Joe Harris on The X-Files #3 and Santa Muerte

It's been a couple of weeks since IDW released The X-Files #3, in which Scully and Mulder faced down Santa Muerte, a spirit of myth that felt like some of the monster-of-the-week episodes from early seasons of the TV series.

Before the fourth issue hits the stands later this month, it seemed like a good time to talk about #3 and remind everybody that one of the best licensed comics adaptations in recent memory is still going strong.

Writer Joe Harris joined us to talk about the episode, and tease what's next.

This issue opens as a pretty straightforward crime comic for a few pages before it eases into The X-Files. Do you feel like even in the multi-part stories, you kind of want to give each month a "cold open?"

We've always, from back at the beginning with Season 10, opened with teasers that--at least in my own mind--would leave you hanging on a beat where you could, hopefully, hear that minimal, iconic Mark Snow line play without the television doing it for you.

When it comes to the second part of a two part story, I think we switch things up something... either a straight-up, cold open that relates to the overall but might not pick up right where part one left off... or a straight-up continuation of whatever situation we left behind at the end of last issue.

When you're doing a story where you're writing not just about another culture, but about its myths and the like, do have a favorite resource or resources to make sure it comes through sounding credible?

I tend to start with Google and narrow things down from there. :)

Writing for the cartels is kind of its own subgenere at this point. Do you think working in larger-than-life horror and superhero type of stories for so long helps you to kind of take something that could be the biggest, most fantastical element of most stories and integrate it into something bigger?

I guess I'm comfortable using current events as subject matter and grist for the X-Files mill, so it feels very natural to me to take something in the news and certainly worthy of it's own story in which it features as a subject... like the crisis of child migration from Central America and Mexico, the cartels, or even the shopping mall mass shooting episode that opened the first issue of this series.

I think my tendency to look at a piece of subject matter and see the potential to "speculative fiction" the crap out of it is what led me to horror, superheroes and now the X-Files. Or got me ready for them anyway.

I always kind of chuckle — I guess this is just the nature of serialized storytelling, but I always find it funny when somebody says something to Mulder like "You think you know what death is, don't you?" As a writer, do you have to kind of continuously remind yourself that the people around the leads don't understand this is a Tuesday for them?

It gets hard, sometimes. I actually had Mulder and Scully slightly tease breaking that wall in issue #1 of this series, with them actually telling a police detective that, at first glance, the shooting they'd responded to doesn't really fit the description of the kind of case that typically comes to them. And it's awkward for them to say it, like they don't want to sound too douchebaggy about it. But it felt like an honest beat to explore, before things turned over and we found X-Files under the rock anyway.

I feel like Enrico has the potential to recur. Obviously you've done well for yourself in the creator-owned marketplace, so is there a kind of point of demarcation where you say "This is a concept or character for a work-for-hire book, this is one I could do something more with?"

It goes both ways actually, but sure. I've crafted X-Files stories out of old pitches and notions for original things. A "monster" story we did back in the "Season 10" series, "Chitter," comes to mind. And I've stumbled upon ideas while in pursuit of X-Files that turn into their own thing all the time. It's an unrefined process that often leads to frustration, exasperation and, occasionally, something cool (in diminishing order of frequency).

Santa Muerte is a really great visual. I think back to some of those early X-Files with things like the Jersey Devil, where the VFX just wasn't entirely there so we got a lot of off-camera stuff, and vague movements. Is it nice to have somebody like Matt on board where you can basically throw anything at him and know he'll be able to make it visually cool?

Matt's unleashed his inner-Mike Mignola on this, hasn't he? I love what he's done with this story, and always adore what Jordie brings out on top of his stuff.