I picked up the book having just graduated from high school in Honolulu, feeling wistful for the familiarity of little details I had once found strange or annoying, as happens after one leaves a place.

Johnson’s smooth, understated linework, reminiscent to me of Charles Burns, played well with the ennui of the teenagers in his story, estranged in purgatory.

I contacted Johnson over email with a few questions about his process. How does an artist convey a narrative with only one image? I wondered how he would respond to the drama and titillations of these horror poster designs, and if the unnerving quietude I knew him for would find its way into the project.

“Growing up on Maui before the internet, comic books were some of the only art I had access to,” says Johnson."

“I lived on a fairly rainy, rural part of the island, so there were plenty of afternoons spent inside with only drawing materials to entertain myself.”

“I have never designed an actual movie poster, but as a graphic novelist I often turn to vintage movie posters for inspiration for their hand-lettered type and striking imagery. New movie posters are almost always devoid of any narrative, instead focusing on the stars' faces. Vintage posters often try to hook you by telling a story.”

Storytelling is a skill very much honed in comics, as panel-by-panel visual progression leads the reader across the page, here zooming into a detail, there pulling away to take in a wide vista, setting the scene. It stems from the same storyboarding techniques used in cinematography.

"I love designing narrative images because the story dictates every decision," Johnson explains. "My approach is always the same: tell the story as directly as possible arranged in the order in which it should be read. If it's not telling the story, it's distracting from it."