Watched it? Good. Now read what Alan has to say about painstakingly drawing for hours on end, creating worlds derived from his obsessive love of horror and find out what Life Of Agony have in store for the rest of 2018 and beyond…
Rewind the clock for us Alan, why were you first drawn to doing your own colouring book series in 2016?
“A few years back, colouring books for adults flipped the books industry on its head, topping the bestseller charts with nature themes and mandala patterns. But for horror fans, like me, there were basically zero titles to sink our teeth into. So, I’ll never forget it, it was actually April 1, 2016 when I pitched the idea to IDW Publishing. I told them I wanted to draw the very first ever, high-end, horror-themed adult colouring book. I sent over the cover image and one page of intricate, disturbing line art. They responded with the fastest ‘Yes’ I ever received for a book project, and I’ve done several graphic novels with them over the years. They literally got back to me within a few short minutes with a green light for The Beauty Of Horror! I got cracking immediately and I quickly found out that this was some task! There’s 88 pages of extremely intricate pen and ink work, and each page took me about eight hours to draw, from start to finish. It was a bit daunting at first, but my goal was to make the biggest, baddest horror colouring book on the market. It had to have everything horror fans would want to colour: vampires, werewolves, zombies, monsters, serial killers and more. I wanted to make the book I would buy as a horror fan. To my surprise, upon its release, The Beauty Of Horror, A GOREgeous Coloring Book became an instant No.1 Amazon Bestseller and is still Amazon’s No.1 Most Wished For adult colouring book in its category, nearly two years later.”