INTERVIEW: HOW LOATHSOME
Interview conducted by Jonathan Ellis

HOW LOATHSOME is what you'd call a queer book.

I don't just mean that specifically in the sexual sense but more cognitive to the words original meaning. Odd. Different. Being weird or being an outcast, or as the series writer aptly put it "everyone is a freak to someone"

It's sex, drugs and Rock & Roll for a generation where sandals and love beads just don't cut it.

The story begins with Catherine Gore, a gender-questioning, semi-gothic writer whose strange lifestyle and disreputable friends provide various entertaining stories. It's Friday night and Catherine is dragged to an S&M play party to see what passes for sex these days. There, Catherine meets the enigmatic Chloe and a deep yet unusual bond is formed. PopImage recently spoke with HOW LOATHSOME's deep yet unusual creators, Ted Naifeh and Tristan Crane about the series.

PopImage: In Catherine's own words, her attraction with Chloe begins to turn into an obsession. Have you ever felt this way about another person? Or been someone else's obsession?

Tristan: Probably. Yes.

Ted: That's none of your business, Jack.

Do you consider HOW LOATHSOME to be a Goth-erotica book? The smoke and leather, shadows and light, piercing any place you can fit a needle... What in particular, attracts you, draws you into this genre?

Tristan: I suppose I don't really consider HL to be a 'goth' book, although the subject matter is sometimes dark. Ted's look for this book is sort of gothic, but has a more realistic 'look' than some of his other projects. As far as the erotic part, HL is about grown-up people, young adults... it's not realistic to not include at least some of the sex or erotic elements. If HL is dark, perhaps its because its about the city, and cities can be rough places to live.

As far as my attraction to this genre, I just think that this kind of life is more interesting than say, shopping at the gap and watching cable TV talk shows. It's more interesting and sexy, and the music's better.

Ted: I certainly conceived it as a Goth book, but Tristan steered us away from that direction a bit. Yeah, it's all leather and vinyl clothes, lotsa big shadows, the occasional piercing. But really that's not particularly goth, no more than, say, the "The Matrix" was. It's just modern hip culture. Part goth, part glam, part queer style, a little punk, a little rave, etc.

But then I don't mind the label "goth-erotica". Sound's good to me. I'd buy a goth-erotica book, wouldn't you? So long as it actually had some sex in it. Unfortunately, How Loathsome doesn't have any actual bona-fide sex, so I suppose it's not really erotica. Of course, we haven't finished all the issues yet. Anything could happen by issue 4.

Tristan: We've got sex... does oral sex still count as sex? (It's in issue 2!)

I don't know if oral sex still counts as sex, but I've often heard it asked 'Does oral sex count as cheating'?

Ted: Yes, it counts as cheating. Unless the significant other is warned in advance and gives his/her consent. Then it's just sexy.

That was an interesting point about cities. "It's always dark in the city" after all. Could you tell us more about the setting where this story takes place?

Ted: We decided to set it in San Francisco because that what all lazy writers do, set stories in places where there's a minimum of research to be done. Why do you think Stephen King sets most of his tales in New England? Besides, the book is, in some ways, about personal identity in relation to community standards.

That's pretty subtle stuff, and it changes from community to community. I wouldn't have felt confident setting the story in, say LA, because I don't know how they deal with these dynamics down there. I have a feeling that it'd be a whole different book.

Tristan: Lazy writers do that? I wouldn't know.
San Francisco is the city I've decided to live in for a while, and it seemed a good setting for these people and their stories. That said, this is an exaggerated reality, like all good fiction. Steven King's been known to embellish a few details himself.

Why the title 'Loathsome'?

Tristan: It's a great word, isn't it? Say it, roll it around your mouth. Go on, camp it up. When you 'loathe' something, you hate it so much that you end up loving it.

Ted: Again, I'd originally conceived it as a goth book, and How Loathsome is such a melodramatic, histrionic, back-of-hand-to-forehead sort of phrase. If originated as a quote from a Rozz Williams spoken word CD. A friend of mine from the games industry, who was an accountant before becoming a videogame artist, was fascinated by the goth/industrial culture to which he was exposed by some of his co-workers. He began to embrace all things goth, bought black clothes (shorts and sneakers and Homer Simpson shirts mostly) and sort of developed a goth tennis player look. Then he'd sit in his cube listening to Ashes to Ashes over and over again and quoting the Rozz Williams poetry in a grand, poetry-delivery style. "How Loathsome" became a popular office phrase. It struck me later as a great title for a book. Tristan always hated it.

