Q&A and Preview: YOU’LL DO BAD THINGS’ Tyler Boss Discusses Serial Killers, Writer’s Block, and Giallo Influences for This New Horror Comic Book Series

I can't wait for Daily Dead readers to check out You'll Do Bad Things, a new horror comic book mini-series from Tiny Onion and Image Comics that will especially resonate with those that love giallo films. Written by Tyler Boss and illustrated by Adriano Turtulici (with lettering from Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou), the first issue is due out on March 26th, and I caught up with Tyler Boss to talk all about the making of this new mini-series. And to give you a tease of the horrors that await readers next month, we have a 6-page preview you can read right now!

What was the inspiration behind You'll Do Bad Things and how did this series come to land with Tiny Onion and Image Comics?

Tyler Boss: The genesis of You’ll Do Bad Things is funny to look back on. The origin story comes from when my longtime collaborator Matthew Rosenberg and I were brainstorming ideas to pitch artist Josh Hixson while on a road trip. We both came up with what we thought were our best individual ideas and then pitched Hixson each of them. Matt’s idea won. So, like any great story born out of spite, I decided I would show Hixson he picked wrong. 

The core of the idea for the story though came from gestating on my consumption of true crime media. I’ve been an avid true crime fan since watching some kind of 20/20 like special on the Zodiac killer in a motel room while on a road trip with my family. My parents and brother had fallen asleep, but I was transfixed on the story, laying there, surrounded by my family in the dark with only the blue light of the TV. Hearing about the killing of the cab driver, the attack on the couple at the lake in Napa, the threatening letters...I needed to know who this monster was. It never occurred to me at that age that a story couldn’t have an ending. 

It wasn’t until years later when the Fincher movie was released that I realized the cultural impact of the Zodiac Killer. This was in the Myspace era, and social media and the internet wasn’t like it is today, so I didn’t know there were other true crime freaks like me out there. That is until 2012-ish with Netflix’s Making a Murderer, to HBO’s The Jinx, to the podcast revolution with the first season of Serial or My Favorite Murder or Last Podcast on the Left. This sort of tidal wave of media and content all built off the backs of murder stories that I couldn’t get enough of...it kind of got to me. I spent some time evaluating my relationship to true crime and consumption of it, and I guess that’s where the seed of the book was planted. 

The trip to do You’ll Do Bad Things with Image Comics and Tiny Onion was mercifully a much shorter path. I’ve been fortunate enough to have my ongoing comic book series What’s the Furthest Place from Here? with Image going since 2021 and so I reached out to the team with the pitch. I’ll be honest, I give all credit to Adriano’s art for the reason that Image got on board. The Tiny Onion partnership was a right time, right place scenario. I needed help with everything that isn’t the writing and drawing of a comic, and it just so happened that James Tynion IV had created a company that offered those services at the exact time I was starting the book. Synchronicities. 

There's a lot of giallo influence on both the story and artwork. What draws you to giallo films and do you have some favorites that inspired You'll Do Bad Things?

Tyler Boss: What I love about giallo slashers over a boilerplate American slasher is that they all sort of start from a place of theatricality as a given. All the slashers are leather gloved, the blood all neon red, the men and women all sexy and nude. There's no attempt to try and make their stories feel like they could exist in the real world, or alternatively supernatural like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. They’re in this kind of middle place between the two realms of horror. And so, you can do certain things in that giallo mode that you can’t do in typical slashers. There is a scene in issue one where a child magician performs in front of a Rockefeller Center-like theater-going crowd, and I don’t think you question it much because we're operating in this mode. Movies like Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Torso or Red Queen Kills Seven Times all deeply informed the tone and approach to the book. I think the coloring Adriano has produced evokes the lighting you think of from Argento films.

You teamed up with the perfect artist to evoke giallo vibes. Can you talk about your collaboration with Adriano Turtulici to bring this book to life?

Tyler Boss: Working with Adriano has been such a privilege. He just has “it.” Such a passion for comics and his love of the game has been a buoy for me. When we started working together, Adriano was coming off a pretty negative experience, so a lot of the early process was trying to prove to him that I could be trusted. So, we started small, just doing a scene with our killer that could work as the basis for the pitch of the book if we liked working together. Trial period.

