CORRIDOR Magazine Issue #1

New Reward Tier! Brian Level Original CORRIDOR Art Package!
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 05:19:12 PM

We’re 85% funded, but there’s only a few days left to go. 22 storytellers have something weird to share with you, but only if we get there!

Since many of you backed the magazine in the last week, we’ll also use this space to share some previous updates with you. It’s worth checking them all for sneak peeks at some of our rewards, but we feel these three will give you an inside look at CORRIDOR’s mission and voice:

• Why We Need Horror, Especially Right Now 
• On Creator’s Rights, Rates & Ownership
• A FREE story reward for Halloween

Finally, we’ve got a new one-of-a-kind reward available today that might make your head explode...

Brian Level is making his entire contribution to CORRIDOR available as a single art package! You’ll receive a marked envelope from Brian, containing the original pieces of this “weird folding nightmare.” It contains several finished pages of original art, overlays and spreads – all parts of Brian’s whole story!

Below are some examples from Brian’s desk of previous pieces he’s done like this:

Brian Level is a horror cartoonist, tattooer, writer who has contributed many premiere comic books like Star Wars, Batman, Spider-Man, Avengers and Deadpool to name a few. His work has been internationally well-received for over 15 years. Level brings an element of the horrific and the spiritual to all of his projects with the goal of adding a richness to the work that is able to be revisited multiple times. He lives with his family in the greater Cincinnati area where he makes comics and runs his tattoo shop.

There’s only one of these reward slots and his last original art tier went very quickly. So grab it now if you want this unique NIGHTMARE ENVELOPE!

Mommy's Favorite
about 4 years ago – Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 06:29:26 PM

Happy holiday! 

Although we previously ran out of the Dave Wachter bundle tier, we just added five more to the campaign. So if you were hoping to get a copy of Breath of Bones with your magazine, they're available again!

We spoke to The Comics Multiverse this week about the campaign this week. We talk up our contributors, go further into our mission and share our long term plans for the magazine if we're successful. Plus you get to see our pretty pretty faces. Video embedded below. 

We'll also be talking about the project on Radio of Horror on Sunday evening at 5pm EST. Tune in, especially if you're in the Worcester, MA area!

Finally, if you like a side of cute with your spooky, check out EVERY DAY IS HALLOWEEN. It's an illustrated children's book about a little girl who refuses to celebrate any holidays other than Halloween, brought to you by Adam Tierney and Vaugn Pinpin.

The current THING vs. HELLRAISER tally is at 5 to 4 in favor of The Thing. Get those votes in before you open your Lament Configuration!

Why We Need Horror, Especially Right Now
about 4 years ago – Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 03:10:29 PM

Hi all,

Christian Sager here. Yesterday I wrote a long thread on CORRIDOR's Twitter account about the importance of horror stories, especially right now. I'm not a big fan of Twitter as a medium for long form writing. But there's a large audience there that may help support CORRIDOR if they learn about it. Some of you may be avoiding social media, especially right now. So if you're interested in the topic, I have transposed the thread into this update. 

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I waited a couple of days to do this so we all had a moment to celebrate. But there's still work to do, work for which storytelling is especially useful. Horror stories are especially necessary right now.

As Joan Didion wrote: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Stories are how we make sense of the world around us, because our puny human bodies can't process all the chaotic sensory information we receive. We use narrative to make order out of that chaos.

There's a few standard arguments for why we consume horror stories:  

1) They helps us practice experiencing negative emotions.  

2) Horror works as immersion therapy, prepping us for real-life horror. Grant Morrison calls this an "inoculation." That's pretty ironic in 2020.

3) Horror stories also help us validate the idea that there's something more to this world than we understand. They allow us to indulge in the magical thinking our brains lean toward, but inside a safe space. 

To unpack these further, let's turn to some advice from Tim Waggoner's Writing in the Dark, where he has a whole chapter on "Why Horror Matters." Waggoner points out that horror fiction allows us to both explore and come to terms with our dark side. That's something that many Americans are struggling with this week, so it's worth looking at closer.

Like many of you I've been struggling with questions about human nature lately: why are we violent and cruel? Waggoner points out that kind of thinking can be overwhelming. Again, it's too much chaotic information for our puny brains. But horror stories allow us to process this chaotic information indirectly. Kind of like looking at Medusa through her reflection in a mirror. And yes, horror is also fun. It gives us an adrenaline boost. Makes us feel more alive.

All storytelling can operate this way, but horror shows us at our worst. It reveals the worst possible ways to deal with conflict.  Later I'll cite some studies that argue horror helps us develop survival skills so we're ready when faced with danger. Like say... a pandemic.

This year, many of us have felt pushed to the edge by crises both personal and universal. Horror fiction allows us to experience similar feelings, preparing us for when the real hard hits come along. I've seen many people struggle this year under the pressure of these crises. Some of them might have been more mentally prepared if they hadn't avoided horror in favor of entertainment that was both easy and comfortable. 

Waggoner also points out that good horror isn't SAFE. It doesn't always end with the heroes winning. Much like real life, protagonists can be defeated or changed by horror. Some become a part of it. A lot of us feel like this today: We haven't banished evil. This is a temporary win. And we shouldn't let our guard down because of one election. Further: how did this horror change our friends, families and neighbors? How did they become a part of it?

We can try to answer those questions through horror stories. We can explore our darkest impulses so they no longer have power over us. Instead of avoiding our bad thoughts, we can use them in an attempt to conquer our problems. Waggoner ends his chapter with this: "The stories we (horror writers) create perform numerous important functions for people as individuals and for civilization as a whole."

