Finding one’s place in the world is arduous and scary in and of itself—but even more so when you’re freshly dead. That’s the conundrum 19-year-old Ashley must face in comic creator Meredith McClaren’s upcoming graphic novel Meat Eaters, on sale next month from Oni Press. In Meat Eaters, Ashley has had her eye on getting out of her small town so she can spread her wings and build a new life. However, when she wakes up one night freshly dead, her plans are in danger of washing away like so much detritus. Now, Ashley must figure out how and why she died, as well as contend with other ghouls and goblins and the undead that are now open to her. Ashley wanted a new normal while she was alive; how will she wrestle with this one now that she’s dead?
I spoke with Meredith McClaren recently about the idea behind Meat Eaters, the look of the graphic novel, her influences in crafting the story, and what the comic has to say about life’s definitive answers.
As I said in the interview below, as a high school teacher, I see my students grapple with some of the issues that Ashley does in the book. (Not the supernatural aspects, obviously.) However, I think we can all relate to Ashley’s plight in some form or fashion, regardless of our age. We all struggle with belonging and wanting to find our place in the world. While Meat Eaters is a fun and compelling comic book romp, the pathos are what make the graphic novel shine.
FreakSugar: Before we get into the graphic novel itself, what was the genesis of Meat Eaters?
Meredith McClaren: Oh gosh. I’ve always been a big fan of weekly teen fantasy/horror shows (i.e. a lot of Buffy). And I love needling around with some of the less glamorous creepy creatures. And I feel a kinship with ghouls and zombies.
A lot of the themes when it comes to the undead is a yearning for something we can’t/shouldn’t/or are told not to have. And there’s a lot to tap into with feelings like that. Vampires are an easy corollary to desire and lust. But I feel like zombies and ghouls are a different kind of longing. A hollowness. A desire to be full. And that’s an emotion I can empathize a lot with.
FS: For folks considering picking up the book, what is the conceit of the graphic novel?
MM: Sometimes things happen to us, change us, in ways we do not like. Ways we cannot make right. And we can only make things worse by trying to pretend they are not there.
FS: What can you tell us about Ashley, our protagonist and unfortunately newly dead?
MM: A big theme with the undead is yearning. A longing for something that’s missing. Ashley feels like something’s off. Like she’s missing something intangible. She thinks she can fill it if she makes everything *just* right. And unfortunately, that’s neither true nor possible.
FS: I grew up in a very small town in rural Kentucky and currently reside in another Kentucky small town. Did you grow up in a small town? If so, did it impact your approach to or the content of the story?
MM: I actually grew up in a lot of different cities. We hopped around a lot as a kid. I’m hoping I got the atmosphere of being in a small town as close as possible but I feel like if I ever got to approach that kind of setting again, I might need to spend a month or two in some of my more rural communities to help with the authenticity.
FS: I teach high schoolers so I see my students grapple with their own issues quite a bit. We all carry our experiences with us, though, the good and the bad and the mundane, and they bubble up at times you can’t expect. Did you draw on your adolescent emotions—or even current ones—when writing Meat Eaters?
MM: I always tell people that whatever I’m working on is therapy and everyone else is just along for the ride. But yeah. The things Ashley finds herself going through is all stuff that bubbles up in adolescence. And I’m sorry to report you still have to navigate it well into adulthood.
Currently Ashley’s in that trap of a mindset right now, where she thinks other people have it figured out. And if she just tweaks herself, just adjusts the right setting, she can figure it out too. The being dead just exacerbates things. It’s just a hiccup. She can fix it. Or overlook it. That’s where her head’s at.
It’s a trap I find myself in pretty regularly. And it can be hard to talk yourself out of it. There’s a lot of exterior sources that tell us how things should be, how people should act, or how we should feel. And that only makes you feel a sense of wrongness with yourself for not being/acting/feeling those ways.
It will make you lose your mind.
FS: There’s a line that Bess tells Ashley early on in the story: “Honestly, people barely know what’s happening when they’re alive.” That stuck with me and feels a bit like a call to action.
MM: I like that line a lot. Superficially, it comes with my frustrations with those shows I grew up with. There’s always a person or a book or a website, and it has ALL THE ANSWERS. If you’re dealing with a monster, it’ll tell you how to kill it.
And I always found that really, really unrealistic. (Even for fantasy.)
When I have a problem, I can go to twelve trusted sources and the internet and sometimes none of them can give me a definitive answer. I don’t see why it should be any different for being a werewolf or vampire or ghoul.
