Immortal beings don't age, but they're still at the mercy of time because they're never quite safe from the mistakes of their past. Violence and sins committed decades and even centuries ago can come back to haunt them at any minute and destroy the lives they've built for themselves. That's what happened to the vampiric Bowman family, the stars of writer Donny Cates and artists Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe's creator-owned Image Comics/Skybound series Redneck.

In the series initial arc, the Bowman family's attempt to blend into human society was destroyed when the family's grandfather escalated an ages-old feud with a human family, the Landrys. The violence that followed killed a number of Bowmans, sent the family on the run, and forced them to adopt the Landry patriarch who had been transformed into a vampire. They ran straight from the frying pan into the fire, as with November's issue #7 a new arc kicked off that found the Bowmans in hiding, on the run from the law, and betrayed by the vampiric Father Landry who killed the Bowman patriarch, JV, after he discovered that Landry had been quietly siring his own vampire family.

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CBR spoke with Cates, who also writes Thanos and Doctor Strange for Marvel, about the dark and dangerous current arc that continues with this week's Redneck #8, forcing cowardly Uncle Bartlett into the role of Bowman family leader, and putting the spotlight on the Bowman's human familiars Phil and Evil. Plus, take the first look at exclusive art from Redneck #8.

Redneck #8 cover by Nick Pitarra.

CBR: In Redneck #7 you left readers with two big plot twists. The first is that, unbeknownst to the Bowman clan, the now vampiric Father Landry has been feeding and creating new vampires. What can you tell us about his motivations?

Donny Cates: An ongoing theme that I like to explore in this book are the ramifications of small, seemingly innocent mistakes which seem to last forever. They're things that fester and get out of hand. In the first arc we had grandpa. That problem was never really solved. They just put him in the attic and tried to ignore it. We saw how that got out of hand.

And in this arc, yeah, as far as Landry's motivations, things are really interesting because we saw him somewhat changed at the end of the first arc. But just because he became a vampire and was taken in by the Bowmans it doesn't change who he is. He's still kind of an asshole. He's still kind of an idiot, and he's still incredibly selfish in the way that he was in the first arc.

As we go along, we'll see a little more of his motivations, but at his core what's going on is there's a line in the first arc where Bartlett talks about how he was brought into the family and he was treated like a dog that no one wanted to deal with. Now we have Landry filling that same role. Bartlett is an example of how that can go really well; how family can change someone and give them a purpose by bringing them in. Landry is kind of that dark mirror. He's what can go entirely wrong when you don't take care of your dog. He's what happens when your dog is let off its leash and, for lack of a better phrase, not trained properly.

He didn't mean to bring these people back. He didn't know any better. That's something I like to play a lot with in the book. This idea that these vampires don't know all the rules. They don't know every little detail on how vampires work. And Landry didn't understand that the way you turn somebody is that you drain them until they're dead. There's a moment in issue #7 where you can see the horror dawning on his face as Bartlett tells him that. You see Landry's face drop. He's like, “Oh, fuck! So that's why that's been happening.”

It's fun because, yeah, Landry is a total piece of shit. At the same time though, no one told him. No one took the time to take him under their wing and teach him about what they are. They used the same "stick it in the attic and ignore the problem until it goes away approach," and things handled that way always come back.

The other twist was that Landry staked Bowman patriarch JV. Does that make Uncle Bartlett the de facto head of the Bowmans? And if so, how does he feel about having that position thrust upon him?

JV's death in the second arc was in my initial pitch for the series. So I knew that it was coming, and I knew that I had to write it. It was heartbreaking, but it was something I felt needed to happen to move Bartlett's character to the forefront. Bartlett has always been incredibly comfortable being the uncle and deferring to JV. He's like, “JV will take care of this.” There's so many times in this book where when Bartlett is in trouble he yells for JV. So in order to grow his character we needed to put him in this spot.

Unfortunately for almost everyone in this book, yes, Bartlett is in control now. He's the most senior vampire on the scene. That scares Bartlett more than it scares anyone else. His entire background, the entire reason why he became a vampire in the first place is because he's a stone cold coward. He's always been a coward. That's part of the reason why I love him as our lead character. He doesn't have a heroic bone in him. He's not the guy who's going to mount up and take a shotgun into town to save people. Every single time we've seen him interact with somebody he talks a big game, but he always walks away.

