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Maybe I'm off-base here, but I'd be willing to bet that James Tynion IV has traumatized a kid or two. With horror stories like Something is Killing the Children and The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country under his belt, Tynion has probably been responsible for his share of nightmares belonging to younger comic readers. So when Popverse got the chance to chat with Tynion, we had to flip the script a bit and ask him:

What frightened you as a child?

Popverse's editor Chris Arrant brought up the question during a chat with the Tiny Onion CEO at C2E2 2026, and while the Department of Truth author admitted that as "a real scaredy cat," the answer was "honestly, everything," there was one creature of the big screen that held an especially powerful sway.

"The thing I remember terrifying me most was actually the movie ET: The Extra Terrestrial. Specifically, it's the scene where Elliot bumps into ET in the cornfield and ET screams. The scream that ET makes is like the least human noise that I've ever seen in a movie or heard in a movie. To this day it makes my skin crawl."

Even still, the questionably-frightening titular character in Steven Spielberg's 1982 family movie was the beginning of a journey that Tynion says is one of the most important of his life: falling in love with the horror genre.

"It wasn't really until late high school, early college that I started actually like reading and enjoying horror," Tynion said, "And I made lots of excuses about why I didn't like horror. [I'd say,] 'Okay, I don't like horror, but I liked Stephen King novels a lot. Okay, I don't like horror. Well, now I'm watching all the slasher movies.' It just slowly kind of started building up and I realized that it's like, 'Oh, no. This is actually the genre that I love the most.'"

And as you know if you've been following indie comics these days, it's a genre that loves Tynion. But let's get back to his humble beginnings - decades after Tynion was first haunted by that inhuman scream, does he consider the film a horror movie?

"These days, I can handle ET," Tynion laughed. "But I do think that the design is genuinely unsettling. I do think ET still classifies as a horror monster, but the movie is still a heartwarming adventure story for kids."

You can watch Popverse's full interview with James Tynion IV below:

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