Part of IDW Publishing's slate of original comic books, Kill More is what happens when serial killer fiction meets horror meets a police procedural meets science fiction — and more. Screen Rant sat down for an exclusive interview with writer Scott Bryan Wilson at New York Comic Con 2023, where he revealedthat his plans for the book are far deeper than fans might expect.

Kill More — by Wilson, Max Alan Fuchs, and Valentina Briški — rewards those who are looking closely as well as those who simply can't look away. ​​​​​​The story, set in the somewhat near future, follows two detectives working in what is essentially an abandoned city. In Colonia, Only those who can't afford to leave are forced to stay. As the detective pursue their homicide and missing persons cases, they start realize that they have a big problem on their hands.

Among the remaining inhabitants are a group of memorable serial killers, like the one picture above on the cover for Kill More #2, which is available for purchase now. In the following conversation, Wilson talks with Screen Rant about Kill More's publishing journey, the pains of deg eye-catching villains, the value of back matter in comics, and more. Check out the full conversation, edited lightly for clarity, below.

Kill More Is More Than Simple Serial Killer Fiction, Promises Scott Bryan Wilson

Screen Rant: This is a great first issue, so congratulations!

Scott Bryan Wilson: Thank you!

How does it feel to finally see it in the world in its full form?

I've been working on this book for eight years.

Oh, man. Oh, wow.

So having it out in print, seeing it on the shelf was really surreal. Because I had thought about it for so long, and I had been working on it for so long, and I had had so much rejection around it. Nobody believed in it, and finally having a collaborator in Max [Alan Fuchs], who’s drawing the book, and then having IDW say, We want it, was — that was amazing enough. Then it was like another year before the first issue came out. So when I actually saw it on the shelf, my knees buckled a little bit. I was like, Oh my God. I hadn't actually seen it yet, and I got to my shop before it opened the day it came out, and I saw it on the shelf. My knees buckled. It was amazing, for something that's been sort of going for that long.

Congratulations. I really mean that.

Thank you.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about what Kill More is about — what’s the conceit? What's going on here?

So it's a book about a city where the infrastructure has fallen out, and a bunch of depraved serial killers show up because cops are leaving left and right. There's not a lot of oversight. There's not a lot of consequences for actions. And they're taking over the city. It's about them, of course, but it's also about the two cops who are steadfast — staying at this job where there's no reason to still be there. Everyone else is giving up, everyone else is leaving, but they're determined to stay no matter what.

They slowly realize: we have a big problem. It's like, Oh, one serial killer, bad enough. They start realizing, We have so many we can't even count. We don't even know how many we have. Which is the start of things for them, when they start putting the pieces together. They don't realize that by the end of issue one. But they start realizing it, and then it becomes this bigger thing. It's almost like — organization. Like, Oh my God, well, how do we start defining who we have, right?

So it's about their steadfast pursuit of these unknown killers that they are only able to identify by victims and some other things that happen in the book.

Let's keep going on the serial killer talk, which is so cheerful, because the first issue makes a great opening statement with the introduction of Ethel. What a character, what a memorable cover as well. Can you tell us a little bit about Ethel?

Yeah, I'll tell you a little bit about her! She runs over men in cars in her car on purpose and plays it off as if it's because she's just a little old lady who, you know, can't drive or can't see over the steering wheel. It’s an accident, right?

Yes, she shows up in every issue in the background somewhere. You have to spot her. She’s there hidden in the background somewhere in every issue. She plays a very big role in the book overall. But it's a very big story. It's like a novel. You are rewarded for your patience when you start putting the pieces together. So she definitely comes back in a big way. She's the opening scene. And that's all I'll say. But she comes back.

Talking about the killers, you know — when I first started the book, it was a very different idea. I was like, Oh, if you have a bunch of serial killers in town, the cops have to figure it out. And I was like, Well, if I was going for realism, we would have a bunch of white guys you couldn't tell apart. Because if you look at serial killers, historically, it's a bunch of white guys you can't really tell apart. That would be uninteresting and also really hard to follow as a reader. Like, which white guy is this? And frankly they needed something to make them very memorable. Because there's so many of them, they don't show up that much each. So they needed a very memorable way of killing so as soon as you see something like, Oh, I know who that is. As a reader, you say, Oh, I know who that is.

