The first appropriate thing about my interview with Steven “S.R.” Arnold is that we were originally scheduled to speak on Thanksgiving day. This was apt insomuch as it casually and accurately revealed that neither of us had anything the least bit better to do. In this, we bore more than passing resemblances to the figures who tend to populate Arnold’s comics: listless, hapless loners cast adrift on the river of a questionably sociable society. His first two (and to date only) full-length comic books as both writer and artist, 2022’s Perry Midlife and its 2023 prequel, Perry Shitlife, are picaresque, seriocomic amblings in the Clowesian tradition, but Arnold’s work differs from his forebears’ in two important ways. He balances, first of all, doggedly mundane realism with an exuberant bent toward the surreal: Midlife especially is structured as a series of alternating vignettes, formalistic grids of real-world mundanity rudely interrupted by strange, alarming splash-page set pieces of imaginative visions.
Arnold is also, second of all, autobiographically honest and unflinching to an astonishing degree. The world of Perry (who is, the cartoonist readily admits, a refashioning of his own self) is populated by sad sacks and douchebag grotesques, but no one is more sad or more grotesque than Perry himself. This is not the kind of self-critical fiction that makes a virtue out of its hero’s lousiness; rather, Arnold’s work is ruthlessly, unromantically honest in its observations. That it manages to be engaging and extremely funny for all of that is a testament to how fully and how fast Arnold’s skills as a cartoonist have already emerged.
As it happened, Arnold and I did not talk on Thanksgiving: my apartment’s radiator unexpectedly sprung a leak, prompting an emergency holiday visit from an off-duty super - and proving, should there have been lingering doubts, that I remain a schlimazel. Arnold reported to me that he instead spent the day watching a selection of films including the 1980s TV movie about post-nuclear suffering, The Day After. This too was entirely appropriate. Arnold’s work always seems to find itself returning to the twin themes of death and decay: Perry Midlife’s fantasy sequences collectively build toward a frantic crescendo that is, quite literally, apocalyptic.
These motifs have been drifting through even the earliest of Arnold’s collaborative work as the artist half of a team with writer Michael Kamison, with whom he operates the self-publishing micropress H.O.T. Press Comics (from which Arnold’s books may be purchased). After undertaking their first work together with 2016’s initial volume of the multi-part Heel on the Shovel, the duo was nominated for a Best Short Story Eisner Award for 2022’s “I Wanna Be a Slob,” a heartbreakingly bleak depiction of punk rock self-immolation (they didn’t win). From those first comics, Arnold’s linework and figure depictions were more-or-less fully refined in their style: a remarkable feat considering his less than a decade in professional comics. Among the many (and many-talented) voices in the Philly comics scene he inhabits, Arnold is surely one worth watching.
I eventually spoke to Steven Arnold two days after our initially scheduled interview, via Zoom from his home in Philadelphia, in late November 2023.
-Zach Rabiroff
ZACH RABIROFF: Typically, when I come into these conversations, I come prepared with background reading from previous interviews the person has done. But I have to be honest: I mostly drew a blank with you. There’s not much out there. So when I ask these questions, I’m not being disingenuous; I really don’t know the answers yet. So let’s start from the ground up: where are you from originally?
STEVEN ARNOLD: I grew up in Bucks County. It's like 45 minutes north of Philadelphia. So, pretty much just spent a lot of my years taking the train down. I lived only a couple of blocks from the train station, so I was able to just come down and knock around Philly in junior high school and high school. I ended up going to college there, and then just kind of stuck there ever since.
What did your parents do when you were growing up?
My mom was a teacher for children with autism, and my dad was an electrician. And somehow this happened. [Laughs]
What was the culture like growing up in your suburb? I mean, did you like it there? Did you feel like you fit in?
