DoT EP102: Writer Pornsak Pichetshote and Artist Aaron Campbell on Xenophobia and Horror in Infidel, plus New Music from Landroid

Pornsak Pichetshote edited other people's books for DC for years before he attempted to write his own. He didn’t give himself an easy out. His first series, now collected as a graphic novel, is Infidel, a horror story that explores xenophobia. It’s hard enough to do horror and politics well separately without trying to combine them in a graphic format, but Infidel is a complex and nuanced story that grounds its truly terrifying ghost story in a very real world. What really brings out these elements is the collaboration between Pichetshote and artist Aaron Campbell, whose imagery and inventive approach is the perfect compliment to the story.

The characters in Infidel are not simple caricatures of racists. Pichetshote set the story in New York to put it in a more liberal environment, politically. The setting is an apartment building in the aftermath of a bombing, where distrust is running high. Aisha, a Muslim woman living in the building, is living not only with that xenophobia, but a more supernatural menace, as well. Her boyfriend’s mother, Leslie, who didn’t like her at first, seems to welcome her now, and tries to comfort her. But her boyfriend, Tom, is cutting his mother less slack than Aisha. Aisha’s best friend, Medina, was also raised Muslim but the two share different views of their faith. The supernatural element parallels the xenophobic threat, and together, they make for a socially pointed story that is also truly scary.

Pichetshote and Campbell address their collaboration and how they put these different elements together. And we also get a bit of news about the new Hellblazer, which Campbell is illustrating. He gives us a bit of insight about the upcoming book and how DC is bringing John Constantine back to his roots toward the end of the conversation. Pichetshote also worked on Two-Sentence Horror Stories for The CW, which is new this month on their streaming service, and some comics work that he was unable to get specific about just yet.

Infidel is published by Image Comics, and you can find that at www.imagecomics.com and at booksellers and comic shops everywhere. Follow Pichetshote on Twitter under @real_pornsak and Campbell under @olmancampbell.

This week’s featured track is a song I heard just the day before I put this episode together, but it fits perfectly with the themes in Infidel. The song is “So Say We All” from Landroid’s upcoming album, Imperial Dunes, which is coming out September 13th. Landroid is the duo of Cooper Gillespie, who sings and plays guitar and bass, and Greg Gordon, who handles drums and sequencing. In the press release, Gillespie identified the inspiration for “So Say Well All,” the opening track on the album. “‘So Say We All’ was written in reaction to the current political climate where immigrants are demonized,” she says. “The message is that there is no such thing as race; we all belong to one race: the human race.” Not only does the message fit with Infidel, so does the music with its dark, throbbing synth backbone and dream-like lighter strings and keys floating over the top. Find out more about Landroid and pre-order Imperial Dunes at landroud.bandcamp.com.