So I wanted to be a little larger than life. More like supervillains than serial killers, because the other thing — frankly, if I were making this super realistic, it would be too f— depressing. Nobody would want to read it. I've read so many serial killer books, true crime, serial killer books. It does something to your psyche. In preparation for this book I read — I mean, I've always been interested in it — but I read so much. And it's just too bleak to think of what one human can do to another in real life.

I don't want it to be this gore fest that's just depravity. Nobody wants to read that. It's too depressing. It's too bleak. Like who's gonna read this? So I thought, if you make it supervillains, you make the violence over the top. That makes it palatable, that makes it memorable. That makes you want to come back for more.

I think part of what makes this book so memorable is the character designs — as part of the supervillain-y aspect of it, the over-the-top-ness of it. What was it like working with your artistic collaborators, with Max, to create these characters?

Max is amazing. We did a graphic novel at Dynamite together, and I already knew I wanted to work with him on something creator-owned. But maybe five pages into the graphic novel, I was like, Alright, man, get this book done. But then I got a book for you.

We started talking about it very early on in that. He would chip away at different designs and stuff as we were working, because I'm like, Look, when this book is finished, I want to have something to pitch, because we want to keep moving on this, you know? Some of the killers had very specific descriptions in the script. I had specific descriptions for them. But once he was turned loose, I was like, Man, I don't really care if it matches what I wrote. What do you see? That's what I want: what do you want to draw?

Because the other thing you have to keep in mind is that it's a long series. When you're drawing characters over and over, they need to not be a total headache to draw. So I think they're all — “easy” to draw as is the wrong word, but something he could draw without a lot of “what did I do last time,” you know?

There's one character, the Sufferer, who has a very complicated sort of design. He's got a hoodie, and he's got a t-shirt, and he's got jeans, and things are ripped, and there are patches. You're like, what're the patches? What’re the rips? Where's the skin? There are a lot of these kinds of questions. He’s got a haircut, it's half dreadlocks, half shaved. Just this wild character design. He's got earplugs! It's all these little details you have to . But that's what fits. That's what made sense. It wasn't just what's easy to draw. It was what makes sense for the character.

And then a lot of them were just designed on the page. Now that we're moving and grooving, it's like, Oh, issue four or whatever, there's a new killer. [Max] is not gonna just draw, he’s not gonna do turnarounds. “I'll just design them on the page.” It's amazing, right? I'm sort of writing the book as a straight-up crime procedural. But Max is really bringing the horror elements. A lot of the violence, a lot of gross stuff, a lot of the angles he chooses. It's amazing, right? Like, I see the pages, and I'm like, Wow, this isn't how I saw this at all, but it's better, and it's creepier, and it's dirtier. Even the way he draws the city! It's so dirty and gross feeling. But it's like, Yes, this is because people are leaving.

I hope he never works with another writer, as long as he draws comics. Put it that way.

That is, I think, a high compliment. So you mentioned that this is a police procedural, it's a serial killer story, it's a horror story, all of these different kinds of genre elements. But it's also a little bit sci-fi, a little bit far-future. Can you talk a little bit about, like — why make that choice? Why add that extra genre element?

The sci-fi elements really pay off late in this series, but they're hinted at throughout. You see in the first issue that there are rocket launchers. There's talk about a colony on Mars, where people are leaving, and they're going there. Colonia, the city where the book takes place, they built rockets. That was their industry, they built rockets to colonize Mars. Now that industry has pretty much collapsed, and there's one rocket that's left to take off, and then that's it. There's a very specific story reason why. It all pays off in the end. The reader is gonna go, I don't quite know what this means, but it means something because it keeps getting mentioned! It pays off in the end.