I didn't love it. It’s interesting: it's become this really artsy fartsy kind of super-rich area. Growing up it was a little bit more working class. You know, there used to be a newspaper stand and a bunch of little mom and pop things. And then, through high school, Starbucks came in and took over the bank, and then a Chico’s, and all these other high-end boutique things kind of took over. There's a really good record shop, Siren Records, that was like the hub of the alt world in that town. And there was a little double-screen movie theater that I ended up working at in college and after as a projectionist.
But I don't know - never really felt like it was a place I wanted to stay. They started introducing a curfew for kids when I was in high school, because all the new shop owners and stuff didn't like the kids hanging out. People were being arrested for drawing with sidewalk chalk in the street.
Were you growing up in the town from Dirty Dancing?
[Laughs] Exactly. It's a weird town. It's got a lot of weird vibes. And I don't know, I was just always looking to get out, but wasn't always convinced I wanted to go to Philly. I think I really disliked it for a long time when I started to go to college there. But I think that was more related to just generalized anxieties and angst more than being open to allowing the city to show me what it has to offer. Instead of me just kind of busing in, busing out, going to school.
You mentioned the record store growing up, and it seems, at least drawing from your work, rock & roll and punk rock in particular were big parts of your life. Was that a major influence on you?
Yeah, in middle school I started being introduced to that sort of stuff through skate videos. And just always being drawn to the punk aesthetic as a little suburban, good Catholic boy. And in middle school, I started making friends with some punkers, and still couldn't fit in. The music always influenced me: at first, like a kind of aggression outlet, but then, as you start to grow and understand the politics of what the music's about, it helps shape your worldview a lot. And, you know, I couldn't skateboard well, so I would be just be off sitting on the side while all my friends were skating and stuff.
I kind of fell out of it after high school, and it wasn't until post-college that I'd gone through a couple of rock bottom situations and found myself in the DIY punk scene in Philly. And that ultimately set the course for the person I am today. The community, the music: it feels like a very appropriate attitude to have in this climate now.
In terms of the “fuck the establishment” ethos.
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, you have to kind of use whatever power you have to try and be better and do better in the world, no matter what form that takes. I think it's the closest I've ever come to going to church or that sort of thing. Like anything, it's not perfect, and there's always going to be problems in a scene, but I don't know - I think it’s a great kind of aesthetic to live by. So, yeah, it definitely saved me in some dark places as an outlet and as a life raft. And I'm super grateful for it. And I miss those sweaty, gross basement shows and just being a little bit of a knucklehead. [Laughs]
So tell me about comics. Did you read them as a kid?
I read more of, like, MAD magazine, and the daily [newspaper strips].
Which strips in particular?
Peanuts was a huge influence. I loved The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes. I remember my mom sitting me down, and being like, “This is going to be the last Calvin and Hobbes strip that's going to come out.” And she ended up cutting it out and putting it on the fridge. And it was there for a long while. I liked them a lot, because I think Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts and The Far Side, are these perfect examples of how to tell a story in either one panel, four panels, or whatever Bill Watterson was doing - however he laid out, especially his Sundays. And that always fascinated me. I mean, as a kid I was more obsessed with animation, the old Disney cartoons, and Looney Tunes, and Rocky and Bullwinkle.
You were watching all those shows in reruns?
Yeah. And I would get, like, a VHS collection of Looney Tunes episodes or old Mickey Mouse shorts and just watch them ad nauseam until the tape was pretty much decayed. But in my hometown, there used to be this community arts center where this guy ran a comic book-making class, and it was for older kids to young teens. And once a week, we’d go in there, and he would do something cool where he would write these comics-- you know, 18-, 24-page comics that were his original stories. And they were all usually based on a fairytale or something.
And then, depending on your skill level, he would be like, “All right, here's a page. We're going to teach you how to ink, and you're going to learn with a Rapidograph, and then you're going to learn with a brush, and you're just going to practice on that.” And then he'd give you a page and say, “Actually, I want you to redraw this, and you draw it as best you can.” And then you inked that, and then by the end of the class, however many weeks it was, you would go get them all Xeroxed. And we would come in with the pages, and then we'd sit down and sort them to the right order, and then take a stapler on a piece of corkboard and do a very rudimentary saddle stapling. And then he'd sell them at the local comic shop and-- you know, being a kid, [I’d go] into the shop and be like, “Oh, I drew that.”
