Dan Watters – co-writer of Creature From the Black Lagoon Lives! – on what a brand needs to thrive in comics

Dan, it’s great to connect. Talk me through how this Creature From the Black Lagoon opportunity came to you?
This one was a little circuitous in that I co-wrote it with Ram V. He’d had the initial idea, talked to Skybound’s Alex Antone about it, and then he went exclusive with DC – but everyone still really liked the idea. I’ve worked with Ram a whole bunch – we co-created an Image series together called The One Hand and The Six Fingers – so he asked me if I’d have any interest in coming aboard. He said: ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon meets True Detective’ and I was in!

Your Creature From the Black Lagoon Lives is a sequel to the original movie. Did you have to get reacquainted with it, or were you already a fan?
I don’t think I ever had to reacquaint myself too much because I’m into horror. I didn’t really come to this through sci-fi or fantasy – it was always horror… That meant everything from horrible early 2000s torture stuff to Vincent Price, to Rocky Horror… Horror was always my thing. I loved all Universal Monster movies, all the Hammer movies, all of it.

And in terms of this comic being a sequel rather than a re-imagining, it felt like there was just a lot of open space there. The Creature is a mystery and it felt like something we could continue to explore.

On that, what aspects of the brand did you feel were ripe to dig into further?
The Creature is an interesting puzzle piece, because he doesn’t really have a knowable motivation in the same way that we know what Dracula wants. The Creature isn’t necessarily a monster in the same way. It’s essentially an animal in its own environment. People then disturb that and shenanigans ensue. I wanted to find a way to tell a story around that without doing anything that makes the Creature less of a mystery. It was a case of trying to keep the creature as mysterious as it is in that first film, while also having an interesting story around it.

And like a lot of these Universal Monsters stories, the monsters aren’t always the actual monsters…
Ram and I would talk about using the creature as a mirror. Whoever encounters the Creature sees what they want in the Creature. We end up with different people pursuing it for different reasons, but everyone is convinced it’s the answer to all their problems… While the Creature is sort of baffled by the whole affair.

This monster, like a lot of the Universal Monsters, has fascinated storytellers for years. We even had The Shape of Water a while back also play around in this space. Why do you feel The Creature From the Black Lagoon continues to fascinate storytellers?
It’s an archetype and it’s an archetype of a certain kind of story… Almost every culture has a story of something in the water that shouldn’t be there – a reason to not go down to the lakeside… I think it’s deeply rooted in us ancestrally. It also becomes a folklore thing because it’s easier to tell children not to go and play unsupervised by the water if you tell them that Jenny Greenteeth or the Selkie is going to come out of the water and eat them! It’s primal and we believe it very easily.

Do you find your work influences and builds on each other? Is there anything about this project that speaks to what you did next?
You have to follow your interests as much as you can, because that’s how you keep it interesting for yourself. If you’re not interested yourself, how can you expect anyone else to be? So I think you can see themes emerge. There are definitely themes you can thread between The One Hand and The Six Fingers and The Creature From Black Lagoon. I can look back at each period of my writing and see an overlap between the books I’m doing at the time. There’s themes of regression and unknowability that feed through my work around that time.

What does a brand need to have in order to translate successfully into comics?
A malleability. It needs room to tell something robust enough that you can tell different stories with it, because rehashing has never been an interest. Look at what James and Martin did with Skybound’s Dracula comic. That felt like a very original work, even though it was using Dracula from Universal. That story’s big enough that you can sort of turn the camera around to tell an entirely different part of it. I’ve worked on a bunch of different licences and it’s always about finding what interests you within them – and the world being big enough to let you do that.

What helps fuel your creativity?
Books – sitting down and reading. I like a lot of fiction, a lot of nonfiction… It’s about exposing yourself to new ideas. It also helps slow my brain down enough to get into the mode to write. It’s very easy to sit and watch stuff, or scroll around online, but that doesn’t let you slow down and get deeper nothing into your thought process to write. So sitting down with a big chunky book gets me to that place a lot quicker.

Is there a brand out there you would be interested in doing a comic for?
Hmm. I like anything that has that space… Something weird and wacky that I can find a new angle on.

After mentioning being a fan of torture horror movies from the 2000s, I thought you were going to say Martyrs or Hostel…
Ha! But those are things you can kind of just do! I can do that and own it! I did a book called Coffin Bound which involved a strip club – an existential strip club – where people were removing their entire skins after they took their clothes off. So I guess that’s the closest I’ve come to doing a Martyrs comic.

They’ll be people that haven’t had the pleasure of watching Martyrs scratching their heads at the moment. But I’m pleased I asked, if only to hear you mention an existential strip club. I think it’s the only interview I’ve ever done where that’s come up.
Hopefully the first of many.

Ha! I have one last question. Is there another licensed comic out there you would point to as being a great example of what brands can do in comics?
There are a bunch of Alien comics from the Eighties and Nineties that are some of the best things ever made. They explore the franchise and bring in forms of horror that the sequels never quite managed to do. I think some of the best storytelling in that franchise is done in the comic books.

I’ll have to check them out. Thanks again Dan.