The most recent example of this comes from a psychology article published in September which found that fans of horror exhibited greater resilience during the pandemic. They argue that "exposure to frightening fictions allow audiences to practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations. 

Greg Ruth wrote an excellent article in 2017 addressing this, specifically in how we expose children to horror.  The world is scary. Rather than leave kids unprepared, let's give them the tools to cope with it. When talking about the catharsis horror stories provide us, Ruth says "Kids can dance with their fears in a safe way that can teach them how to survive monsters and be powerful too." 

Citing an episode of Doctor Who, Ruth points out something we fans of horror already know. It provides us with "guides" who are more honest with us about the world than our parents. Stephen King and comic books taught me more valuable life lessons than my own family. How about you?

So rather than deny horror stories, let's make sure our fears can't get the best of us. Let's learn how to meet and overcome them together. That seems especially relevant right now.

Stephen Graham Jones — one of our favorite authors here — also addressed this in an essay last year. We're all outraged and disgusted by the news on a daily basis. So much so we may need horror stories simply to help process those emotions and vent them out. 

I especially like this quote from Jones' piece:

Horror was probably even the first genre of story we were telling ourselves around the many campfires we evolved around (cautionary tales keep us alive to breed more of us), and will nearly have to be the last type of story we tell ourselves as well (“gather round for the tale of how everybody died”)—horror’s very much here to stay, is part of our DNA, providing us the teeth in the dark we need to keep us vital, make us feel puny and human.  

Horror stories are built into the very fabric of our culture. Without them, we're left with an overwhelming amount of information to process, without a narrative to make sense of the world.

Some more research on the "why horror" topic was published by Abby Moss in a 2017 article called "Why Some Anxious People Find Comfort in Horror Movies." She spoke with a psychology researcher in Denmark who studied the effects of horror movies. He said this: "There's psychological distance when we watch a horror film. We know it's not real—or at least, some parts of our brain know it isn't real. Other parts—ancient structures located in the limbic system—respond as though it were real."

Consuming horror stories creates a flight or fight response in a controlled environment, allowing us to experience negative emotions in a safe space. Another researcher at Oxford compared it to exposure therapy, where patients are exposed to the source of their fear and learn to be less fearful of it.

In an essay on why he makes horror films, Steven Sheil agrees with writers like Waggoner and Jones. He says horror has a deep concern with examining the fundamental themes of our human experience. He writes: "The world is a violent and scary place and death is everywhere. We’re reminded every day of the brutality that people can commit, as individuals, as cells, as armies, as governments. Horror asks questions about that brutality – where it comes from, where it leads." 

Now seems like the right time to seriously ask ourselves these horrific questions. Why did 70 million of us endorse a racist, a liar, a sexual predator, a fraud, a bully and a promoter of violence?  What needs did they think he could meet for them? We're going to need horror to help us process that information. We're going to need it to answer questions about our own humanity, what we value and how we make sense of the world together.

Sheil says, "When someone tells me now that they can’t understand people who like horror, I tell them that I feel the opposite – I can’t understand anyone who doesn’t." Those of us who avoid horror stories are also avoiding the questions they force us to ask about ourselves. 

As Stephen King wrote in 1981's Danse Macabre:  "We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones. A good horror story is one that functions on a symbolic level, using fictional (and sometimes supernatural) events to help us understand our own deepest real fears."

New Reward Tier! Ryan Lee Original Art!
about 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 06:23:55 PM

We decided to take a day off from campaign promotions yesterday, with the news about the U.S. election and the celebrations around the world. After sleeping well for the first time in a long time, we're ready to share a brand new reward with all of you. Ryan Lee is now offering the original art for his contribution to CORRIDOR’s first issue as a new  tier! This will be a single, mixed media piece designed to accompany one of the stories in the magazine.

Ryan Lee is a Michigan-based Comic Artist/Illustrator. His work specializes in the macabre, strange, fantastical, quirky, and monstrous. Most recently, he was the artist/co-creator of the recent thriller/horror comic, Mountainhead from IDW Publishing. He’s also worked with Black Mask Studios, Marvel, Valiant, and Oni Press, to name a few.

Below are examples of Ryan’s full-color originals:

Here’s a few more active Kickstarter campaigns we thought you might also be interested in:

BEEF BROS is a gonzo superhero comic about "two happy-go-lucky himbo bodybuilders who stand up for their community, pushing back against sadistic cops and greedy landlords." It's created by Aubrey Sitterson and Tyrell Cannon, two of our allies in the comic community. We've never seen anything like it.

ELENA is a horror graphic novel by Jorge Jaramillo that explores loneliness and isolation. It looks to be a wonderfully unsettling tale.

BEARSLAYER is a painted and illustrated adaptation of a famous Latvian poem. The art from Bogdan Gărgăriță looks to be meticulously rendered, with multiple layers of texture and symbolism.

New Reward Tier! The Lesser of Two Evils
about 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 07:41:21 AM

With the United States election prominently in all of our minds and anxieties running high, we decided to partner with two of CORRIDOR’s contributors to design a voting ballot where we all win. Announcing our new reward update: a high-quality, flippable risograph print by Marie Enger and Dave Jordan… THE CENOBITES VS. THE THING!

How do you vote? We’ve created two new “VS” tiers for each monster. Pledge your allegiance to the creature of your choice by selecting either the "Vote for Hellraiser" or "Vote for The Thing" tier. We’ll tally the votes together at the end of the campaign. Either way you get this awesome print! But will Clive Barker’s demons show you sweet suffering via Marie Enger? Or will John Carpenter’s cosmic creature assimilate you via Dave Jordan?

“Nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired.”