[INTERVIEW] MATTHEW ERMAN'S COSMIC-HORROR COMING-OF-AGE • DIS/MEMBER

Read Time:9 Minute, 37 Second

…the inner fears and the struggles to find where you belong: these things are eldritch and totally unknowable and that’s really interesting to me.

As a former teenager (who isn’t), honorary Ohioan (I lived in Cleveland for four years), and post-Mormon (yikes!), I was primed to respond to Loving, Ohio. The latest original graphic novel from author Matthew Erman (Mariko Between Worlds, Power Rangers) and artist Sam Beck (Renegade Rule, Verse), this book hits the sweet spot of Weird fiction, bildungsroman, and existential pondering. Ohio is fertile ground for comic book creators; the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum is housed at Ohio State University in Columbus, and Superman was born on the North Coast.

In addition to Siegel and Shuster, comics creatives including Brian K. Vaughan, Derf Backderf, Jeff Smith, and more hail from the Buckeye State–and those are just the big names. During my time in the Sixth City, I tapped into a booming indie comics scene spanning Cleveland, Columbus, Akron, and beyond. It was this that really sharpened my taste for independent creators, which has led to a fruitful and surprising creative life of books, music, and art.

Ohio has its darker side, though. It’s also part of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (AKA the Mormon Church), in which I was raised. Growing up LDS, upstate New York, Ohio, and Missouri loom large in the mythos. The Rust Belt and Midwestern topographies and sensibilities of these places seemed exotic to a kid from in Florida. Growing up in “the mission field,” I had a sense of my religious self as lesser than fellow adherents born in Zion. When we visited a small town outside Dayton to visit friends several summers in a row, being in Ohio felt like connecting to my religion’s broader history. This landscape was part of where my beliefs had been born. I became more real standing in cornfields than I was among palmettos. Ohio’s is a landscape that became punctuated with fringe religious groups early in its settler history, and remains so.

In Loving, Ohio, a cult has its tendrils in everything–quite literally. Much of Beck’s art for the interiors ranges from unsettling to visually traumatic–yet it’s the banality of The Chorus that really stokes dread for the reader. The Chorus is your parents, your teachers, your local doughnut shop (is nothing sacred?). The Chorus controls the flow of local money and manipulates instances of mass mourning. The Chorus is very difficult to opt out of, because it’s the water in which you swim. If you stop swimming, do you drown? If you go on land, who’s to say you’ll evolve in time to survive? Is the loudest group’s horrifying utterances indicative of majority feeling? Is The Chorus a discrete sect that can be taken down, a way of being you’ll spend the rest of your life unlearning, or the compositional groundmass of capital in which we all live? In the best horror media, the answer is usually “all of the above.”

Erman’s characters shift through modes of being in ways that feel deeply real: most of us aren’t the same person at home as we are with our friends. Sexuality, career goals, and grades provide small stakes to reify the universe-changing ones. It’s this focus on the minutiae of teenagehood combined with the cosmic drama unfolding around Sloane and her crew that creates the book’s impact. Even the personal and municipal horrors Sloane and her friends experience are blunted by the regularity with which they occur.

When you’re young, whatever is happening around you is just… normal. Beck’s colors reinforce this uneasy double consciousness many teenagers occupy, regardless of whether their authority figures are cultists. A majority-mutes palette prevails, grays and greens depicting the sameness of life in Loving. Slashes of red disrupt, tearing the fabric of reality and heralding major trauma, until gold and orange washes creep through the pages toward the book’s end: sunrise, new day–new self?

If you’re willing to visit Loving, Ohio, you’ll likely come away changed. Below, read Matthew Erman’s thoughts on exotic cheeses, confrontational art, and what’s coming up next for him!

Dee Holloway: Hello Matthew, and welcome to DIS/MEMBER! To start, could you give us a background sketch of you and your work so far?

Matthew Erman: I’m Matthew and I’m a writer from Columbus, Ohio. I started writing in comics in 2017 with the release of my twelve-issue horror series Long Lost. From there I went on to write series titles such as Power Rangers with BOOM! Studios, The Dark Crystal for Simon & Schuster, and Care Bears with IDW, while also writing creator-owned series Witchblood, Good Luck, and Golgotha Motor Mountain. My original graphic novels include Terminal Punks, Heebie Jeebies, and Loving, Ohio. I spend my time writing speculative fiction, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy but I just love writing in general!

DH: This graphic novel tangles with some thorny topics, including religious indoctrination, death of loved ones, conspiratorial thinking, and alienation from family. What prompted you to tell a coming-of-age story using a cosmic horror lens?