Bess is the closest Ashley can get to someone who knows things, and even SHE doesn’t know everything.
So yeah. Using fantasy to reflect reality. There’s not a lot of definitive answers out there. You get older. The questions get bigger. The answers get murkier, if there are any to find at all. And you still have to move through it, uncertainty be damned.
FS: The art is a wonderful hybrid of inviting and unnerving, striking a balance between the emotional and physical trials that Ashley is grappling with. How did you decide what you wanted the look of the book to be?
MM: Any book I do is a happy accident. I might have a few pages that are for sure laid out in my head when I start, but most of a book is going through the motions of ‘this looks cool, let’s try this, what happens when I do this, oh look, it’s done.’ Sometimes I get surprised. Sometimes I have to try again.
I will say, as far as unnerving imagery, I think it helps that I was a very fearful child. I was terrified of everything. And that’s a feeling that you can keep tapping into, even if the source of your fear isn’t there anymore.
FS: If you had a final pitch for Meat Eaters, what would it be?
MM: Ashley died. And that sucks. What sucks more is that the rest of the world kept going.
Meat Eaters goes on sale Tuesday, July 8, 2025, from Oni Press.
From the official graphic novel description:
From cartoonist Meredith McClaren (co-creator of the acclaimed series Black Cloak) comes a punishing and poignant original graphic novel about the monsters that lurk both in the darkness beyond—and within us all . . .
Let it be said that dying is hard. Nineteen-year-old Ashley Moore found this out the hard way.
All Ashley wanted was to keep her head down and work hard until she could escape the small town where she felt she was stagnating. But after waking up one night covered in blood—and irrevocably dead—Ashley finds her foolproof plan for getting out has gone up in smoke, and something within her has changed.
Without a heartbeat and with a disturbing craving for fresh—preferably bloody—meat, Ashley finds herself privy to a world that exists just beneath our own: a world of ghouls and monsters and things that go bump-in-the-night. Despite her desire to be left alone—and to not think about the night of her death at all—Ashley is slowly drawn into the realm of the unusual, getting advice from ancient vampires, dodging angry pack leaders, and becoming the reluctant big sister to werewolves Motley and Harrison. As she does, she finds it increasingly difficult to put away the parts of herself she wishes to ignore—namely, what happened that fateful night she stopped breathing. The truth, it turns out, can’t stay buried forever.
In this visceral story about the effects of trauma and anxiety, dying is indeed hard. But getting on with it? That can be worse.
And from the official press release about the graphic novel:
Oni Press – the multiple Eisner and Harvey Award-winning publisher of groundbreaking comics and graphic novels since 1997 –is proud to announce the next stunning installment in its summer 2025 graphic novel lineup: Meat Eaters. From cartoonist Meredith McClaren—co-creator of the acclaimed series Black Cloak—comes a punishing and poignant original graphic novel about the monsters that lurk both in the darkness beyond—and within us all . . .
Let it be said that dying is rough. Nineteen-year-old Ashley Moore found this out the hard way.
All Ashley wanted was to keep her head down and work hard until she could escape the small town where she felt she was stagnating. But after waking up one night covered in blood—and irrevocably dead—Ashley finds her foolproof plan for getting out has gone up in smoke, and something within her has changed.
Without a heartbeat and with a disturbing craving for fresh—preferably bloody—meat, Ashley finds herself privy to a world that exists just beneath our own: a world of ghouls and monsters and things that go bump-in-the-night. Despite her desire to be left alone—and to not think about the night of her death at all—Ashley is slowly drawn into the realm of the unusual, getting advice from ancient vampires, dodging angry pack leaders, and becoming the reluctant big sister to werewolves Motley and Harrison. As she does, she finds it increasingly difficult to put away the parts of herself she wishes to ignore—namely, what happened that fateful night she stopped breathing. The truth, it turns out, can’t stay buried forever.
“MEAT EATERS is an ode to all the teen horror television I lovingly consumed over the years,” said Writer and Illustrator Meredith McClaren. “Where there are bad things in the world, sometimes they hurt you, and sometimes that makes you change in ways you do not like.”
In this visceral story about the effects of trauma and anxiety, dying is indeed hard. But getting on with it? That can be worse. Don’t miss this deadly debut when Meat Eaters takes its first bite in comic shops and bookstores everywhere on July 8, 2025!