Interview: Michael Moreci on Hoax HuntersPosted by: Ryan Till Dead

This week I had a chance to speak with Michael Moreci about his and Steve Seeley's upcoming series, Hoax Hunters from Image Comics. We talk about transitioning from a back-up story to an ongoing story, the inspiration for the series and get a little nerdy about conspiracy theories. Check out the interview after the jump...

First of all I just want to say thanks for taking the time to talk to us about your upcoming book, Hoax Hunters. After hearing about it, talking with you briefly and reading issue #0 we are all really stoked to see what you have in store going forward. Can you talk briefly about what kind of comic this is and what the book is about?

My pleasure—I'm a fan of the site and the show. You guys are a lot of fun.

As for your question, Hoax Hunters is a blend of a lot of things—horror, sci-fi, conspiracies, and playful riffs on reality TV. Fundamentally, the Hoax Hunters are a team of investigators who go out into the world and explore popular myths, folklore, urban legends, scientific anomalies, things like that. You have Ken Cadaver, a re-animated corpse; Regan, a former child star who experienced a demonic possession that left her, let's say, gifted; and Jack, an FBI agent with his own sordid, supernatural past.

Ultimately, the purpose of the Hoax Hunters isn't only to get to the heart of the mysteries they encounter—it's to cover them up, and publicly at that. Whatever they find, they spin on their reality television program (also called Hoax Hunters, imagine that); they manipulate facts, bend truths, and alter stories to conform to their agenda, which is to keep all the dark, weird corners of the world hidden.

And, like any good conspiracy story of this ilk, there's a big story at play. Secret societies, distorted reality, all that fun stuff. Steve and I have a pretty specific mythology in mind for Hoax Hunters, long term. Yet, at the same time, we are constantly seeking a balance between the supernatural and the ordinary—while maintaining the mystery that is at the core of Hoax Hunters, we also want to constantly ground the series in compelling characters, in dilemmas that ring true on a more personal level. The series doesn't work if those two complimentary pieces aren't working in unison with one another.

I tend to liken it to Ellis's Planetary, in that sense. In that series, Ellis plays with the historical context of comic stories, hidden histories, and human myth—but to enjoy the book, you don't have to know any of the text he refers to. What makes Planetary so special, ultimately, is that at its heart it is a brilliantly executed story with rich characters and a lot of genuinely human moments. That's what Steve and I are trying to achieve with Hoax Hunters; you can take all the hypertext material out, you can know nothing of the occult landmarks we reference, and still enjoy the book. I can't say whether we'll achieve that level or not, but we're sure as hell going to try.*

*All of this, though, is purely hypothetical, to a degree. As we recently saw with the untimely end of Green Wake, plans and schemes mean nothing if the book doesn't sell. The straight truth is simple: If Hoax Hunters doesn't perform well, there won't be more Hoax Hunters. Steve and I can't afford to produce it, and Image can't support a failing book, no matter how good it may be. So if you like Hoax Hunters—the concept, the art, what you've read in Hack/Slash—please, tell your LCS to stock the book, tweet about it, talk about it. That's the only way it will have a future.

    

This book has a hybrid of almost X-Files/Fringe meets reality television Ghost Hunters meets BPRD feel to it. What are some of the influences that you pulled inspiration from for Hoax Hunters?

Oh, X-Files for sure. That's a big one for both Steve and I. You know, it's often thought of as a UFO show but, especially in the early years, it was a "all kinds of crazy shit" show. And I love it for that.

There's also some Mythbusters in there--I'd be lying if I said Regan wasn't modeled after Kari. Again, I'd also throw Planetary in the mix, not only for its penchant for big, crazy ideas and science, but in the way the story continually got bigger and bigger as it went. If all goes according to plan, that's exactly what Steve and I have in mind for Hoax Hunters. You'll see the scope get bigger and bigger, and the stakes rise with each arc, until it builds to a very specific point (which we already have planned).

Outside of other works, I'm just a science/information geek. I like the idea of having a healthy, pragmatic skepticism about the world around you, and that's a lot of what science is. Being able to take that curiosity and blend it into a comic about an astronaut made of crows and an immortal Russian who has designs to rule the world is pretty damn fun.

While reading issue #0 I noticed you have a character that is a former Nazi scientist brought to Russia to work on their space program. His name in the story is Friedrich Braun, which made me think of Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi scientist the US had brought over to NASA after WWII. How much of the stories and 'cases' that the book follows are grounded in reality and actual urban legends / conspiracy theories? Or was this simply a coincidence that the paranoid conspiracy theorist in me noticed?

Don't look now Ryan, but they're watching you…

Seriously, good eye! I see someone else is a bit of a history nerd. That reference is just a product of how I write, in a way. Because I do so much research, I always have these corollaries close to mind. I think it's fun to throw in that extra dimension, just something for those who notice to mentally gnaw on. It's like what the writers of LOST did, regularly, by tossing in names like Faraday, Locke, Hume, etc... You don't have to know who those figures are to enjoy the show; but if you do, it adds to the cerebral gamesmanship that was internally being played in the narrative, a wheel within a wheel.