ME: It just felt connected thematically and magic things happen when you trust your editor and creative partners. I was in a cult when I was growing up, so I was able to pull from that experience a bit, so that was nice, haha. Cults and their members and the overwhelming experience of growing up, the inner fears and the struggles to find where you belong: these things are eldritch and totally unknowable and that’s really interesting to me. Their longevity and their commonplace presence in the Midwest as a kind of story we all tell ourselves; maybe that’s the big meta-narrative of the book. I’m not sure–it’s fun to think about though.

DH: What’s your go-to item at Grandpa’s Cheese Barn?

ME: Only been twice, I’m a southern-western Ohio boy and I rarely would go up north. With that said, I like walking around and trying all the cheeses, they’re all a treat to me and I will buy whatever grabs my attention. Probably something very weird-sounding, because I like when businesses swing hard on a strange idea. But really, the whole experience is a bit of a treat—I like the big mouse.

DH: An early scene in Loving, Ohio features an underground metal show. What metal (or other music) have you been listening to lately? Do you perceive a relationship between fringe music, such as metal and hardcore, and horror media?

ME: Lately, I’ve been listening to: Hotline TNT, Hauomi Hosono, Pile, God Mother, Tomb Mold, and Tommy Richmond. So it’s all over the place from metal to Japanese ambient to TikTok meme music. There’s definitely a connection between fringe music genres and horror media because both more often delve into themes of darkness, existential dread, and the macabre that requires more to enjoy it. Music is the most direct emotional art for me, it hits immediately and quick and is like a shot to the heart for feeling emotion.

Horror media does something similar. It shocks some part of you, it wakes up something–whether that’s fear or dread, or some emotion or an idea from which you’ve turned away. I like that; I like when art does those things, oftentimes without the consent of the reader or viewer. I’m not a fan of trigger warnings on art (unless they’re used creatively) as I think it takes away one of the most effective tools horror has, which is the shocking confrontation between an idea and the viewer. The raw, emotional intensity of many “metal” and “noise” genres can amplify the sense of dread and otherness found in horror stories, making them a natural pairing.

DH: How did the writing and art of Loving, Ohio influence each other? Did you know Sam Beck before working with them on this project?

ME: The writing and art in Loving, Ohio were deeply intertwined throughout the process of making the book. Sam always got chunks of the story far in advance of it going to editorial and Sam’s designs and art affected the writing up until nearly publishing. There’s a couple pages in the back that I removed a lot of words at the last minute because Sam’s art is so beautiful and I got some great advice from another writer. The story’s themes and atmosphere heavily influenced Sam‘s visual style and vice versa too. Her other work doesn’t look like this, which to me, is all the more special. I love when an artist feels comfortable in the space to experiment and do interesting things, things they wouldn’t normally do in the context of their other art.

I knew Sam before this project, and collaborating with her was another fantastic experience. Their ability to capture the eerie and emotional essence of the story and to really extrapolate my scripts into her essence is really unparalleled. She did something really special and I hope, if anything, she is celebrated for creating this book. Sam‘s artwork is so so vital to the book. I can’t overstate that.

DH: What media (whether long-time loves or recent favorites) have influenced your writing projects? Do you have a favorite “plucky teens” movie or book?

Sam Beck’s disorienting interior art for Loving, Ohio

ME: Oh yeesh. I like that my stories often have a certain dream logic to them. The monster just is, or can be— and it doesn’t really matter. It can be human and not human, at the same time and you know, and what really resonate with me is fiction and stories and narratives that are themselves. I love the movie Repo Man, it’s this funny, punk sci-fi roadtrip thing that is so cool, and unique. I really love that and to me above all other things that can make a story, a story — that is what really makes me want to write and create. Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and the music of the Yellow Magic Orchestra have all really contributed to my sessions of writing, especially for Loving, Ohio. I also really love the books of Sandra Boynton, she has been a favorite with me and my son. And for a favorite “plucky teen” movie or book, my pick is The Faculty by Robert Rodriguez. It shares a lot of parallels with Loving, Ohio.

DH: What’s up next for you in terms of projects?

ME: My upcoming projects are really just focusing on my 2024 releases of Loving, Ohio, Heebie Jeebies, and Golgotha Motor Mountain. I will say for the first time publicly that I am working with Lisa Sterle, my wife and the creator of The Modern Witch Tarot, on three new comic projects. Those hopefully will see release in 2026/2027!

Many thanks to Matthew for speaking with DIS/MEMBER! Find his books through your local indie or library, and if you’ve got spooky kids in your life, be sure to pick up a copy of the aforementioned Heebie Jeebies, out now from Papercutz. Happy reading, ghouls!