So, in this second arc we're thrusting him into a position where he can't walk away anymore. He's got to show up.

EXCLUSIVE: Redneck #8 interior art by Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe.

I like that he is a coward because he's the opposite of the stoic, take charge Texas hero archetype.

Yeah, that was JV. He's the quiet, brooding hero.

Bartlett is based on a real guy that I know. In fact, everyone in the book is actually based off of my friends here in Austin. They're actually drawn to look exactly like my friends and they have all of their names. So Seamus, Greg, Perry, JV and Bartlett are all my friends who live here.

Does that include the Bowman family's human familiars, Phil and Evil, as well?

Yes, Phil and Evil both are people in my life. And, yes, his name is Evil. Evil is a really good friend of mine.

I met all of them at this bar here in Austin that I used to work at called Posse. You'll see that word pop up a lot in the book. It was the name of the barbecue joint the characters ran in the first arc that got burned down.

The real Bartlett, who looks just like ours and whose name is Bartlett, is so not a coward. He's a really good guy that I can count on, but visually speaking when I started to think about his character, I really loved this idea of a vampire non-combatant; someone who's really like, “Look man, my name is Paul and this is between y'all. I'm not going to put my life on the line. I'm just going to sit on the porch and get drunk for eternity.”

I love that guy. [Laughs] Because the bottom line is as much as fans, and me included, want to read about the stoic hero, you want to hang out with Bartlett. You don't want to be hanging out with a dude who's got drama for eternity. So I was really interested in seeing what that character would do when thrust into these dramatic situations.

He's got a long arc, too. By virtue of being immortal, these characters lend themselves to an ongoing series. So we're going to see Bartlett struggle with this role of not only being the hero of the series, but also a leader of a family. Just like how he used to look to JV for guidance, everyone now looks to Bartlett. That's not an easy spot for anyone, and bottom line is, he's probably not the guy you want to have his hand on the wheel.

Weirdly, Perry might be the best choice. She seems to be the only one who has a clear head about almost anything. Sadly though, despite everything about her Perry is still very much a child, and is very, very scared.

So shit is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better... if it ever does.

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In issue #7 you dropped another interesting hint about Bartlett's past -- the fact that he sired a vampire named July. Will we learn more about that character this arc? Or further down the road?

July is my favorite character who hasn't shown up yet in the series. So you'll be learning a lot more about her.

There's actually a hint about her in the first arc as well. In issue #4, we see the big flashback that charts Bartlett's origin, and during that he briefly throws out that he was in Austin for a time and there was a girl, but he doesn't want to talk about it.

July is the only person in Bartlett's life who is not a Bowman. It's the only time he ever had anything outside of this family. So his time with her represents him having his own family. Because even though Bartlett is very comfortable being an “uncle,” he didn't start out in life just wanting to have that role. The guy had dreams, a heart, love and all of these things. In his head though, that part of his life is over. And that part of life is wrapped up in her.

So, yes, the info about July is absolutely there for a reason, and we'll meet her soon.

EXCLUSIVE: Redneck #8 interior art by Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe.

The other Bowman family members that remain shrouded in mystery are Phil and Evil. In issue #7, Evil's skill with a rifle suggested he might have a military background, but will we learn more about these character's soon? What kind of role will they play in this current arc?

I'm glad you picked up on that. I'm definitely trying to beef up Phil and Evil for this arc. They have massive roles in this story. As far as Evil's background? He's a really interesting character because he's maybe the scariest character in the entire book. He's just a dude though! How fucking scary do you have to be to earn the name Evil in a family of vampires?

So, yes we're absolutely going to learn almost everything about Phil and Evil this arc. We'll learn how they came to be members of the family and where their true allegiances lie. I don't want to say too much more about it, but if I were a fan of this series I'd really be paying attention to that storyline. It's going to be a big deal.

It seems like Phil and Evil would be forced to step up given how dark things have gotten for the Bowmans with them being hunted by the law, and Landry making his own vampire family.