So that was your first zine.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'd always been interested in comics, but that really set it in motion. But I was never a cape and cowl kind of kid. I liked the artwork for a lot of that stuff, but the stories never really did much for me. So I think that's why I was always drawn to MAD magazine, because these were stories that I was connecting with for whatever reason. They were goofy; they were weird.
Being an older millennial—I was born in '85—all of that alt comic stuff was always on the periphery. I remember seeing Buddy Bradley or, you know, OK Soda and Jim Woodring figurines or, like, an album cover or something in a record store. So all this stuff was just kind of floating around and just out of grasp, because I didn't have any older, cooler people showing me that world.
You didn’t have an older brother handing you copies of Eightball.
No, no. I wish. I think it would've warped me significantly more than MAD magazine.
So at what point did you discover those alt comics artists? Because I don’t think I’m alone in saying that you can certainly see the influence of them on your work.
I remember I got a copy of the Ivan Brunetti graphic art compendium [An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories; two volumes, Yale University Press, 2006/2008] that I guess was the predecessor of the Best American Comics. I don’t know if it was or not, but it definitely influenced that. But I remember getting volume one, and just kind of flipping through it and being like, okay, some of this stuff looks really familiar. And that blew the lid off of everything, because it's where I first read, Joe Matt, or Chris Ware, or all those people. And it was just kind of, “Holy-- this is art as well as a comic. And it’s speaking volumes.” And it really allowed me to see the potential that this medium has. It was always just an entertainment thing before - like, cartoons are entertaining, and then this does the opposite... cartoons are an art form. That set it all in motion.
And Dan Clowes especially ticked all those boxes for me. Reading Ice Haven for the first time was just-- I didn't want to touch a pencil after that. It was like, “Well, why should I even bother trying to do something?” [Laughs] It's never going to be this good.
Were you thinking at that point that you wanted to do this sort of thing professionally? When did you start thinking about comics as a job?
I always wanted to draw. It’s the place where I'm able to be most happy. I ended up studying film in college, and I've been working in that world for the last 10, 12 years. And I realized that I was very happy with what I was doing as a job and as a career, but it wasn't satisfying any sort of creative itch. So I started drawing again, and being like, “Okay, this is just visual storytelling.” It's a different medium, but I feel I'm able to combine all of my interests into comics.
When I draw, I think very much like a camera. It allowed me to feel fulfilled in a way that I don't think I'd ever expected it to. After I decided I wanted to draw comics, it didn't seem like something I could do. And after finally being able to complete the first book, [it was] like, “Oh, I still have a lot to learn, but this was worth all of that work to me.” And I think it was after tabling at SPX for the first time and realizing that, yeah, this is fulfillment in a way that I've never felt before. That was the decision - that this is not only what I want to do, but what I need to do to be happy.
And around what year was that?
The first book I did with my writing partner was done in 2016, and then we tabled at SPX for the first time in 2018. So not too long ago, but long enough to have learned a lot about the system, and how to operate within that world. You could just be some dude with a book, but if you don't know how to sell yourself or communicate with people, you're not going to get anywhere or do anything.
That writing partner would be Mike Kamison, right? How did that partnership start?
We met working at a movie theater together. It was one of those friendships that clicks instantly. We're kind of mirror images of each other: we look the same, we have the same interests in music, and books, and movies. He's a writer, and when we were starting to do stuff, he was getting his MFA in writing. So at the movie theater we would just be bumming around, and it got to the point where I was like, “Hey, I got this idea, but I don't know what to do with it. You want to take a shot at writing it?” And he said yeah. And then it just kind of snowballed from there.
And what idea was that?
