THINGS I LOVE: Richard Moore's "Boneyard"

Anyone unfamiliar with Richard Moore’s work to date is truly missing out. His latest series, Boneyard, is a rich blend of classic horror movies and off-beat humor. Moore has a flair for visual story-telling, and his artwork shows a unique gift for comic timing, as the first issue illustrates with a three-panel gag about a vampire, a frightened human, and a phone book mistaken for a bible.

“Boneyard was just perfect for me,” Moore says. “I’m a big fan of old horror movies. I also like doing humor, and I wanted to draw something that had an almost cartoony look to it, and it just came together and almost wrote itself. I just sent number three into NBM Publishing. The first story arc is going to be about four issues but it’s an on-going series.”

In addition to the whacked-out humor, Boneyard boasts one of the larger casts of recurring characters to be seen in an independent series. “I think people will be surprised after the first four issue story-arc [which characters will be focused on]. Abbey has been the break-out character for obvious reasons, but as far break-out potential for the character itself, as opposed to the way the character looks, I think that Glump probably will be. He’s the fat little demon. He doesn’t have a lot to do in the first four-issue story arc, but after that he’s going to carry a lot of the humor. Abbey has been in three projects that I worked on before. She was just a character I’d always liked, and when Boneyard came up, I just had to put her in there. She got a little more refined here, I gave her a bit more background. Some of the others, Nessie the swamp creature, has appeared in various incarnations in things I’d done before. Same thing with some of the other ones. And faces that I’d sketched before and liked found their way into Boneyard.” –Excerpt from unpublished interview from Moore by moi.

Of the many, many things that I like, Richard Moore’s Boneyard is at the very top of the list. Introduced to me by the incomparable Charlie and Shelli Fleming, the series led me to seeking out Moore and interviewing him for a number of publications, including the ground-breaking, world-renowned and orgasm-inducing Femme Fatales Issue #95 - Vol 11 #3 (2002). --->

Boneyard is about the unassuming Steve Paris who inherits a haunted cemetery populated by all sorts of wonderfully creepy characters. In addition to his prowess at drawing sexy sea monsters, Moore has a fantastic sense of visual comic timing, as can be witnessed in the very first issue, when Paris attempts to ward off Abbey with what he thinks is a Bible, grabbing it up without looking. It’s genius.

Sadly and tragically, Moore put an end—or, as he puts it, a “hiatus”—to Boneyard with issue #28, wrapping up a storyline but leaving so much unanswered. The issues have been collected into easy-to-handle and transport trade paperbacks, both in black and white and color, and are available here.

Now be off with you.