As for Hoax Hunters, you'll certainly see a good degree of that kind of internal winking going on. Steve and I have no problem wearing our inspiration on our sleeves, or making conscious nods to source materials. In fact, the first full arc revolves around the mass animal die-offs you see in the news from time to time--birds dropping from the sky, cows suddenly keeling over, etc. We take it in a weird direction, but the seed of inspiration is in that real-world phenomenon. Steve and I looked at it and said, "what's the craziest explanation for these occurrences?" And like that, a story was born.

    

Are most of the issues going to be almost done-in-one stories like issue #0 was, or are they going to be longer arcs? Is there going to be a bigger story underneath the missions that we follow the team on or are they more self-contained?

A little of both. Steve and I have a detailed story planned out, but we want to be able to pull back from that as well. Again, this is kind of like X-Files. There was the bigger story at play, but the show also took time (again, in early years) to pull back and do fun freak-of-the-week stories. That's what we envision; we'll have longer arcs that deal with a specific case and tie into the larger narrative, but also the occasional one-offs that are just pure fun.

On a story level, I think it's dangerous to get too tethered to either method. With big, over-arching stories, there's a tendency to get to weighted down with your own mythology and lost in minutiae; but with absolutely no singular story coursing throughout the narrative, you run the risk of getting repetitious, of becoming Law & Order. Even the best stories know when to pull back every now and again. An episode of Breaking Bad, titled "Fly", comes to mind, which I think is one of the greatest hours that show every produced (and considering I think it's the best show on TV, by a long shot, that's saying something).

Also, setting a format that includes these self-contained stories allows Steve and I to experiment a little. Not that I'm giving away any specific spoilers, but our plans involved one-offs that take place in different historical eras, digging into the Hoax Hunters past while also opening the door for different kinds of stories. (Vertigo's The Unwritten does an amazing job of this.) We might even see some familiar characters along the way, wink wink.

Having been a back-up in Hack/Slash you probably didn't have a lot of room to really dig into the origin stories of the characters on the team or the origin of the team itself. Is that something that we will see explored in the series, or are we sort of jumping right into the team like we did in the first issue and piecing them together as they go?

We're going to hit the ground running with issue one, but we'll definitely learn much, much more about the characters, the Hoax Hunters organization, and the dynamics therein as we go. Steve and I envision the Hoax Hunters show as being in its fifth season, and we framed it like this so we can put the big hoaxes behind us—Bigfoot, Chupacabra, Area 51, etc. That way, we'd be free to explore more off-the-wall content. Plus, I like keeping some our story close to the chest and revealing pieces when it's appropriate to do so, and thus have more of an impact down the line. I read too many comics where the story seems so eager to reveal everything as quickly as possible—there's something to be said for pacing, nuance, and for letting things unfold in a natural way.

That being said, the first Hoax Hunters arc is what I'd call "Jack-centric." We learn about his background and begin to see that there's a bigger story going on in the Hoax Hunters mythology.

You are a confessed (and I think it's going to be pretty obvious once this book takes off) conspiracy theory / cryptozoology / urban legend nerd. What or who first got you interested in this type of research?

I think a big part of it has to do with an innate skepticism about the world that Steve and I both have. I grew up reading books about UFOs, Bigfoot, and other similar oddball stuff, and then I got into X-Files, and then I got into conspiracies, and so on. The more I learned and read, I came to realize that there's this whole other world out there, the "black" as some of these operations/occurrences are called. Granted, I'm no physicist; in fact, I had to cheat my way through high school science courses. But, I've read enough books and have seen enough Discovery channel specials to know there's a whole lot about this universe, about human existence and beyond that we simply don't understand or haven't discovered.

Of course, a lot of what you hear in this realm are stories recounted from people who are completely off their rocker. But can all of it be? I think about two books, when I'm reading and one I recently read. The former is called The Bible and Flying Saucers and, while surprisingly pragmatic in its approach, it's totally out there. The latter is The Search for Zero Point Gravity, which was written by an esteemed aviation reporter and includes some pretty compelling evidence for UFOs, inter-dimensional travel, and endless power sources. Two books on opposite ends of a similar spectrum; yet somewhere, I figure, there has to be some truth.

But to get back on point, I think I'm just a skeptic by nature and was attracted to books, comics, TV shows, etc, that feel in that wheelhouse. Steve had a great line about the contradictory nature of humans—we believe what we're told and question what we see. That's vital to Hoax Hunters: You can see footage of a UFO in a field, but if someone with even a hint of being an "expert" comes out and says, "oh, that's just swamp gas," most people will believe them. Hoax Hunters exists where that contradiction ends.

Thanks so much to Michael Moreci for taking the time to talk with us, look for Issue 0 of Hoax Hunters coming out March 21st.