I had the chance to speak with William Harms, creator of the vampire comic Impaler, about the comic, his creative process and the future of the series.  Impaler tells the story of Vlad the Impaler, most commonly rendered as a vampire in fiction, who in this story is actually a vampire slayer.  When a new vampire threat engulfs New York City, he returns from the depths of time to defend humanity, and teams up with a police office, Victor, in the battle of a lifetime (or several).  Read on for scoops on where the title is headed and what's in store for its characters! 

Tell us about the history of Impaler.

Basically, it started out as a series with Image Central, that started in October of 2006, and three issues were released through them.  Then the sales weren't quite what we needed, regardless of the book's acclaim, to go on.  So my agent took it to Top Cow, and that's how it ended up there.  From there, there's been a large gap in the publishing, but that's just because of scheduling and talkbacks and all that kind of stuff.

The vampire is a staple of the horror genre.  How do you keep it fresh and unique after all these years?

When I first started working on Impaler, just sort of sketching out how the vampires worked, one of the things I decided was that I didn't want any of the quote-unquote traditional weapons against them to work.  So there's no crosses, no holy water, no stake in the heart stuff.  Instead, if you shoot them in the head, they die.  The problem is that since they can turn into shadows, if they're in shadow form the bullet will just pass right through them.  The only thing that can kill them, when they're in their shadow form, is iron, which is what Vlad's sword is made from.  So I think it's a fresh take on how vampires operate and it opened up a lot more interesting storytelling avenues because I wouldn't be hamstrung by, like, "Okay, how am I going to have the protagonist stake a vampire in the heart, or get holy water on them??"  We've already read those vampire stories, and we don't need to re-read them.  The thing about them is, initially, after they turn into a vampire they maintain some of their individuality.  But after a while they all kind of look the same.  So it's really like this kind of hive-mind thing going on, where they all start to look identical to each other.  That's something that will come up later in the series.

Was it difficult to maintain the balance between Vlad's world of sword and sorcery and the modern day police-procedural world of the protagonists?

It was something that interested me when I decided in Impaler, that Vlad, instead of being a vampire, which he is in most fiction, he would be a vampire hunter.  What I wanted to do was bring him whole from his world into our world.  So I really had to establish who he was in his world, and maintain those aspects, the sort of medieval sword and sorcery.  That was something that I really wanted to bring to it because I really wanted him to be kind of a fish out of water.  Like our world is not his world, but being who Vlad is as a character, he is completely unwilling to adjust to that.  He just does not care.  He thinks that things are still the same.  The way things worked in the 1500's that's how they're going to work now.  And the police stuff was more of an effort to ground the book in reality.  Just to say "These are normal people, they're living their lives, Victor's retiring, his boss doesn't like him."  Those are all things that people can kind of relate to.  So it was very important to ground the book that way.  Plus it was really just fun thinking "Okay, well if vampires really attacked New York, and people were disappearing, how would the police react to that, what would they do?"  And the fact that the cops are kind of freaked out by it, but at the same time the mystery appeals to them as police officers.

There's also a balance of big, horror moments and little, quieter moments.  Was that an important aspect in your writing?

Yes, definitely.  The horror fiction that I like, things like really good Stephen King stories, perfectly illustrate why you need to do that.  Because those quiet moments help you establish the characters and show who they are and get the reader to sympathize with them.  And without that - I mean, there's a difference between horror and Friday the 13th Part 8, you know?  That's not really a horror movie, that's not trying to scare you, the fun of that is really just seeing those teenagers get hacked up.  Well I didn't want that.  I wanted everybody in the book who dies to have it mean something.  So that's why you need those quiet moments, to just kind of establish who these people are, and say "This is a normal guy, this is his life, and with all the trials and tribulations that one goes through" - and boom!  Oh shit, all of a sudden vampires are taking over the world.

Was it a challenge to keep your tone/characters/ideas steady while working with several different artists on the series?

It's always a challenge when a new artist steps in, especially when they-re trying to match.  It's much easier for me to hand something to an artist and say "Here's my ideas, go and create it."  And it is a little more difficult for them to say, "This is kind of the established look of everything, this is the style and you need to match it." Which, regardless, is always a challenge.  But all of the artists are all professional artists so beyond that there was no difficulty at all.  They were all professionals and I think they all did a great job.  And the new artist Matt Timpson is just unbelievably awesome.  He not only captures the tone and the style of the first book but he truly makes it his own.  I think people are just gonna freak out when they see the fruit of his labors.

The end of the trade paperback is very interesting.  How do you proceed from there?

The new series picks up literally 90 minutes after the trade ends, and shows...I don't want to spoil the ending, but it picks up with Victor and Vlad reacting to what just happened to them.  Then the story also branches out a little bit from there.  There's some new primary characters introduced, one of which is this guy named Lt. George Wagner, basically he's the leader of a commando team, and they're sent in to Newark International Airport because the Secretary of State was flying back from Europe and had to do an emergency landing there.  When you meet him that's his introduction - they're going to the airport to try and find the Secretary of State.  A second part of that is his wife, Darlene, actually comes up in the book.  And between Vlad and Victor, George and his men, and then Darlene, it's kind of like this tripod of stories.  Really the goal there is to show different aspects of how vampires taking over the world, how it affects... in terms of George's wife, how does this affect the normal person.  With George it's "How does the military respond to that?"  Then Vlad and Victor are sort of the more supernatural element.  I felt like I had to expand the story because, Vlad and Victor, for obvious reasons, they have to move out of New York.  So because of that I felt like the story really had to expand, whereas in the first trade it was very tightly focused.  It never breaks away to anything that's going on outside the country.  It's always just on New York.

Is there a planned end in sight?

Yeah, I pretty much know how it?s going to end.  They're essentially pretty much the same ending: One is pretty godawful, and the other is slightly godawful, and which one ends up happening we'll see when we get there.  I've kind of planned it out and it'll be the usual, about 50-60 issues if I had my way.  That would be a good length for the series.

Note: That wraps up my discussion with William about the series.  For more info and to read the first issue of the series, check out the official 'Impaler' website from Top Cow!