In that script, I wanted to show him I could be a gracious collaborator, so I put what I thought was a layup page in the eight or so pages we were doing. Super easy page, four wide panels, all the same composition, looking down on a car with blood slowly pooling underneath it over the four panels, like an oil spill. What I got back from Adriano was anything but that description. Instead, he started from behind the car, followed by a big “BANG” as the killer kicked out of the driver's side door, then stalked off into the night as we lowered the reader's view all the way to the street. I had written the scene to put the reader in a sort of omniscient view of the scene, away from the danger, safe. Adriano’s instinct was to move you closer, to be more visceral about the actions. 

I like to tell that story because it really illuminates my approach to working with him. He’s a young cartoonist in age, but not in skill. There’s a scene at the end of issue #2 that I took my hand completely off the wheel for when describing the panel-to-panel action, and just gave him a breakdown of the information that needed to be in the pages. He actually just came back yesterday with this great re-work of my direction for a scene between Seth and our second lead. This just shows how it’s been an awesome collaboration. 

What can you tell our readers about Seth Holms and why this character is important to you?

Tyler Boss: Seth is funny. When I first conceived of him, I kind of hated him. Hate may be too strong of a word, but he definitely was like, a friend of a friend you talk shit about. He’s someone who has had all this success and opportunity—and now he can’t do the thing he wants to do? I think to Seth: ‘do you know what some people would do for the things you have?’ But in working through the book, getting to know him more, you understand why he is the way he is, what makes him tick. So, while he still can frustrate me, I empathize with him. He’s not a bad dude, just a little stuck, and some people just can’t seem to unstick themselves, like Seth.

This is a character that's facing some pretty extensive writer's block and I'm sure it's something that's happened to both our readers and Daily Dead writing team. Is it something you've faced and do you have any tips / tricks for overcoming it?

Tyler Boss: Seth is a writer’s block incarnate. I face writer’s block often when I sit down to write. It’s honestly probably actually the reason I hated Seth, when I first met him. He’s a manifestation of both block and the shame that can accompany it. But I will say, what works for me best is truly just doing it. Sit down and just start writing, and some of it will be bad...most of it will be bad, but then some of it will be good, and then some of it's good? It’s the most fun feeling in the world. It’s worth chasing. 

But also, I recently had to go get my car fixed and sitting in the waiting room of a multi-time JD Power and Associates winning outfit, I wrote the outline and page breakdowns for an entire issue like someone was dictating, and I had a hard time keeping up. 

This 6-issue series kicks off in March. Can you give our readers a tease of the terrors that await them over the course of the series?

Tyler Boss: We’re trying to bring you a slasher with all the blood and nudity and mean shit you’d expect, but we’re also trying to tell you a good mystery. I don’t know why I keep writing mystery stories... they’re very hard to write, and even more difficult to pull off well. But I think we have a good one here, and I can’t wait for people to see what Adriano and our incredible letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou have created. 

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Award-winning artist and writer Tyler Boss (What’s The Furthest Place From Here?), rising star artist Adriano Turtulici, and lettering legend Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou are teaming up to deliver a grisly new horror miniseries that follows a once-famous true crime writer whose horrifying fictional stories are coming to life in a string of murders by a mysterious serial killer. Drenched in pulpy Giallo film-inspired neon gore, You’ll Do Bad Things takes a deep dive into the worlds of true crime and serial killers, and the fandoms surrounding both. With a touch of B-horror camp, fans of Dario Argento films, Stephen King’s Misery, and true crime will enjoy this gorgeously dark six-issue miniseries, launching this March.

In You’ll Do Bad Things, it’s been ten years since the release of He Came in with a Smile, the true crime smash hit that chronicled the brutal murders committed by the Nursery Rhyme Killer. But in the decade since its release, its author Seth Holms hasn’t produced another title. He wants to write a story with a happy ending, but every time his fingers clack across the keyboard it always ends in his character's death. Worse yet? These tales of blood and barbarity that flow so freely from Seth’s mind are starting to happen in real life.

You'll Do Bad Things #1 (of 6) will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, March 26:

• Cover A by Tyler Boss -- Lunar code 0125IM323
• Cover B by Adriano Turtulici -- Lunar code 0125IM324
• Cover C (1:10 incentive) by Jenna Cha -- Lunar code 0125IM325
• Cover D (1:25 incentive) by Marcos Martín -- Lunar code 0125IM326

You'll Do Bad Things will also be available across many digital platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Play.