In the past, IDW Publishing has had success with genre-specific imprints, namely their utterly spooky IDW Dark. Now, they’re doubling down with the launch of IDW Crime, a new line of comics dedicated to gripping mysteries, morally complex characters, and the messy consequences of human obsession. The imprint’s first title, Seven Wives, kicks things off with a story by writer Zoe Tunnell and artists V. Gagnon and Maria Keane with colors by Antonio Del Hoyo.
Ultimately, it’s a tense whodunit set inside a secluded Arizona compound owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. On an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday in April, the “patriarch of the Dunn family, [Matthew Dunn], has been found stabbed on the pulpit of his temple, basking in the blood-soaked gaze of his savior.” With 49 witnesses, seven wives, and one dead husband to manage, the two detectives investigating the case (Aguilar and Halwell) must work fast as secrets begin to unravel and the true nature of power, loyalty, and belief come into sharp focus.
“I’ve always been really fascinated with fringe religious cults, so when I was chatting to my fellow editors about possible crime stories, and that came up, I instantly jumped on the idea,” said IDW editor Riley Farmer. “Some of these churches are incredibly powerful, manipulative, and secretive cults – Seven Wives dives into all of those aspects while uncovering the killer, and that instantly gripped everyone here at IDW. It’s like a car wreck you can’t look away from.”
Ahead of the launch, I spoke with Tunnell all about Seven Wives, including developing the mystery, researching the real-world influences behind the story, and how the creative team approached building tension and atmosphere in this new crime series. Read our conversation below, and feel free to pluck out some early clues before picking up the first issue on May 20. (The FOC is Monday, April 13, FYI.)
Variant cover by Serena Mercado. Courtesy of IDW.
AIPT: The setup for Seven Wives is instantly gripping. When you first developed the premise, what was the core mystery or theme that hooked you and made you realize this was the right story to launch IDW’s new crime imprint?
Zoe Tunnell: On my end, I didn’t learn it was the launch title for the line until well into scripting! It felt like a wild honor, and only made it more important than ever that we stick the landing as hard as we can. When I was first approached, the elevator pitch that editor Riley Farmer gave was “Knives Out in a fringe cult compound,” and it was hard not to be immediately on board. Tonally, it’s far darker than that specific flick, but the same locked-room mystery with a home full of suspects touchstone is something I made sure to keep in mind, and is something I think folks will really enjoy.
AIPT: The story takes place inside a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints compound, which brings a lot of cultural and psychological weight to the mystery. What kind of research or conversations helped you shape that setting while still keeping the focus on the human drama?
ZT: I watched a lot of documentaries for research, as well as reading what few accounts we’ve got from people who managed to get out. It was probably the single most difficult and emotionally rough research I’ve ever had to do for a story, but when dealing with real-world pain and trauma it’s a necessary part of the process. The rituals and psychology used by cults across the world to control their members is pretty intrinsically entwined in the plot, as not only are our titular wives neck-deep in it, our detective leads in Aguilar and Halwell are confronted with the alien and confusing world just like our readers will be.
Variant cover by Matt Wilson. Courtesy of IDW.
AIPT: A classic whodunit lives or dies on how well it manages suspicion. With seven potential suspects, how did you approach structuring the story so each wife feels like a real person rather than just a red herring?
ZT: It was always part of the plan from day one. If you under-bake one of the characters, readers will catch it. If you have too many red herrings, readers will get fed up with it. Treating every member of the cast as their own, fully-realized person was always a priority and I hope that shows when readers get their hands on it!
AIPT: The IDW Crime imprint is positioning itself as a place for character-driven crime stories that hold a mirror to society. How does Seven Wives explore those darker impulses that draw people toward power, loyalty, or belief, even when things start to go wrong?
ZT: At its core, Seven Wives is a story about the corruption of power. Matthew Dunn is the most reprehensible, disgusting character I’ve ever written, and a good deal of that is because of just how many people we see behaving just like him in our world nowadays. It is distressingly common to find everyone from politicians to leaders of faith preach virtue and justice with one hand and turn around and abuse their positions to do exactly what they tell their followers not to. Hard to find a more timely mirror to hold up these days, I fear.
Variant cover by V. Gagnon. Courtesy of IDW.
AIPT: Visually, a story set inside a secluded compound with so many overlapping perspectives feels like a huge opportunity for mood and tension. How did the art team approach building the atmosphere of the place and the personalities of the wives?
ZT: I cannot sing the praises of our entire art team enough. The herculean task of having a book with a cast of seven wives wearing similar outfits and hairstyles is an absolute nightmare, but both V. Gagnon and Tesslyn Bergin-Dicoi are masters of their craft and have put together a stunning package. Some of the layouts V. used in #1, building the Dunn Home as a structure to frame the panels on the pages themselves, took my damn breath away. That plus Antonio Del Hoyo’s color work juggling present day scenes and flashbacks in a beautiful, clear way makes this one of the most gorgeous series I’ve ever worked on.
AIPT: Crime stories often revolve around detectives unraveling the truth piece by piece. Without giving anything away, how do the investigators in Seven Wives change as they dig deeper into the mystery?
ZT: Both Aguilar and Halwell are absolutely affected by their descent into the Dunn Compound, and neither of them for the better. Without giving away any particulars, Aguilar has a far more personal stake in ensuring that justice doesn’t leave the wives of Matthew in the dust, and Halwell discovers a whole new side to his long-time partner.
Main cover by Mirka Andolfo. Courtesy of IDW.
AIPT: True crime and cult stories have become hugely popular across podcasts, documentaries, and television. What do you think comics as a medium can do differently when telling this kind of unsettling story?
ZT: I think they bring the same strengths they do to all stories, really. Comics combine the visual with the written in a way unlike any other medium, and in a subgenre like crime where there is such a long history of striking imagery and a visual language that it just makes sense to tackle it. Without sounding too slasher-flick-y, seeing a blood splatter is always going to hit harder than having it simply be written down.
AIPT: The series is designed as a three-issue, oversized limited series, which is a pretty tight runway for a complex mystery. Did that format change the way you approached pacing, reveals, and cliffhangers?
ZT: It did! It was my first time tackling this specific format – 40 pages for #1 and then 30 each for #2 and #3 – and I really enjoyed it. Having, essentially, two issues worth of pages to work with for our debut gave me plenty of room to dig into characters and set up slow burns than I would have running off of a 22-page #1, and keeping it in a three-issue, 100-page format made some tight pacing and satisfying page-turns absolutely essential.
AIPT: Fun question: If the investigation in Seven Wives suddenly turned into a classic detective movie for one scene, which character would dramatically slam a file on the table and say, “I know who did it,” and would they actually be right?
ZT: Oh, absolutely detective Ryan Halwell. That man is a dork who would not be able to resist having his parlor room reveal moment even a little bit. As for whether he’d be right or not…well, I think that’s for folks to decide for themselves once they’ve read the series!
Read our advance review of Seven Wives #1!
You must be logged in to post a comment.