
HORVATH: Right.
RASCOE: ...DNA and stuff like that, and because police departments can talk to each other. Were you thinking about that? Like, how - I don't know when they said was the golden age of serial killers, but that's supposed to be over, thankfully, because...
HORVATH: Yeah.
RASCOE: ...It's much harder to do now.
HORVATH: You know, the adage sort of in screenwriting is like, it's a lot easier to write plots for before cell phones existed.
RASCOE: Yeah. Yeah.
HORVATH: It felt sort of the same way, that it would definitely - it's going to change. Like, everything's going to change. That was also a driving force in me being like, OK, yeah. This is the '80s, and, like, well, if we jump eight years, like, it would be really interesting to see, like, how all this stuff is sort of affecting Samantha. But also, like, you know, if we keep following this thread, like, we'll kind of see where it leads to now, right? It's all that stuff kind of wrapped up into one.
Another big part of it, especially in the first book - well, and in the second - was just, like - it's processing grief in different ways and how that ties into our interior lives. But I - hopefully, I'm making something that's not easily digestible and then you just kind of move on to the next thing. Like, I hope that there's something that readers are maybe not quite able to digest, but it's intriguing, and they kind of carry it with them. Whatever that is is definitely going to be unique to the reader. But in my best-case scenario, that's kind of, like, what I'm giving to the reader.
RASCOE: That's Patrick Horvath, author and illustrator of "Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees." Thank you so much for joining us.
HORVATH: Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much. This is, like, dream come true.
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