Watching a character transform into a heroic, killer-destroying, final girl is often one of the most fun and satisfying parts of a slasher film. It also raises an interesting question, “What happens to a final girl after her movie is over?” Writer Tim Seeley wanted to explore that question. So, in 2004, he teamed up with artist Stefano Caselli to create Hack/Slash; a comic series about the life of a final girl named Cassie Hack who travels the country looking for “Slashers” to slay with her, hulking partner, Vlad.
Their adventures pitted them against a multitude of original killers and occasionally film fan favorites like Chucky and Victor Crowley. They also unfolded pretty regularly in series one-shots, ongoings, and mini-series, the most recent of which ended earlier this year. If you're new to comics, the 20-plus years of Hack/Slash might seem a little intimidating. Don't worry, though! I recently spoke with Tim Seeley about the series to create a primer for readers new to the character and comics.
For more, check out our list of the best horror comics to read this fall.
Hack/Slash is meant to serve as Seeley's love letter to the slasher sub-genre, which he's loved for a long time. “I love horror stuff, and I love being scared. Even if I'm not scared of slasher movies, I kind of enjoy how they are essentially a way for young people to vent their frustrations about a world that tries to keep them down and keep them from being themselves,” the writer explained. “The final girl in the slasher movie was always sort of the symbol for the teenager being like, ‘I just want to be a teenager and you're trying to stop me!' [Laughs] That's always very appealing to me as well.”
When Hack/Slash began, Cassie Hack had already taken down several of her world's Slashers. The first one she had killed was her own mother, who had become a monstrous revenant known as “The Lunch Lady.”
“The thing I wanted to explore when I launched this series was what kind of person would live in this world after the movies were over? What is left of them? And how does that change the way they deal with other people?” Seeley said. “So, Cassie is a traumatized and damaged person, but also someone who wants to believe in this inherent goodness. Unfortunately, she's unable to find it in anyone except for Vlad.”
Vlad wasn't just a person for Cassie to talk to and believe in. He also gave Hack/Slash a unique visual identity because he looked like the type of character Cassie would hunt.
“I wanted a visual that looked like a Slasher movie on every cover. You see it and it's, ‘Oh, there's the final girl. And there's a slasher, but wait! He's on her side?' I felt like that was an important visual aspect at first,” Seeley stated. “Then, as the story went on, Vlad became the way to ask for some redemption for the slasher characters. Because they were often people like Jason, who were scarred, injured, or deformed. They were abandoned, and then they became evil.
“Part of it was, can you have a story about a character who had all these bad things happen to them, but didn't become bitter, angry, and murderous? In fact, he's much more well adjusted and normal than Cassie,” Seeley continued. “That became part of the balance of the characters. The guy who looks like the monster is, in fact, a big-hearted, sweetie. And the person who looks like the heroine is in fact a pretty aggressive and possibly murderous character.”
Seeley feels that a long-form exploration of how Cassie and Vlad's hunts impact their personalities would be hard to do in a single film. He also feels a Hack/Slash film would not be able to feature a lot of the weird, wonderful, and monstrous characters that made up the comic's large supporting cast.
“We would have an hour and a half to get in and get out. Maybe if we had done it as a film, we could have gotten two or three, but there's no film version of this where we have this massive cast of extended characters who were all important to some degree,” the writer explained. “We would have never been able to do a character like Pooch, who would have been too weird for film. Those characters didn't just work in the comics; they became some of the most popular members of the story.”
Pooch, who looks like a talking Cenobite dog, became one of Seeley's favorite characters to write as well. “Pooch kind of stole my heart and a lot of the readers' hearts as well. He's the alien dog who originally acted as a jailor and worked for an evil Elvis Presley,” the writer said with a laugh. “Originally, he was just a design in my sketchbook from a drawing club I used to go to with Scottie Young. We were talking about the texture of chicken skin. So, I was like, ‘I'm going to draw a dog with chicken skin.' [Laughs] Somehow, that became this character that I still do stories about decades later.”
Seeley created a number of original killers for Cassie and Vlad to clash with in Hack/Slash. His favorite was Samhain, a masked killer with a Halloween motif who became the closest thing the series had to an overarching villain. “Previously, it was Slashers show up, we have a story with them, Cassie annihilates them, and we move on to the next one,” Seeley noted. “Samhain represented her big villain, though. He's someone who could do supervillain style things and keep the story moving, which ultimately leads to a big confrontation and payoff as well.”
When Cassie and Vlad weren't confronting Seeley's creations like Samhain, they were often crossing paths with other comic characters like the cast of Josh Williamson's (Dark Ride) and Mike Henderson's (The Hive) Nailbiter series. The most recent mini series, Hack/Slash: Body Bags by Seeley and artists Stefano Caselli and Steve Kurth (Dee Snider: He's Not Gonna Take It), brought Cassie and Vlad face-to-face with the stars of Jason Pearson's titular creator owned series.
