BEN STENBECK gives us a glimpse of OUR BONES DUST

Interviews Editor, Andrew Irvin, sits down with Ben Stenbeck, one of New Zealand's finest comic artists to discuss his latest creation, Our Bones Dust, out now through Image Comics.

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COMIC BOOK YETI: Ben, it’s good to have you stop by the Yeti Cave to discuss Our Bones Dust. How’ve you been since we met at Supanova Melbourne? (Ed. - for those who want to see the short interview, where we talk about Kiwi comics and more, check it out here!)

BEN STENBECK: Hey, good!

CBY: Glad to hear all is well! I was honored to get an early look at issue #1 of your latest comic with Image, a brilliantly rendered and bleak look at a deep future post-apocalypse. It’s evocative of wasteland worlds across fiction, within a wider cosmic scope. There’s a four issue run underway now, but when did development of Our Bones Dust begin?

BS: It all began as a gag story 12 years ago. It was just going to be a short joke story; scary cannibals hunting this kid through a ruined city, and then suddenly the kid turns the tide and butchers them all, And then you realize they were chasing the kid for something silly like a book or at one point a porno mag. It was called “The Last McGuffin.” It percolated in the back of my head for a few years before becoming more about an AI being studying a post-apocalyptic Earth, looking out for a feral child being chased by cannibals. 

CBY: A long time coming! I'm glad you're finally ready to share it with the world. We Could Have Been Gods was an interesting conceptual motif to include as you illustrate the remnants of humanity about the potential that remained unfulfilled. I don’t know if it’s a nod to the track from your fellow Dunedin local, Dudley Benson, but I figured I’d ask - what various Kiwi elements were you able to drop into the story, despite it taking place in a world well beyond our current geopolitical reality?

BS: Thanks for noticing. That graffiti was a part of this story from the very beginning. (No, never heard of Dudley) It's a sad misanthropic commentary on what the human race is capable of; there’s almost no technological idea we can’t master eventually. We have everything we need to one day become a universal species, but we still have voting adults who think the earth is flat or any number of other silly things adults shouldn't believe. So sadly, I don’t  think we’ll make it. But I tried to make this hopeful, and that's why it has the ending it has.

And yes, geographically it takes place in New Zealand. You can see NZ from space on page 2. The lizard is an overgrown Tuatara. The old dead tree where Attis finds the Kid in is a Pohutukawa. There's a bunch of things like that.

CBY: I love that attention to detail (i.e. - the molecular diagram for lignin and other plant matter, or the degraded form of individual pieces of waste) in the presentation of the remnants of a human world. When you’re researching your work, how do aspects of the storytelling that make an added impact work their way into your scripting, storyboarding, and notes?  

BS: I think that's just picked up from years of drawing comics, Trying to find ways to make a panel more interesting or authentic. There's so much of this story where the visuals came first. But also happy accidents where some of my favorite imagery came out of something unexpected I wrote.

CBY: I know your work over at Dark Horse on Hellboy with Mike Mignola has been incredibly formative, and you’ve also collaborated with him on Koschei, which was also published by Dark Horse. Can you talk about the experience of working with Mike, what has carried through to your independent creative development process, and what you’ve done differently in the production of this book, now that you’re steering a narrative entirely on your own with Our Bones Dust? 

BS: Working with Mike has been amazing. Everything you might think it is. I've learnt a lot. Mostly that I'll never see storytelling as clearly and brilliantly as he does. But still, if I've picked up 1% of his understanding of the medium, I'm doing pretty good. Making this book really felt like me doing my own thing. I don't know if you can see Mike’s influence in this, but it's definitely there. There's 15 years of Mike Mignola comics training behind it. Also, I've had the great privilege of working with Dave Stewart all those years so there was never any question of having someone else colour it.

CBY: Yes, Dave did a fantastic job and really helped immerse the reader in the deep future wasteland setting with the tones he added. I mentioned your history of work with Dark Horse, but note that Our Bones Dust is coming out with Image. Can you share with our readers a bit of how the publication arrangements for this book came together, and why Image ended up being the right home for this title?

BS: It happened pretty organically. There was something about the challenge of going out on my own and getting this thing done under my own steam that I wanted to try.

 I happened to be sitting next to Eric Stephenson (the Publisher at Image) at a quiet convention and he saw some pages I’d done for Our Bones Dust that I had in my art folder. That was kind of it, it just happened. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want him to see those pages, but I really didn't expect it to be as easy as it was. I think he liked what he saw and trusted me to do something good. 

CBY: Another testimonial to the value of creators getting out to conventions and sharing their work! So with four episodes in this initial run, do you anticipate this as the start to something more expansive? What sort of scope do you have in mind for the narrative arc of the world of Our Bones Dust, and what do you look forward to completing next?

BS: Unfortunately, there's no Our Bones Dust on the horizon right now, I tried to wrap it up in one book that can stand on its own. I have ideas for a follow-up that would fill in a lot of the gaps with who the AI are and what they are up to. We would follow Attis and Poena across the universe (probably punished with some boring job they hate). But also follow Evlin and the Kid on earth. For now I have too many other things to do. In October, there's a horror story I wrote drawn by Matt Smith in the Headless Horseman Halloween Annual from Dark Horse. I'm wrapping up art on a 3-issue series written by Mike Mignola, and then I start work writing and drawing my first book in the new Lands Unknown Universe, which is the same universe as Mignola's Bowling with Corpses book coming out towards the end of the year.

CBY: I'm glad we've got a whole range of stuff to look out from your forthcoming body of work. Now, what other projects beyond Our Bones Dust are keeping your interest and inspiring you these days? What comics, music, films, art, literature, etc. should our audience give a look once they read Our Bones Dust?

BS: An Our Bones Dust influence list? First off Scavengers Reign! That series is so good. It came out long after I finished work on Our Bones Dust, but it feels like it belongs to the same family. Things that influenced OBD… Moebius and Katsuhiro Otomo's short stories; the less famous stuff of theirs that seems like they just did it for themselves. Cormac Mccarthy's The Road. The Rover starring Guy Peirce (I always thought of this as a sort of prequel, like this movie happened 80 years before the events of OBD.) Brandon Graham and Simon Roy’s (and a ton of collaborators') work on Prophet. I still look at that all the time. One more thing I didn't discover until long after I finished OBD is Garden of Spheres by Linnea Sterte. That is breathtaking work. It's the type of work that simultaneously makes me want to work harder and just give up because it's so good.

CBY: Well, my viewing/reading list just expanded again (I always ask this question, and I'm constantly making my to-do list longer!) Ben, thanks for discussing your latest work with our readers. If you’ve got portfolio, publication, and social media links to add, now is the time to share.

BS: The best place to follow me is https://www.instagram.com/mrstenbeck/

Or @benstenbeck on Cara if that ever takes off. Or my dusty old website Benstenbeck.com