Monster Mash
Author Tom Sniegoski on Vampi, Buffy, and the demonic aspects of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
      by Tara O'Shea

Tom Sniegoski loves monsters.

As a child, he adored Universal movie monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and the Mummy to the point where his family worried about him. "My mother was beside herself," he revealed with a chuckle as we sat in a hotel bar across the street from Chicago's Wizard World convention. "She thought I was from another universe. I mean, literally -- I remember relatives... My mother's brother who was an Army Colonel in the Vietnam war, and this guy is all stars all over his uniform, is saying to her 'You know, it's not normal for him to like this stuff.'"

The definitive Warren Vampi.

Normal or not, Sniegoski has made a living telling stories about monsters. As a comics writer, he was one of the authors behind Harris Comics' successful 1992 re-launch of Vampirella. A cult figure with enormous popularity due largely to the writing talents of the late Archie Goodwin and artist Jose Gonzales, the sexy vampire from outer space was first published with a color cover by legendary artist Frank Frazetta by Warren Publications in 1969. Sniegoski re-vamped Vampi's origin, giving her the mission of exterminating vampires from the Earth (a sort of vampire Vampire Slayer), as well as an extensive cast of supporting characters.

No longer an alien vampire form the planet Drakulon, she was established as the daughter of Lilith, a contribution that Sniegoski is especially proud of. "A couple of the other writers tweaked [the Lilith story] a little bit, but they didn't abandon it. Obviously I did something right. How many people don't know this legend -- I tell people, 'Adam's first wife.' 'What do you mean, Adam's first wife? Only Eve, only Eve!' and I'm, like, 'No, there's another one!'"

Sniegoski left the series after three years and twenty five issues. "I think the new people that took over the direction of the book had a preconceived idea that cheesecake was what made Vampirella hot in the late 60s, early 70s. Just the cheesecake, and they thought that they could get by with just the cheesecake again. It was kinda interesting, they kinda wanted to dismiss everything they'd done."

In a very Blake's 7-esque move, Sniegoski massacred the entire supporting cast in his last issue. "Actually, Chris [Golden] did that with me," he noted with a smile. "That was the first thing we did together. We just wiped them all out. We just killed them. Said 'You can't have 'em!'"

On the subject of the latest Vampirella book, Kevin Lau's Japanese manga inspired Vampi, Sniegoski was less than enthusiastic.

"I don't agree with the art."

You want the Frank Frazetta version, with the ribbons and a pair of underwear?

"Yes. And now we've got manga with big guns. I don't know what they're actually thinking. I think they're just desperate to try anything 'cause the numbers had plummeted so badly. They went from what I had done, which was a Top 50 selling book for I don't know how many years, and they just decided that they didn't want to do stories anymore -- they just wanted to do cheesecake. That's right around the time that I said 'You know what? I'm not doing cheesecake.'"

Guns. Lots of guns.

In addition to Vampi, Sniegoski has also penned tales of Wolverine, Daredevil, and Shi, and is the first writer ever asked to work in Jeff Smith's Bone universe, resulting in the graphic novel Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails. Teamed with co-writer (and best friend) Chris Golden, he co-wrote Realworlds: Batman, in which a young mentally disabled supermarket worked named Charlie who dresses in a Batman costume and acts out scenes from the Adam West TV series. The story proved to be a touchstone for many fans of the legendary DC Comics character, and has been the source of some of the most positive feedback Tom has received for his work in comics.

Currently, Sniegoski is co-writer (with Chris Golden) on the monthly Angel title from Dark Horse. Not coincidentally, Chris Golden is to blame for Tom's involvement in the Buffy universe. "I was at Chris Golden's house the night it premiered, and everybody kept saying, 'Oh, I'm gonna tape that. It looks pretty good.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, yeah, but I have to drive home.' I said, 'Yeah, I'll have my wife tape it, and I'll watch it.' You know, when I get in, or maybe the next day. Or whatever. And when I got in, it still had 15 minutes to go, and I was like 'You know, this looks really good.' And the rest is history -- the balls got rolling."

Sniegoski's first major project in the Buffyverse was Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Monster Book with Chris Golden and Steve Bisette. The massive tome covers not only each of the monsters, vampires, magic users and other supernatural flora and fauna featured on the hit series, but the origins of demons, witches, and vampires in folklore and the popular media.

"Probably the ultimate reason I got involved with The Monster Book was Chris Golden. Chris Golden and I have been writing together for the last 3 or 4 years, so with Chris doing a lot of the Buffy product coming out of Pocket, The Monster Book -- I think he may have even come up with the concept of The Monster Book and then called me up and said 'Hey, I got this idea,' and started to talk about what the book would be. And I was, like, 'That's kinda cool. That's kinda cool.' 'Do you wanna do it with me?' 'I haven't really done this before.' Because primarily I've just done comics.

"I wasn't even sure if it was going to get off the ground. And Chris was 'I'll pitch it. I'll pitch it.' Chris pitches a million a things a day. Some of it sticks, some of it doesn't stick. And then he told me who he thought he'd approach because we were just guessing that the volume was going to be so large that he was gonna contact Steve Bisette, who was an extremely talented comic book guy. Steve got me my first comics work. So I've known Steve forever, so it was like 'Oh cool!'

"And the thing is, Bisette is a huge movie nut and comic nut. So in terms of his knowledge, and my knowledge, combined with Chris' knowledge, it gave us a great team to pull this great big book of everything you'd ever want to know about monsters together. We never realised the extent of the amount of work that we would have to do for this book. I think we had just a certain idea of what it was gonna be, and we were kidding ourselves. Because when we actually sat down to start doing the actual research, it's enormous."

So enormous that literally hundreds of pages of mythology and pop culture that were edited from the book for length.

"It was a nightmare," he confirms. "'What do you mean it's too long? More is good!' That was the attitude when we went in. We should have known better. But Chris had the attitude that more was better. So Steve was writing his heart out. I was writing my heart out. Chris was writing his heart out, and we just delivered a monstrosity."

A monstrous Monster Book?

"Oh, you ain't kidding. It was, Oh my god. I've said this to many a person -- and I'll say it to be recorded -- the fact that my marriage survived The Monster Book just shows you that nothing can break my wife and me up. And the thing is, she helped enormously on this book.

"We literally went from the beginning and traced it straight through -- and again, we sat down, and we're starting 'demons', we're starting 'witches' and we're like 'Oh my God, where do we start?'"

Next Page >