But it was also that I wanted to set it a little bit in the future because I didn't want to pin it down to any certain time. The phones look like cell phones, but they operate a little differently. People still watch TV, but it works a little differently. I read a thing where it was like — if you look at movies where the cities are super futuristic looking, like, that's never going to happen on Earth. Because to tear down New York City and rebuild it super futuristic? Never gonna happen! Too expensive, right? Everything is just built on what comes before.

So everything kind of looks familiar [in Kill More], but things are sort of futuristic. You can see some of the prices when they go in stores and things like that. You're like, Wow, that seems really expensive for a hotdog! $17? But you're like, Oh, well, it's the future. I think the opening caption says “soon” or “in the future,” I can't exactly what the opening caption is. But it's not a specific year. I didn't want to pin it down specifically. Because then if I say 2059, people are gonna go, We’re not gonna be colonizing Mars in 26 years! Like, yeah, no, I know! So I can't say that. You just gotta hint.

All those little details add to this almost unsaid undercurrent in the story that's kind of about economics and about class as well. I wanted to ask you about how you think these genre elements add or influence or shape the way you're thinking about the larger themes of the book. Which of course is, you know, killing people, but also about who gets to leave and who has to stay.

My thought originally was like, okay, first to leave would probably be the middle class, the people who are working, the people who worked at the rocket factories. Okay, their job is gone, they gotta go somewhere else. They start leaving. Well, that's also blue collar jobs, right? Police, firefighters, they would start leaving. Once that's gone, you're left with the lower class and the rich people. Rich people, probably not going to stick around, right? They're gonna take off too. So you're left with the lower class.

In later issues you see scenes in extravagant apartments — that someone is squatting in. I think there's a line in the first issue — someone's on TV, and they're like, “There's no such thing as homeless.” Anybody who wants a house can have six because there's so many available now. That's a big thing throughout: the squatting and the availability of real estate that wouldn't otherwise be available. I don't know if I'm trying to make any big socioeconomic comment, but it's definitely something I think about with every issue.

Alongside all of that — who was forced to leave, who has to stay — there are also the people who choose to stay, like the detectives who ground the story, which we haven't talked about yet. Can you say a little bit about who these characters are, how they work together?

The two main characters are Detectives Aira and Parker. Aira is the detective who's just never gonna give up. He has no hobbies other than being a detective. I think even in the original description in the script, it's not in the issue, it says like: he's not an alcoholic, he's never been married. These are sort of cliches of cops. Oh, they're alcoholic and divorced. None of those because all he ever wants to do is solve crimes, solve murders.

And then you have detective Parker, who's much younger, who is a missing persons detective. She realizes like, she discovers a body in the first issue because she's looking for one of her missing persons. Aira shows up to investigate the homicides. He gets called in, and they realize — she's like, You know, I wonder how many of my missing people are actually homicide victims.

The things you see throughout the book are like, Oh, the police department computer systems don't work anymore. There's all these basic things that don't work anymore. So Aira has a handwritten list of his homicide victims, which you probably wouldn't have in 20-whatever-this-is. It's this dedication, determination. There's a line, I think in issue two or three, and Aira says, “Anyone who leaves is a coward.” Talking specifically about the cops who leave, because in the first issue, his partner tells him, I got another job in another city, I'm taking off. Aira is not amused by that.

The city's not just populated by the lower class, you see other people who are still there. There's still these signs of like, maybe this can all come back. Maybe people are still willing to hang on. But the outlook isn't great.

One of the things I loved about the first issue was the found documents at the end of it. The intake form and then the news story. Was that always a part of the book? How does it influence the way the book goes moving forward? I really liked those!

The back matter is super important. Watchmen [by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons] is a massive influence. From Hell [by Moore and Eddie Campbell], to me, greatest comic ever made. But Watchmen is up there.