It was [2016’s] Heel on the Shovel: basically a domestic version of Frankenstein. What that looks like in a small family unit. And the idea of understanding grief, and identity, but doing that all through a dark comic lens. Just the absurdity of that, but also the real implications that an absurd situation would have on a real family. So he took that idea, which was just a nugget from my end. I had tried writing it before, and I'd done, you know, 10 pages or something. “I don't have the confidence to do this yet.”
But you felt like you had the skill to draw it.
Yeah. I felt like I could do the drawing, and I'm an ideas person, but I wasn't confident in my own writing at that point. So Mike was able to take that, and just run with it. And his storytelling is great. It's some of my favorite in the world. And we're hopefully going to be having the last book of that [series] out next year, just so we can put a stamp on that, and be done with it. Because we've been doing it for so long, and it takes years and years between each book to get the next one out. It's the plight of wanting to do too many things, and then you get older and life becomes harder with schedules, and jobs, and this and that. But he got the third book written, so it's all on me right now.
Go back to the genesis of that idea, though, because I’m curious where it came from in the first place.
I've always been interested in "Frankenstein" just as a concept. You know, here is this thing that everyone hates and is terrified of, but it is the real victim of the whole situation. Never asking to be brought to life, never asking for the world that it was put into, and never asking for the treatment that was put on it. I think at that point in my life, I was just unsure about everything. I was in a relationship that was ending. I'd gotten fired from a job I had. I was on unemployment, but because my previous job only had me scheduled as part-time, even though I was working full-time hours-- like, I was only getting $500 a month to live off when I did eventually get unemployment. But at that particular time, the unemployment offices were on strike, so it was just a complete mess. But I was driving and listening to this 16 Horsepower album. What the hell is it called? I can't remember. But it's got this song called "Heel on the Shovel."
I’ll put it in a footnote.1
[Laughs] The song just struck me in a way where-- the lyrics are very minimal, but it's repetitious, and it gets you into a headspace, and things just kind of fell into place. I think that all of my ideas are anxiety-driven. [Laughs] And I think that idea definitely came before I was on my antidepressant meds. So it definitely came from a darker place. But, you know, Mike was able to see these real moments in it that I just couldn't see in that period, and built the story from there.
Process-wise, how was the collaboration? Smooth? Complicated?
No, it's never been complicated working with Mike. I feel very lucky to have a relationship like that, where each person just respects the other person's capabilities to a point where nobody questions anything. I have complete trust in Mike's storytelling, and Mike has complete trust in my visual representation of it. And we allow each other to have our own say in that without our own influence. So if we’ve been discussing how something is going to roll out, but in his process he ends up changing it, I accept that because it's usually the right call. And then if, as I'm going through the script and being like, “Okay, I can turn this one panel into four panels to tell that visually a little bit better,” or, “I can truncate all this stuff into like a splash page or something,” he just lets me roll with that.
So, yeah, it's been great, and I think we both needed each other, especially when we started tabling [at conventions]. Because we both have really high social anxiety, and-- especially going into SPX for the first time and being like, “What the hell is this?” It's just been a really special relationship. We had gotten an Eisner nomination for a story we wrote in an anthology last year.2 So that felt like vindication that, you know - this is good. We made good choices being friends and collaborators.
I’ll get back to that Eisner nomination, but I’m curious about the process you and Mike use. You said that the initial idea for Heel on the Shovel was yours, so were you steering the ship for the comic? Did one of you have the final word on what decisions you made creatively?
With the first book, I had my bullet points of where I thought the story should go, but before we ever really started doing anything we would just go out and get coffee, and talk about it, and just kind of spitball and take notes. And I think that maybe as we were both getting more confident in working with each other, and working on in this medium, it was definitely more of an attached-at-the-hip sort of thing. Always talking about it, bouncing stuff back and forth. And by the time we did the second book, I think we had one sit-down where we were like, “All right, I think it should go from here to here to here.” “Okay. Cool.”