This arc is so unbelievably dark. The last page of our first arc ends on this line of, “They say it's always darkest before the dawn. But for us, that's not true. For us, the sun comes up and it just keeps getting darker.” That was a promise to readers of what's to come. Things are just going to get darker and darker. This arc is unrelenting.

We set quite a tone in the first issue by dropping JV. I wanted to do that in the first issue to set that tone. I wanted people to understand this is an arc with big consequences. Issue #11 is going to be really tough for everyone. I would encourage people to make sure you're in a good headspace, make sure you're in a safe place and you're comfortable. If you're having a bad or stressful day just put it aside from your stack and come back to it when you're in a good place because issue #11 is one of the hardest things I've ever written. It's going to hurt.

What inspired the wilderness setting of this arc?

A lot of this arc is somewhat based on what happened in 1993 at the Koresh compound in Waco, Texas that was assaulted by the FBI. I grew up not very far from Waco and I watched that whole thing on TV; with the tanks coming in and the building burning down with people inside it. It was horrific.

Waco is just a half hour away. So when I was outlining our second arc, I decided to drive out there. I got a notebook and a backpack and I rolled out to Waco and found where the old compound was. It's just a big field with a small, unofficial marker. Other than that there's nothing there. It's completely bullshit and completely in my head, but it feels like you're being watched out there.

It's a creepy area. It's really dense with lots of woods. And it's unnerving because of the lives that were lost out there. I was struck by how good of a place it would be to hide if you really wanted to. The hiding didn't really work out for Koresh… and it's probably not going to work out for the Bowmans.

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In issues #1-#6 we saw how great the art team of Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe are at bringing to life a crime/horror story that took place primarily in an urban environment. And if issue #7 is any indication, they're just as good with stories set in rural environments.

Part of the fun of this book is these guys don't live in some crazy castle or gothic cathedral. They live out in a terrifying shack in the woods. Because we are dealing with something that could be considered a fantastical story I try to ground things in very real places that you could conceivably walk outside and see yourself.

So I took a ton of pictures of Waco for reference, and I have to say my team just crushed it when it came to brining that place to life and delivering the feel that I got out there.

In issue #7, Lisandro pulled that feel off perfectly. There's a moment where you see a shadow in one panel, you hear a noise, then in the next panel it's gone. You don't even realize there was something there until you go back and look at the first panel and kind of trace the shadows. It's a very cool moment. In my script I described it as, “This should feel very sinister to the audience, but to the Bowmans it should feel pretty safe.” I'm probably pretty biased, but I thought my artists nailed that.

EXCLUSIVE: Redneck #8 interior art by Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe.

Finally, I wanted to ask you about the scope and scale of your overall story. It's clear that Redneck is about family, violence, and the mythology surrounding vampires. But is it also about the larger mythology of Texas? The south? Or the United States as a whole?

That's a great question, but I don't know. I did another book that came out this year, God Country, which was very much about family and had a Texas backdrop. I always looked at it as God Country is really about family and Redneck is really about the history of Texas. Now though I'm not really sure if Redneck is as much about the history of Texas as it is about these Bowmans.

Setting things in Texas where I've lived my entire life helps me hone into thinking about family. This is where I grew up and where my family is, and more than anything Redneck is about my own family.

I wrote a letter that ran in the back of the first issue speaking about where the book came from. Redneck is absolutely the most personal book that I've ever written in that there are parts of my family that are not great. We have some rotten branches on our family tree, and my father had a really tough childhood. He was around some really nefarious characters and was part of this cycle of violence and hatred. So when they had my brother and I, my dad and mom kind of drew a line in the sand and said, “We are not going to raise our children in that fashion. We're going to break that cycle and we're going to raise our children to love and appreciate art, music, and writing. We're going to encourage them to be supportive.” There was a lot of love in my household.

So that to me is really what this book is about. It's a book about a family that has evil in their blood, but just because they have violence in their past doesn't mean they have to be monsters. They're a family that's struggling to forge a better path for themselves and those who come after them.

Redneck #8 is on sale this Wednesday, Dec. 27.

EXCLUSIVE: Redneck #8 interior art by Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe.