My wife watched a bunch of “murder shows” this past year, a mix of true crime documentaries and crime fiction. Mare of Easttown, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, Mary Kills People. Up and Vanished. Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (and the movie that came out around the same time with Zac Efron). Before that, when she was on the road for work, she’d listen to Crime Junkies, Counterclock and the OG, Serial.
“I’m just intrigued by the mystery, I guess,” she said when I asked her why, playing the role of the dad in the Apple Jacks commercial. “I don’t always like when they solve the case, but that’s a bonus if they do, like, ‘Oh good, that’s taken care of.’
“I don’t know if it has something to do with being in the medical field, but somehow that stuff doesn’t bother me, which is kind of creepy to say, but it doesn’t gross me out, it makes me more interested.”
Also, she said, she finds the voices of true crime podcasters oddly comforting: “It’s very soothing when they talk about the murders.”
A true crime podcast serves as the inciting event to the plot of Fog Line, a 36-page, black-and-white, landscape-format comic by writer Mario Candelaria, co-writer and artist Andy Michael, letterer Matt Krotzer and editor Hernán Guarderas, now on Kickstarter.
The plot: For the past 40 years, a retired truck driver named Henry has been haunted by a hit-and-run fatality he buried in the woods. Henry has learned to live with what he did over the years as he built a life and a family. But today he feels the walls finally closing in around him when he discovers a true crime podcast about the mysterious disappearance of his victim. Guilt, shame and paranoia now plague Henry as he tumbles down the rabbit hole of this cold case in search of learning what exactly they know and if this could threaten to expose him. What were once intrusive thoughts during quiet moments have become active panic as Henry spirals while absorbing as much information on this case as possible to see if his day of reckoning has finally come.
We talked with Candelaria about his new book and our obsession with true crime and crime fiction. Check out the interview below this five-page preview.
Dan Grote: Serial obviously was big for true crime when it came out in 2014, but the pandemic also had a content-starved populace devouring “murder shows” while they attempted to hide from the killer virus outside. What kind of true-crime (or fictional crime) content are you into?
Mario Candelaria: I have an obsession with Los Angeles and California in general, so I immediately gravitated towards learning about classic murders like Black Dahlia and Zodiac and the Night Stalker (Shout out to Son of Sam as an East Coast honorable mention), so The Root of Evil podcast was huge for me, and I even made it a point to visit the Hodel house on Franklin in L.A. to see with my own eyes this house where they believe Elizabeth Short was murdered.
I am honestly hoping for some meaningful content on the lesser known Kendall Francois murders from the mid-’90s in Poughkeepsie (New York). I was in elementary school when they found the bodies in his walls, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
Dan: You’re a Philly boy. Any thoughts on the accent work in Mare of Easttown?
Mario: I actually have not seen it yet, but it is on my list once we wrap up Why Women Kill. I enjoy seeing our area in the media, especially when you can hear that Pennsylvania Dutch way of pronouncing a hard O. I am kind of disappointed M. Knight didnt take this extra step in Servant.
Dan: What are some of your favorite crime comics? (Bonus points if you can answer this without saying “Brubaker and Phillips.”)
Mario: This is easy! You Have Killed Me by Jamie Rich and Joelle Jones was a huge influence on me, as was Filthy Rich by Brian Azzarello and Victor Santos (I loved this book so much I reached out to Victor and purchased several pages from the novel, as well as started a working relationship with him). I’d be remiss if I did not mention Capote in Kansas by Ande Parks and Chris Samnee. That slow burn of an investigation is probably more of an influence on Fog Line than any of the others I mentioned.
Dan: Ultimately, what does our obsession with true crime say about us as a people?
Mario: There’s a line from the latest season of Fargo that really hit the nail on the head with regards to why people gravitate towards these otherwise ghastly stories: “America loves a crime story because America is a crime story.”
I am not too sure how universally agreed upon that statement could be, but I felt those words in my heart the instant I heard them.
Dan: How did you gather your team for this book?
Mario: You’d think this would be a harder question to answer, but it was as simple as me sending the script to Andy Michael as a beta reader (as I often and randomly do with friends), and when he said he loved it I asked if he wanted to draw it. He said he hoped I would ask him! Then getting a letterer was just me asking Matt Krotzer if he was available and he said yes.
Getting editor Hernán Guarderas was a little different in that we had a secret writers group where we all submit projects for peer reviews, and Fog Line was the one I chose to present. When we realized another set of eyes would be beneficial to tightening the story, Hernán was my first choice since he was already familiar with the project.
Dan: Why landscape format?
Mario: Mainly because it is different. I always like the way those stories look since that one New X-Men annual. There’s a certain cinematic scope when you can lay panels out across the width rather than down the height. The eye naturally leads you to sweep from one page to the next. Victor Santos’ Polar series was a big influence, and I even reached out to him for formatting questions.
Dan: This is your fourth Kickstarter. What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned about crowdfunding in that time?
Mario: You’d think as a veteran of this I’d have some wealth of knowledge, but the last one I ran on my own was four and a half years ago, and so much has changed since then. I think one key thing is I’ve learned how important it is to be a part of the community, interacting with my peers and engaging with them when they run their campaigns.
Being in quite a few anthologies where funding came from Kickstarter also gave me indirect experience in seeing how marketing and tagging could work, especially strategic scheduled posts to hit all different time zones you might normally engage with.
I like to think that while the money is crowdsourced, the experience is definitely crowdsourced by learning from those you surround yourself with.
Dan: What are some of the benefits of being a winner of the 2020 Mad Cave Studios talent hunt?
Mario: The Mad Cave announcement took me by surprise, and I am very much looking forward to everyone seeing what we have been working on since then. Much love to editors Brian Hawkins and Chris Fernandez for the time and attention they’ve put in with me.
Here is hoping there might be more with them in the future.
Dan: Are you back on the standup circuit now that restrictions are being lifted?
Mario: Not yet, but I am looking at when local open mics might be, and started writing new material. I haven’t performed in a bit, but I have been writing short bits for other comedians here and there, so getting back into that mode has been easier than I thought. We’ll see in the coming months.
Fog Line is available to back now on Kickstarter.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
