Wanted and Fast & Furious screenwriter drifts into Boom!

[ENGLISH] Boom! Studios tells us: Screenwriter Chris Morgan Switches Gears With His Colonial Era Action-Horror Comic Debut / Los Angeles – Solicited this month, Screenwriter Chris Morgan and co-writer Kevin Walsh make their comic debut with SALEM #0 hitting stores this November. SALEM tells the tale of Elias Hooke, a renegade warrior-priest who battles both sadistic church torturers and hell-spawned minions on an all-consuming quest to destroy a real demon that haunts the darkness and preys on humanity.

Morgan, best known for his work on movies such as SWAT, CELLULAR, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT and most recently WANTED, took time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about the series:
Q: You’ve had a successful career writing films – what made you want to get into comics?

Chris Morgan: I love stories, all kinds of stories, but there are certain kinds of stories I can’t tell in the film medium right now. What comics offers me is a chance to tell a story I would not otherwise be able to tell. I can create a less traditional lead character. I can do story twists that the powers that be in Hollywood would never allow. And I have an unlimited budget when it comes to the visual storytelling. With the freedom that the comics medium affords me, I will be able explore ideas that I hope will take my audience by surprise.

Q: SALEM is a 360-degree turn from FAST AND FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT. What draws you to the material you write?

C.M.: Is it? You may be surprised to learn that the climax of SALEM involves a 14′ tall witch made of brambles and thorns outdrifting Vin Diesel in a cherry ’05 Skyline…I know Vin would be down for making an appearance.
For me, genre doesn’t matter. What matters are compelling characters and how I relate to them, so I can tell their stories. Once I fall in love with a character, I’ll follow him into any venue. SALEM stared out as a kernel of an idea about a character – our protagonist Elias Hooke – that fellow writer (and good friend) Kevin Walsh and I came up with while we were working on another project. As much as we tried to focus on the project at hand, we just couldn’t help talking about Hooke and speculating on where he came from and what drove him. That cemented it. When we couldn’t walk away from it, we knew had to write it.