Richard Moore's 'Boneyard' Goes Quiet
RSSBy SLJ Staff
"It would be easy to keep going indefinitely--and I certainly had enough story arcs planned to keep Boneyard (Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing, 2001-1009) going for many years--but I have a lot of other projects that I wanted to get to," says Moore by email. "Also, difficulties with the publisher just made it easier to move on to something else." Moore didn't respond when asked to elaborate on the difficulties, but Terry Nantier, founder and publisher for Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing says, that to his knowledge, Moore will continue publishing collections with them. "Any issues that there were, were resolved a long time ago," Nantier says, declining to comment on the specifics. "As I understand, he will be doing some things with other publishers as he has always done. But as I understand he will also continue to do collections with us." The horror/comedy quarterly series, which ran 28 issues from 2001 to 2009, is about an ordinary young man named Michael Paris who inherits a large plot of land from his grandfather in a town called Raven's Hollow. But Paris finds out that the land is actually the town graveyard-and there are a number of creatures who inhabit the Boneyard. Boneyard's storyline grew from Moore's fascination with monsters, characters he says had a "commonality," plus his own "desire to never work in retail again," he says. Although a clear horror-buff, Moore notes that a glut of these stories have hit the mainstream in the last few years. And while not against their popularity, he wishes there was a bit more integrity in some of the monster tales populating books and screens today. "For me it's more a question of quality," he says. "If a series-books, TV, whatever-has a genuine heart, it's fine. But there's a lot of stuff out there that seems opportunistic. 'Let's get a vampire show on the air while they're hot' - that sort of cynical motivation." For now, Moore's motivation is to find a story that doesn't lose his interest-perhaps a comedy/adventure or comedy/fantasy or even another horror series, he says. While he often scripts essential plot elements of a story arc in advance, surprising himself seems part of the fun. "It's also nice to have flexibility, to be able to make changes as characters grow, sometimes in unexpected directions," he says. "It keeps things from becoming boring."
After eight years telling stories about a 2,000-year-old vampire named Abby, a demon named Glumph, and the silent Brutus, graphic novelist Richard Moore is burying his 'Boneyard' series, with the July release of Volume 7 set to be his last.
