Steve Bissette's Taboo!

Back in 1988, I went to a comic convention in New Hampshire. There I met Steve Bissette. Steve had recently announced that he was launching a horror anthology entitled Taboo. As I was regularly contributing to Amazing Heroes (AH) at the time, I asked if I could interview him, and secured his contact info. After the con, I contacted my editor, Kim Thompson, at AH to pitch the article.

I was given the go-ahead and then reached out to Steve. Only, Steve told me that he wasn't quite ready to launch the series. So I got back to Kim, who told me to continue to pursue Steve, and when Steve was ready, and I got the interview, to let Kim know, and he would schedule the article.

Well, I wound up calling Steve once a month for a year, while he gathered material for the book in preparation for the launch. Well, when he was finally ready, I got to chat with him. Steve, if you didn’t already know, was a extraordinarily talented horror artist and writer. When I began the interview I confessed to him that I really wasn’t a big fan of horror.

We then spent the next four hours talking about all kinds of horror, from comics, to books, to TV to film, and of course about Taboo itself. As it turns out I — quite literally — knew of every horror reference he made. Which really surprised me as (as I told Steve)  I really didn’t like horror, mostly as it truly scared the living crap out of me.

Needless to say, I got the interview, wrote the article and had it published in issue #153 of AH.

Then, for some 10 years after it’s publication, whenever I would run into Steve at a con, he would be very nice to me, saying hello, introducing me to others around him, and chatting with me. I never really understood why Steve was always so nice. Then one time he said to the folks with him. “Bob was the first person who wrote about Taboo.”

It was then that it suddenly occurred to me that what to me was simply me chasing a story (calling him once a month for a year), was to him the tenacity of a reporter intent on promoting something that was something of a life passion for him.

I have since caught up with and frended Steve on Facebook as well as reviewed his book Teen Angels & New Mutants, which details Rick Veitch’s groundbreaking work on the series Brat Pack. Anyway, today I happened to come across AH #153, and thought I’d post the interview in its entirety here.

I honestly think that it is one of the best articles I’ve ever written,