The back matter in Watchmen, super important to the book, right? There's people who read Watchmen the trade and skip the back matter, and there're people like me who read it every time. Super important. There's a lot in the world building that happens in the back matter. It's all there for a reason. It all says something. Part of it was when I was talking IDW about doing the book, I was like, if I just deliver 32 pages? Would that be okay? Is it okay if we don't have ads in the book? And they're like, Yeah, go ahead. And so then I was like, Oh, okay, I'm gonna deliver back matter. Because I have all these ideas I want to do.

I make all the back matter. That's part of what I do on the book. And that continues throughout the series. I think there's maybe two issues that aren't gonna have back matter, because the story is a little longer, but it's all super important. It's all really additive to the book, if you take the time to read it.

The back matter in issue two I’m super happy about. It's an introduction to a book of poems by the lieutenant, who you find out in issue one has left, has retired. Now he's writing cop poems. It's like, what? I don't understand why this is here. But if you look at it, you're like, Oh, I see. This is the guy from issue one. And now you're like, Oh, this is his worldview. So that all continues throughout.

So one last question for you, and I'm very excited to ask it knowing that you've been working on this for eight years. What is the one thing about this book that you always want to talk about that no one ever asks you? What is the thing that you want to talk about?

Man, that is so hard, because it has been such a part of what I've been doing for eight years. Everything else I've written, I've always thought of like — I've always had good ideas. Like I was doing like the Pennyworth series for DC. I had another creator-owned book before this one with IDW. I've done so many other little things, but I've kept ideas back because I wanted to save them for Kill More, even though I knew I didn't have a publisher. I didn’t know if it would ever come out. But I was like, No, I'm gonna save that. That's for Kill More. That's a Kill More thing.

I think the thing for me is like, I want the book to appeal to comics fans, but even people who don't read comics. It's written for people who maybe read one or two graphic novels a year — or have never read a comic. I think this is a big, big story. It's more like a novel than a comic. Every page was laid out, plot-wise, before I wrote the first issue. For the entire thing! There are things that happen in issues one, two, three, four that you have no context to understand until you read issue five. And you go back and you start flipping through issue one, and you’ll be like, Oh, f—! There's so much stuff like that. There's all these — they’re not even Easter eggs, they’re plot points.

When you read issue one, there's no way you can have any idea of what it means or that it means anything. And then you read issue five and you go, Oh! Issue five is a big one. Issue five is a big turning point. Then you start going back and you look through and you're like, Oh. You realize it's a lot grimmer than you think. But there's no way of knowing that.

So it's a book that demands reading, rereading. A second read, a third read. I want every time you read it [for you] to see something new you've never noticed. To discover something new. That's how I am when I read Watchmen and From Hell, you know, and Providence. I mean Alan More is a big one. Even 100 Bullets [by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso], books like that, right? Every time I read them, there's something I've never seen yet.

There are so many comics, and you read them, and you get everything. There's no reason to pick it up again. Just like there's plenty of movies, you watch them once — I got everything. But the best things — the best literature, the best films, the best TV shows, the best comics? Oh, there's so much here. And you just keep going back. And you just keep watching and rewatching or reading and rereading.

For me, every page has so much thought in it. I've probably written entire issues of certain things that have as much thought as, like one page of Kill More. Not that I wasn't trying my best, but for what it was. [Kill More is] the thing I've been living with, and it's a big novel of a comic. So maybe that's the thing. There's no way for people to know about that, because it's not done. But that's the thing — just stick with it.

And the other thing is — you know, you want every issue to be better, right? But when I turned in the first issue, the co-publisher of IDW Mark Doyle called me, and he goes, Hey, you know this is really f— good, right? And I went, Oh, sh—. That's great. I was excited for five seconds. And then I went, Oh. My heart sank. I got to do this seven more times. That is this challenge. Like, is this issue better than the previous one? Is this one better than the previous one? Like, trying to just keep upping things, like making it better, you know?

There's so many comments where the first issue is great, and you don't have to read the rest of this series. This is not that book. This is a book that demands thought and thinking and engaging with it. So thank you for reading the back matter.

And thank you to Scott Bryan Wilson for talking with us about Kill More at NYCC 2023. Kill More #2 — back matter and all — is available now from IDW Publishing.