To shiver with fear with Squeezie, you will now have to turn on the light. If you’re the type to devour his horror thread videos at night under the duvet, it will be more difficult to do so with Bleak, the comic book whose first chapter comes out this Thursday in bookstores. The youtubeur has co-scripted three scary stories whose intrigues take place one evening of babysitting in an unknown house, the night in a carnival as well as in the middle of a summer camp in a forest.
Soon, a new volume will be released to extend the experience of this horrific universe that Squeezie intends to launch. “It would be cool if we could create some kind of Goosebumps new generation”, he enthuses with 20 minutes.
When was the moment when you said to yourself that you were going to release a comic book in a horrific universe?
We made 800,000 horror threads on the channel (laughs) and it’s something that often came up: “what if we made an original creation around horror? “. Comics, short film, film? We didn’t know it at first, we wanted to create our own stories and our own universe. We thought that comics were the most logical first step because it’s easier to set up than a film or a series. It was a logical gateway to mastering what we were doing and coming up with something solid.
You participated in the writing of the screenplays. Did you first think about themes, characters, mechanics?
These are more pitches. What mechanics do we want to use? What’s cool in a comic strip is that if you want a fairground, it’s drawn, there’s no constraint of a production team that has to scout, find it… You can imagine lots of of stuff. So we were wondering what pitches could create empathy in people and be visually nice. We thought it was cool to have several environments.
Three different cartoonists illustrated the stories independently. Why this choice ?
No one is sensitive to the same type of horror. Already, at the level of the stories, we did not really know what type of horror was going to please. Same with illustrations. There are so many different styles, so how do you get people to experience the story as well as possible without closing the delirium to other readers? We had to target the widest possible audience, that’s why these drawings are neither too childish nor too adult. There are still differences between them, which allows us to take the temperature and see what people like the most.
The idea for the comic strip came to you from the famous horror threads. How do you explain that it became the channel’s most popular format?
I couldn’t quite explain it. I’m the first surprised that people like it so much. But at the same time, we are fascinated by stories because we all like to learn things, to be surprised, to tell them to our friends. I think horror stories play on our anxieties, our fears of everyday life. We know that these things exist, that they happen around us. You say to yourself “if it happened to me, would I have had the right attitude? Could I have survived? “. I think it exorcises our anxieties.
In the collector’s version, we can read that you have six stories left to tell “to close the first chapter of Bleak “. What does it consist on ?
Our first chapter is really our trilogy. Besides, we would like to do spin-offs of certain stories because people who have read the comics are thirsty for an even more developed story. Some do not lend themselves at all to the 24-page format with which it is quite hard to develop a plot. We thought that in addition to these three comics, we were going to do spin-offs of longer stories. But it will be more. It would be cool if we could create some kind of Goosebumps new generation. There would be this format with three stories and longer formats with 72-page stories where you can expand more.
And what will the second chapter consist of?
We would like to move towards audiovisual but it is much more complicated. We know how to do it because we’re used to it now, but it’s still a real challenge. On this one, we have huge requirements so we’re going to take our time to tell ourselves that we couldn’t do better when it comes out.
You have proven that you can be a YouTuber and release an album, that you can be a YouTuber and release a comic. What do you have left to prove?
Above all, I would like to prove to myself that we are capable of going after our ideas, making them real and that people like them. For now, I’m happy. Many people follow me in all my projects, are mega benevolent, which gives me enormous comfort in everything I do. I don’t have a stomach twisted with stress and if they have any comments, they will be relevant.
The comic recorded 70,000 pre-orders. We can speak of a real success.
I thought there would be 10,000 pre-orders, which is already huge for a comic. People overwhelmingly pre-ordered the latest pack with all the exhibits. This shows that there was a desire to see more, it made us too happy. I don’t take it as pressure, it means there is a fanbase of Bleak who are pros at this and want to see more.
Delayed because of the Covid-19, the tour of your album Oxyz can it be done?
I will be touring in 2023 in my opinion. I want to release more sounds. Even there, I found myself much more in music. I really tour hard so I prefer to have a lot of sounds to play on stage.
So you continue to work on productions?
To death, of course, it does not stop.
For a second album?
We’ll see what the future will tell us (laughs).