Today we sat down with acclaimed storyteller Ricardo Delgado to talk about his new graphic novel titled Dracula of Transylvania. He gave us a sneak peak on his earlier memories of Dracula, getting into the horror mood and of course his research into the story. After you read the interview, be sure to check out his Kickstarter below to participate and learn more of his graphic novel. He is already has new goal of $24,000 and I feel we can get him there!
Here is the interview:
What were your earliest memories of the Dracula story?
RD: Oh, that would be a combination of the old monster movies I saw as a kid, the Dracula comics, and honestly there used to be these very cool Halloween costumes as well. As far as movies go there was the combination of the Mexican Wrestling films that starred El Santo, and my favorite was El Santo contra las Mujeres Vampiro though I was very picky and I thought that the Vampire women’s wrestler henchmen did not need to wear Dracula capes. And of course, the classic Universal monster movies just seared themselves into my brain and spent many of the days leading up to Halloween watching all of them. I have to say that Dracula’s Daughter and Son of Dracula are oft-maligned pictures, I enjoy them a great deal. Also I thoroughly obsessed over Marvel Comics’ Tomb of Dracula, which was the scary Drac, along with the brilliant Christopher Lee’s version in the Hammer films. The Ben Cooper monster masks of the 1970’s were in my opinion superb, though I did wonder why they used the Glenn Strange Frankenstein instead of the classic Boris Karloff. I’ve just loved that stuff my whole life.
What kind of research was done to use in the novel from the Dracula myth?
RD: Well, the story needed some historical research to set the geography, etc, but the real work began after that, to figure out specific stuff that was in each specific scene then in a broader sense and after the fact to connect the story’s settings, costumes and other details to the era’s context. I also created historical ‘interstitials’ here and there throughout the story, especially when the narrative moved to a different locale, to further explain where that setting and place in the world was at that time in history. I hope it enriches and helps inform the reading experience for everyone. It’s a supernatural story, big time, but with some learnin’ involved as well. It won’t hurt, I promise ☺
What steps were needed to put your visualization of Dracula of Transylvania in art and story form in the novel?
RD: Well the story itself was thought out in broad beats, in many cases to fill in areas that perhaps were not explained in previous incarnations for reasons that may have been budgetary or for time. Cool thing about a novel is that if you want to write about, say, Dracula’s coffin, you might say that his place of rest might be a thing of interest, and because of that you can in a prose novel go on for page after page about the coffin as long as it remains interesting. It does not stop the story is my point. Different than a movie or comic book or anything else. What is new about DRACULA OF TRANSYLVANIA is that I’ve utilized my skills as a concept artist in Hollywood to design and visualize some of the more dynamic and interesting aspects of the story, like Dracula’s forms after he’s shape-shifted. No effects budget here to worry about, so I can go to town visually with images one might find in an ART OF STAR WARS book but here it helps support my story. Fun stuff!
Was there any changes in your surroundings in order to get that Dracula experience in your mind?
RD: Well, I’ve got the soundtrack to THE EXORCIST and THE OMEN pretty much memorized, lol. Though for some strange reason I can’t listen to music when I write, just when I draw. And watched a LOT of vampire movies, lol.
For the art in the novel, did you go to art museums to use their own expression of Victorian art?
RD: Good question. A little, but I knew how the landscape paintings of Atkinson Grimshaw made me feel or how the portraits of John Singer Sargent sometimes look supernatural to me. There’s even an allusion to Sargent when the brides materialize in Whitby, where the observer sees them shimmer and their colors mix all over each other like a Singer portrait. There’s a red-hued portrait of a woman that Singer came up with and she looks just like a ghost. Beautiful and haunting at the same time.
What do you want fans to experience once they read the novel?
RD: I want the audience to feel immersed in this dark universe, the sounds, the smells, the feeling of being in a Paris catacomb, the smell of a clipper ship’s dank hold at sea, the sound of an opera house in Rome. Borgo Pass at midnight would be a pretty terrifying thing without an iPhone to light your way, lol, and I want audiences to feel like little kid me did when I saw Renfield creepily loving along the floor toward the unconscious nurse in Browning’s Dracula. That kind of involvement. If you are alone in a candle-lit Victorian era room and a vampire walked in, how would that feel? Terrifying, I would think. And that’s how I’d like you to feel about DRACULA OF TRANSYLVANIA.
Terrified.
And entertained ☺
Check out Ricardo Delgado’s Kickstarter for Dracula of Transylvania: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cloverpress/ricardo-delgados-dracula-of-transylvania
