"2001 Maniacs" sees comics as franchise move

It’s not just big studios and high-profile blockbusters that can get a boost out of Comic-Con. As work gears up on “2001 Maniacs: Beverly Hellbillies” — a sequel to the 2005 horror-comedy hit “2001 Maniacs” — writer-director Tim Sullivan and stars Robert Englund and Amy Baniecki were promoting a comicbook version from Avatar Press that bridges the gap between the films.
Sullivan co-wrote the comic with his “Maniacs” screenwriting partner Chris Kobin, introducing a couple of characters who will appear in the sequel, including Baniecki’s Scarlet Red. He says comics have infused his vision since he was a kid reading monster mags and reprints of old EC comics in the tree house. When he wanted to direct, he put together an illustrated screenplay for the first “2001 Maniacs.”

“The comicbook really is like an illustrated screenplay,” he says. “I realized as we were writing the comic that so much of what I learned as a screenwriter came from reading Tales from the Crypt.”
Englund, best known for bringing slasher Freddie Krueger to life in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” films, also was exposed to comics early on.
“I was really diverse in my tastes. I loved Scrooge McDuck, I loved Blackhawk when I was very young and precocious. I moved on to Tales from the Crypt and Mad magazine,” he says.
Sullivan wrote the book by coming up with the text and sending stick-figure drawings to Avatar editor in chief William Christensen, who then sent them off to artist Raulo Caceres in Spain.
“A week later, I’d get this gorgeous artwork sent back,” he says.
Baniecki’s character, Scarlet Red, is introduced to the story in the comics — a process she was startled by because the artists drew a character who “looked exactly like me,” she says.
The comic is influencing the film, too, with Caceres being the first to draw Red’s lethal (and anatomically correct) chastity belt. “I didn’t even know what to tell the artist,” Sullivan says. “And they drew it, and now we’re just giving the comic to the special effects guys and saying just make it look like this.”
The final result, Sullivan says, is the comic and the appearance at the con are intended to turn the films into a franchise.
“Now that we have the comicbook, this is really the first step toward taking ‘Maniacs’ toward the bigger realm that we envisioned for it,” he says.