Cassie and Vlad also met up with several established horror movie characters. In the 2007 one-shot Hack/Slash Vs. Chucky, they battled Don Mancini's killer doll. In a 2008 arc that ran through issues #15-17 of the first volume of the Hack/Slash ongoing titled, “Cassie and Vlad Meet the Re-Animator,” the duo came face-to-face with Herbert West. 2011's Hack/Slash Annual was titled “Hatchet Slash” and pitted Seeley's creations against Adam Green's Victor Crowley. In 2013, Dynamite Entertainment published an Army of Darkness Vs.Hack/Slash mini series by Seeley and Hack/Slash artist Daniel Leister.
Most of the Hack/Slash crossover stories involving horror movie characters proved relatively easy to set up. They were often hashed out over beers after horror conventions.
“What's cool about a lot of Slasher characters is that they're very often owned by the people who created them. So, I could say to Adam Green, ‘I loved the Hatchet movies. Let's do a crossover.' And he would say, ‘Okay, cool! Here's what we can do. And here's how I would like him to look.' I would say, ‘Awesome!' Then we'd make a story and it would come out,” Seeley explained with a laugh. “Even with a character like Chucky, who is owned by a big corporation, he's primarily controlled by the guy who made him. Don Mancini still has a big stake in and works on Chucky.”
Collaborating with horror movie creators to develop stories was enjoyable for Seeley, but ultimately, his favorite partnerships were with the creators who helped bring his Hack/Slash issues to life. Many of those artists had wildly different styles, which allowed Seeley to tell tales with a variety of tones and ideas.
“Early on, we took a risk and decided this wouldn't have a house style. The art would match the story as much as we can,” Seeley revealed. “I think making choices every time we do a story about the people who draw it means that the stories feel mostly as intended, and next time we do something kind of crazy, no one is shocked because we've done all kinds of stuff.”
Seeley didn't just collaborate with artists on Hack/Slash stories. Over the years, he's allowed a number of writers to tackle his characters. Most recently, it was Eisner Award winner Zoe Thorogood (Creepshow), who penned the 2023 Hack/Slash: Back to School mini series, and Stephen Graham Jones, who authored a Hack/Slash prose short story in 2021 titled “The Girl in the Fishnet Stockings.”
Initially, the work other writers did on Hack/Slash bothered him, but Seeley wouldn't say anything. These days ,he loves seeing other takes on Cassie and Vlad.
“Zoe came up with a version that was different from mine because she is actually a woman and actually closer in age to Cassie than I am,” Seeley stated. “Seeing a new viewpoint take on things helps me understand my own characters and come up with new ways to tell stories about them. It reinvigorates the characters and also shows me how they'll be interpreted by the next generation. That's a lot of fun for me.”
With Hack/Slash stories written by both him and other creators, readers might be wondering where to start. Seeley and his publisher, Image Comics, have worked to make the answer to that question a simple one.
“For Hack/Slash, it's buy Volume 1. Then buy Volume 2. [Laughs] That, as a method, has been extremely helpful for us. Because we're still on shelves and if a retailer wants to buy Hack/Slash they can say, ‘I'll take 1-6.' There are no reboots, they're just in order,” Seeley explained. “We'll continue to do things that way because of how well it works for us.
“We've even found, now going on 20 plus years, that some people want to read it in the big, brick of a hardcover book, but there are still plenty of people buying it in the softcover omnibus volumes. There are plenty of people still buying it digitally to read on their Kindle. There are still people who want to buy the back issues of the monthly,” Seeley continued. “We have different kinds of readers and different access points. My job is to make sure that it's always available.”
The access point of a Hack/Slash film adaptation is possible, but it's something Seeley and fans have been waiting on for a long time, and will most likely be waiting for years to come. The adaptation has languished in developmental purgatory for years and remains stuck there, despite the success of SyFy and Peacock's recently launched adaptation of Seeley and Mike Norton's comic series, Revival.
“The current studio that holds the rights hasn't been doing a lot of active work on it that I know of. I have not been actively involved in any development on it in the last two years. I was a few years ago. I don't know. I wish I knew,” Seeley revealed. “I think it's going to take some new filmmaker, some avant-garde, risk taking director, or an actress to star as Cassie to go to the studio and say, ‘I want to make this now. I have a vision.' I'm not a filmmaker. I don't direct. I don't have that kind of stuff. I'll write you a screenplay, but I'm waiting for someone to be that person. There's someone out there. I know there is.”
Seeley has worked on a number of creator owned books over the years, but with over 20 years of stories, Hack/Slash is his most enduring. That's not something that's easily achieved in the field of creator owned comics.
“I can't believe I'm still working on this after all these years. I'm so thankful to the people who keep reading it and spreading the word. Horror fans are so dedicated and awesome,“ the writer stated. “In the world of creator owned, things like this are the make-or-break. I don't have a marketing team or corporate bucks, but I can certainly rely on word of mouth better than just about anybody.”