And then he sat down and wrote it, and then I sat down and drew it. We had this longer story that we knew was going to be three books, which was very ambitious for people just starting out. But I think in between those books, we started doing smaller things: like, we did this series called Swamp Parade, which is just a bunch of short comics. Mike has some of his prose in there, too. And we wanted a parody of high-end magazines, so it was kind of, “What would it look like if MAD magazine took over the New Yorker?” That's where that grew from. And then we did a couple other short, contained comics of 20 pages or 24 pages. And I think doing those things in between these longer projects helped build that momentum and that confidence in each other.
It seems like even from your earliest work, your visual style is more or less fully formed - the look of the first Heel on the Shovel is essentially the same look as Perry Shitlife, at least in terms of the way you draw your figures. How had you defined your style by that point?
I don't know. I'd been drawing, trying to come up with an idea for years before we started doing anything. And in that time just trying to understand how to get line weight, and how to do all these things. So I kept trying to take art that influenced me and be like, “Okay, what is the thing that speaks to me about this artist? Oh, it's how they draw a profile,” or, “I like how they do their body language.” Or finally understanding that backgrounds are important too. Obsessing and learning how to use the instrument. I hadn't picked up a brush to ink in many, many years. So it was relearning how to do that, and trying to find all the tools.
Were you doing all this research while you were going into the first Heel on the Shovel book?
Yeah. Yeah. I tend to rabbit hole a lot. I just became obsessed with it, reading interviews with artists and comic creators just scouring through interviews, trying to find out if they mention the type of ink that they use, or the type of brush, because I don't know if I should be using a #4 or a #0 to get this line. And not being good enough to be able to understand that you can kind of do whatever with whatever.
And you also were doing that series in color, which seems even more ambitious for a first book.
Some might call it stupid. [Laughs]
So how were you figuring that out? Was it all just with Photoshop?
That was a whole thing, trying to figure out workflow with Photoshop and stuff. If it was still available, I probably would've tried to have done it with Zipatone, because that seemed like what these guys used, and it seems easier than a computer. I think I spent longer coloring that first book than it took us to write and draw it, just because it was such a huge learning curve. Now I’ve got it down pretty quick. I have my whole workflow figured out, but it took like 10 years to get to that point.
How long did it take, start to finish, to put that first issue together?
We started talking about it in 2014, and we didn't get the first issue out until the end of 2016. So, a while.
Yeah, a two-year process.
Yeah, for like 20 pages or something.
But it seems like once that learning process was out of the way, the rest of your work has moved quite a bit faster.
Yeah, yeah. I don't regret taking so long to do it right, or at least as right as I could. Because now at this point, there's seldom any sort of kinks in the workflow, whether it's figuring out how to stitch scanned images together, or doing the whole digital thing. When you're younger, and you're trying to find your voice and your image, you spend a lot of time harping over “Does this follow the rules of this and that?” And now it's just, who gives a shit? I like how this looks, and now I'm just going to go with that. I don't really do any second-guessing anymore. What gets drawn first ends up getting printed at this point.
So you feel like you have more confidence in your abilities as an artist now?
Yes, very much so. And I feel more confident in the visual aspect, now that I understand it enough, trying to experiment a little bit more. Instead of being younger and just kind of throwing whatever onto a page, [I’m now] able to understand flow, and word placement, and visual storytelling on a single page. I feel like I've gotten to a point where I'm ready to start experimenting with that form a little bit more than I was - and, after the last two books that I put out on my own, finally having the confidence to put my own writing out there.
Before we get to that, I want to ask you about the choice you made to self-publish your work, and create your own publishing house, so to speak, with H.O.T. Press Comics.
Yeah, our micropress.
Why did you decide to take that approach?
