Comics Alternative

On this interview episode, Derek talks with Tom Manning, whose most recent work, Runoff, was released late last year from One Peace Books. They discuss the genesis of the project -- how it began as a self-published serial and then eventually evolved into a massive 450-page tome -- and its ambitious scope. Tom describes it as a mashup of genres and styles where he wanted to exploit the full range of the comics medium. Runoff is a horror sci-fi mystery set in small Washington state town resembling the one that Tom grew up in, and it's equal parts dark, humorous, and head-scratchingly confounding. Manning employs an ensemble cast of eccentrics, reminiscent of Berke Breathed's Bloom County, but who reside within a Lovecraftian landscape. Indeed, the cthulhu of this narrative is an enigmatic floating obelisk or headstone-looking entity with moe type eyes. And if that's not disturbing enough, you have a vigilante group of monsters by way of the Universal lot, but whose zombie member is a polite soul who goes by the