Vertigo series feels the 'Burn' of pyromania

In the new Vertigo Comics series Slash & Burn, fire can take hold of one's self as much as drugs or alcohol, and one woman in particular is drawn like a moth to the most dangerous flames.

Rosheen Hayes is a North Dakota firefighter trying to get past her firebug days now as a reformed pyromaniac in British writer Si Spencer’s comic book, illustrated by Ande Parks and Max Dunbar and featuring covers by Tula Lotay. In the first issue (out Wednesday), a new arson case puts Rosheen’s partner in the line of fire, the new detective in town Bill Morrow and the mysterious Matchstick Man are enigmas in their own way, and a homeless man reminds Rosheen of her past living in an orphanage.

Paste BN talks with Spencer, who crafted last year's Vertigo series Bodies, about Slash & Burn and the thriller's complicated heroine.

Why are people going to fall in love with Rosheen Hayes?

Above any individual character trait, I’m hoping it’ll be because she’s real. She’s a complex mess of contradictions, like any addict, like any human. She’s whipsmart, confident, strong, fearless and witty on the outside, but inside she’s vulnerable and afraid, fighting to keep control of her present and her past and above all her addiction to fire.

Was there a surprising influence when fleshing out her character?

The main surprise came quite early on when I realized this was a book about addiction. There’s always a difference between what a book is “about” and what a book is “really” about — the theme as opposed to the plot. Most writers will tell you that they often have no idea why they’re writing a piece until they’ve got a handle on what they’re writing and that’s certainly true of Slash & Burn. It started off as a story about environment and how it shapes personality, but once I nailed those central concepts of addiction, withdrawal and control, of how an addict lies to everyone around them but mainly themselves, the whole thing fell into place.

On the first page of the series, she calls herself a “femme fatale” and a “murderer.” Is there some truth to that or is that just what she sees in the mirror?

The initial “femme fatale” and “murderer” references are purely about her association between fire and sex and the fact that she sees her work as assignations with blind dates that always end with her killing them. I wouldn’t read any more to it than that. Yet.

What aspects of the tried-and-true addiction story did you find came to life in a new and different way using the premise of small-town firefighters?

What I didn’t foresee is what a relatively easy sell that central premise of pyromania would be. Other addictions are kind of hard to get across — it’s hard to explain what someone gets out of a smack coma or chasing for a hit of meth spitting out teeth or lying a gutter in your own whiskey puke, but everyone gets fire. It’s primeval, hard-wired into our caveman DNA.

Why set it in North Dakota and not, say, a bigger American city or even in your native Britain?

I’ve done London. A lot. I wanted to stretch my comfort zone, but without going too far out of my depth and North Dakota has that old-country European vibe to it. Also — and no disrespect to any flickertails out there — I wanted somewhere that was a little bit lackadaisical in its infrastructure. This isn’t some strict procedural story and I didn’t want to get tied up in the red tape of realism plot-wise. I wanted a town where you can imagine rules being bent a little.

Plus, visually it’s fantastic — big skies, prairies, snow, oil fields, forests — but its towns have a certain lack of identity or architectural history. I know Max would tell you he struggled a little at first with the nondescript nature of the backgrounds, but he’s absolutely nailed that sense of dislocation, the eerie facelessness of functionality. He’s made the town’s lack of visual personality into a virtue with some truly wonderful art.

Will Bill Morrow have a significant role to play in the series?

Where there’s crime, you’ve got to have a cop. I hate that conceit that so many TV shows use where someone entirely unqualified like a medical examiner or a criminal profiler or the precinct janitor is allowed to interrogate suspects and wander around crime scenes. Morrow’s a cop, Rosheen’s an arson investigator. One needs the other. As for other supporting players? Everyone’s there for a reason — keep reading.

Will we get to see bits and pieces of Rosheen’s life as a pyromaniac and revelations as to why she is so enamored with fire particularly?

There’s a whole backstory running concurrent with the main arc that looks back to the days when Rosheen was really out of control and why. No spoilers but let’s just say that Rosheen and fire go back to pretty much day one and it’s never really left her alone since — it’s blazing in her mind, smoldering in her belly, roaring in her heart and she’s fighting a constant battle to keep from self-combusting. I just hope she makes it.

You have really artistic ways of describing an arson scene, in one panel likening it to young lust and in another to the instruments of an orchestra.

Well the sexual connection between Rosheen and fire was always going to be there, because it’s a feature of addiction — for her the two are inextricably linked. The slightly surrealist allegorical sequences came to us initially out of a desire to tell CSI and exposition scenes in a totally new and original way. People have overdosed on pure forensics on TV so we wanted a device that brought something fresh to those inevitable examination scenes. Rosheen’s got a kind of synesthesia where she sees fire in bizarre visuals and sounds which really gives Max, Ande and (colorist Nick Filardi) a massive opportunity to let rip with their imaginations and create some astonishing imagery that’s so much more interesting than just another room full of burned stuff and ashes every month.