I think, again, a lot of that came out of our social anxiety. We had this high of creating a book, and [then were faced with] sending it out and getting no feedback, and just being like, “Okay, we feel like this book is interesting enough that if nobody has any interest in it, we're just going to try and do it ourselves.” And that morphed into our whole DIY aesthetic towards everything. It's really gratifying - and frustrating. Because it's definitely not reaching an audience that I wish we had the ability to reach. But that also comes from us not using our social media or doing much after that.
So how have you been promoting your work? You mentioned tabling at SPX.
We do some local zine shows. Our first big break came from J.T. Yost at Birdcage Bottom. We had sent him the book, and he was like, “I'll sell a couple copies in my shop.” So we just felt, “Oh, this is huge, this is awesome. We're officially going to make it now.” And as we started putting out more work, J.T. was always a huge champion for us. So the books started to go into a couple shops, through people who buy from Birdcage regularly. I actually went and did a reading with M.S. Harkness in Baltimore at Atomic Books. The owner there had been stocking our stuff there for years through Birdcage Bottom. So it was awesome to finally meet him in person. It was a real special kind of feeling.
So that association with Birdcage Bottom is how I assume you got involved with Too Tough to Die.
Yeah, J.T. had reached out to us a couple years before about doing another one of the anthologies, but we were just too busy. But when he had come to us about Too Tough to Die, it was like, “We will clear all of our schedules to make this thing work.”
Tell me about the story you came up with for that.
It's interesting, because we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do. You know, Philly's got a pretty interesting, extensive punk scene from the late '70s, early '80s, and I think originally we wanted to do something about that. And then COVID happened. Mike got really sick, and went into the hospital and almost died from an ailment--
But not COVID?
Not COVID. This was just during COVID. It was the day that lockdown happened, I think. He was like, “I don't feel good.” And his wife, who's a nurse, was, “Shut up, you're fine.” And then the next day, she's like, “All right, we’ve got to get you to the hospital.” Ended up being pancreatitis, and he was in and out of the hospital for a good portion of the year. And obviously we couldn't work on the story together, so it wasn't until the end of the summer that Mike finally started to be able to write.
So we decided to do this super-honest approach to the prompt, which was, basically, how does punk shape your life now, especially now that you're older. So while I don't think our story is the most classically punk story in there, I think the aesthetic of it, where it's [the protagonist’s] fight for survival, really came out punk as fuck. We thought we had done something that was pretty depressing, and we sent it off, and got a response back being, “This is really sad.” And we’re like, “Yeah, we know.” But we felt good about it. And it was later that year or the next year we got a random email from J.T. saying, “Hey, just want you to know, we submitted your story to the Eisners, and it's on the shortlist.” And then the nomination was announced the next week or so, but we were gobsmacked and completely caught off guard.
Did the nomination change anything for you? Did you find that you were getting more attention because of it?
It's helped sell books, for sure. I mean, Too Tough to Die sells itself. It's such an incredible book that it's not hard to sell it. But being able to say, “Hey, we got an Eisner nomination,” definitely helps. But other than the weird couple of weeks surrounding [the Eisners], it's just something to have in the trophy case, and when you're starting to second-guess yourself you can be like, “Oh yeah, look at that.” I think we've always felt we were kind of screaming into a vacuum for so long. And getting some recognition like that felt like a vindication on some level.
So, what prompted your move into writing your own books?
Mike was in the hospital, and he couldn't write the book. So I was getting antsy, and just-- COVID, my friend's in the hospital, and all these other things that are collapsing the world around me. And I needed an outlet to get that catharsis. Perry Midlife started as a couple of short comics from Swamp Parade #1, which were just some Tintin parodies that I was doing.
I think it was three or four little gags with that character - a depressed, 38-year old Tintin was always very funny to me. I was going to start expanding on that, but then I had all these other ideas in my head that weren't really big enough to do anything in collaboration with Mike. So I started stitching all of these things together... pretty autobio in a very surrealist lens. I redesigned the characters in the [real] world, and I wanted to do an eight-page mini, and then that turned into a 34-page book, and then it just didn't stop.
For a debut book, I think maybe it’s a little surprising that it’s largely a book about death, and about aging. So I guess I want to ask: why? Why are those the themes that were at the top of your mind?
I think it's because of what I am obsessed with at the moment, which is getting older, and facing the idea of death in every aspect - you know, the world is dying, everything's dying. [Laughs] I think largely it is a cathartic way for me to self-pacify those anxieties. There's a huge nuclear threat that is peppered through all three of the most recent comics. I'm not entirely sure where that comes from, but like I was saying earlier, I watched The Day After - this movie does it all. It's got it all.
I was going to ask about this motif of societal self-destruction, sort of paralleled with person self-destruction that runs through the two Perry books.
I think a lot of it stems from the idea of: is our world a reflection of ourselves? And I think that can be looked at on a micro level and a universal level, because I think you can't always change the world as a whole, but you could change your smaller world, and then that smaller world can have effects on the larger world. And that can be positive, but it tends to be mostly destructive and negative.
Which is Perry’s paranoia in the book: that he’s just relentlessly consuming and contributing nothing.
Yeah, which I think is a bit of self-reflection of how I've viewed myself through a lot of my life: just being afraid to say anything or do anything, and just kind of letting the weight of it all just crush [me] down.
How much of Perry is autobiographical? How much of the character is you?
I would say almost all the events in the books are autobio. Whether they happened in that order or not is nobody's business but my own. [Laughs] But I have a really bad memory, so I tend to take these moments of my life, and where it starts to get abstract is usually when I'm filling in the gaps of things I can't remember. So it's working in reality and a parallel reality, I guess, but being mostly autobio. But allowing it to take on a little bit of its own life, I think, is what I've been trying to allow it to do. Not that I'm trying to make the character do better things, or be better, because of the poor decisions that he's made. I think a lot of it is like he is trying to understand the decisions that he's made. So those things never change: it's just that the world around him, and how that interacts with him, tend to either happen factually or more abstractly.
Right, and Midlife is built around this alternation between very realistic sequences and big, elaborate fantasies. At what point did you decide on that approach?
I think of it more like a conversational piece, in terms of: we're talking about something, and then, “Oh, that reminds me of this. I need to tell you all the information I have about this thing, because it might tie back into what we're talking about.” But by the time I'm finished telling you what that is, I don't remember what we were talking about before. It's these moments of thinking where you go off into a different direction. And maybe it's something that the character is stressing about but isn't talking about, and that is coming out in this weird fantasy element.
All those things are usually actual facts or ideas that somebody has shared with me. In Perry Midlife, the story about Mars and Earth getting destroyed was just the rambling of some guy that was in line with me at a bookshop wearing an Air Garcia t-shirt. I feel like being able to escape into a fantasy and come back out can help strengthen the trajectory of where the character may or may not go.
And you also do a formalistic shift, where you move from strict grids to big, double-page splashes during the fantasy sequences.
Yeah. And that's where a lot of the confidence comes in, to be able to throw caution to the wind.
Were there any particular visual influences you were drawing from for those sequences?
Not particularly. I tend to not really read anything when I'm working. At least at this point in my process. Before, it would be, like, reference pages all over the desk. “Oh, that's how you draw a background.” Now it's just going with the gut. I don't know, those [splash] pages come out the easiest, maybe because they’re the most absurd. So I get to be a little bit more fun with what I'm trying to show. And then it's fun kind of trying to figure out how something will flow into it and out of it. Because so much of making comics is just painful, you know - sitting in a position for hours and not talking to people, or just hating everything. There's this physical reaction that I get - you're drawing [the page], but you hate it at the same time. And then by the time you're done inking it, you look at it like, “Okay, this is fine. Move on to the next thing.” But with those pages, it's a lot more fun. I feel like I'm a little bit more free, because I tend to not use any sort of grid in those things.
You do seem to favor the 12-panel grid, but on those sequences you let loose.
It's my “going wild” moment. But I also think that it helps break up the monotony of [using] the grid over and over again.
It seems to me that part of the intention of those sequences is to create the sense of monotony in Perry’s everyday world.
Yeah. And to have it be pretty consistent: it changes, sometimes 9 [panels], 12 depending on the landscape or whatever. But you're literally in a box, and the character's very much one who is very boxed into himself, and his world and anxiety. So I feel like it has a greater impact to be able to throw it all out and do these big splashes, and get a little weird and loose in it.
Were you happy with the way the book turned out?
Yeah. I was nervous about Shitlife. I think because when I did Perry Midlife, I had gotten a response that I wasn't expecting.
How so?
I had gotten a pretty favorable response to it. And because I was super-nervous putting it out, because it's my first solo writing thing - I wasn't super-confident in that. But I feel like the intended honesty of it seemed to hit readers in a way that I think I wasn't expecting. So after getting a lot of positive feedback, putting out Shitlife as my first follow-up-- and it's twice as long, and wasn't the book that I promised it was going to be at the end of the first book.
Right, what made you decide to shift directions from the promised sequel?
I wasn't ready yet. I needed to do a lot more introspection, especially with something like death and nuclear fallout. I've been doing a lot of research in that, and personal work, and trying to understand a lot of things. One of the things that's going to be a huge part of the next book is inherited trauma. But done, you know, in the classic comedic way. [Laughs]
I had gotten my great-grandfather's World War I diary, and he was a POW. And I know how much that experience affected my grandfather, and how much that affected my dad and me - taking this moment, and trying to do research into that, and trying to understand things more. So I've been in the process of getting that thing translated, just as a thought experiment in terms of understanding where certain anxieties and traumas came from. How they trickle down, and how I deal with that in a personal but also funny way in this next book. So it took me a while to get all the pieces together, and I'm hoping by this time next year it'll be out.
And in the meantime you decided to dial things back with the flashback approach.
Yeah. I can't really explain why that was the moment I chose to do, except that it probably had the most influence - [digging] out of that period of my life was probably my greatest self-accomplishment. I think what I wanted to do was give you some backstory as to how our character got to where he is in Midlife, and maybe why he's relishing in these kind of monotonous quiet moments. And being okay with things not being chaotic, but then also still not really understanding how to deal with chaos.
There does seem to be something very publicly therapeutic about the subject matter. It’s obviously a story about addiction.
Mm-hmm.
Was it difficult for you to put that on the page?
I think it was harder for me to show it to my parents. [Laughs] Because they remember that period of my life not with the most rose-tinted glasses. It was also a bit cathartic to be able to be, “Okay, that chapter is done.” That's been over for a while, and we can see how much things have grown, and now we can look back at these moments and kind of laugh at them. I guess more laugh with them instead of at them, because it's not poking fun at any of those struggles. But it was a little nerve-racking, putting that out there. I think I'm just trying to be as honest as I can with these works. And there is a bit of catharsis in being able to actually address things, and put them into a tangible medium, and be able to literally close the book on that chapter.
Why the move to black & white for Perry Shitlife?
Oh, it was a flashback episode. It's a demo tape comic. Still a little rough around the edges, but the idea's there.
So now you’re working on the sequel you had been planning on doing in the first place.
Yeah, Perry No-Life.
How is the progress on that so far?
Slowly but good. I just started typing the script out. And this one, I'm actually doing it in 12 chapters. I don't know how long it's going to be yet. I'm trying not to make it, like, a hundred pages. But there's a very good chance it'll be as long-- maybe slightly longer than the last book, just because of the adventure that happens in this book. And it was also difficult to figure out how to tell a story about being dead without ever being dead before. [Laughs] So I think I've finally cracked how that's going to happen.
You’ve cracked the secret of oblivion.
Yeah. So wait a year and find out what that secret is.
This is how cults begin, you know.
I wouldn't mind being a cult leader. [Laughs]
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