Strangely enough, I later found the same phrase in The Fellowship of the Ring, and laughed out loud.

Speaking of a 'grand poetry-delivery style', do you see HOW LOATHSOME as partly poetic? Particularly with Catherine, a writer, as the protagonist and narrator.

Ted: I don't. I'd like it to be a bit more poetic, but we ended up making it more slice-of-life, and less focused on the beauty of the written word itself. Maybe some of the "fictional tales" are vaguely poetic, but more in content than style. Judged by those standards, they're not very good poems. But they're still cracking good yarns, if I may say so.

Tristan: For the record, I don't have anything against poetry. It is a much-maligned and abused literary form however, and I'd much rather tell a straight-forward and interesting story. It can be awkward to combine the two methods of storytelling in a comic book.

How did you two hook up for this project?

Tristan: Ted and I were lying on his satin-sheeted bed, in between our matched set of twin Siberian tigers and I suppose the opium was quite strong that day because we both had this weird dream...

Ted: Ummm... yeah.

Tristan: We've been friends for years, and found out somehow that we could collaborate on a script together. My visual medium is photography, but Ted can draw people I'd never be able to find. He's an amazing illustrator.

The mix of photography into the art for the covers is gorgeous. Will this process see it's way into any of the sequential pages?

Tristan: Thanks! We had been tossing the idea around, using my photos and Ted's line art, for quite some time. While the covers have been a bit of an experiment, there is always the possibility that some photographs may make it into the interior pages.

Ted: I'd been mulling an idea over in my mind for a while of using photos as colour for line-art. So when we got Cid involved and asked him what he wanted to do for the cover designs, he described the concept of a photo with line-art over it. We said sure, sounds great. We were all on the same page, so it came together very well. And everyone seems quite impressed with the results.

Plus you'd have a great reason to go out and take photos of androgynous semi-nude goth girls and boys smoking heavily while standing under street lamps. Assuming you don't do that already...

Tristan: I majored in photography back in College, so I'd already had some practice with that... it is nice to be getting back into it once again. Being able to incorporate photography into How Loathsome is just icing on the cake.

Ted: There's gotta be some perks to this business, even is if is just asking extremely pretty people to pose partly undressed in smoky bars and subway stations.

Are there any friends or personalities you'd like to acknowledge for inspiration in regards to the characters or story in HOW LOATHSOME?

Ted: For me it's all the people I know who came of age in the alternative nightclub and party scenes, looking to various groups to define who they were, and then finding that those "scenes" weren't really enough to supply an identity. I know dozens of people like that. Basically, Catherine is, in some ways, inspired by those people, trying to find a safe place with others to whom they can relate, but little by little discovering their uniqueness and coming to terms with the benefits and drawbacks of it.

Beyond that, I ain't giving away my influences. They might sue.

Tristan: The characters and situations in this book were inspired by all kinds of people, from people I've known well to those little phantom voices in my head. I have definitely been influenced by the culture and atmosphere here in San Francisco. It's all the fabulous, weird people at nightclubs and bars that inspire me, and you get all kinds in this city. The trashy diva drag-queen rock stars and the quietly fey club kids and everything in-between plus a few things you've not even thought of yet.

How about musically? Which I'm sure plays a large influence. Though with the exceptions of Hedwig and the Angry Inch or Robin Black and the Intergalactic Rock Stars, there are not so many, at least not widely known stars in North America who fit into the glam rock genre.

Ted: I agree, Rock & Roll American style doesn't have much to offer in that category. The closest we have is a lot of latter-day goth "me too-ers" and barely disguised heavy metal bands that think it's glam to put strippers on stage with them. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Tristan and I are both big Britpop fans, especially when they involve sensitive, artsey fem-boys showing off their lanky bodies and singing about wasted youth. And I kinda still like Marylin Manson, though I've never owned any of his albums. I mean, what's the point? But I'd buy a video collection in a flash.

Tristan: Now that Ted's 'outed' my weakness for British rockers I slink away in shame. Music has always been big and essential to me. I listen to all kinds of stuff, there's a local college radio station here (KUSF) that showcases all kinds of indie, weird music, much of it from local bands. They're pretty much the only radio station I can stomach listening to, everything else is pretty horrible. We do have a pretty fantastic Glam Rock Band called Blue Period. I did some pictures for them a while back for a monthly glam club they ran. They are a band that's not widely known, perhaps, but they should be.

This is a great book with a large potential audience outside the regular realm of comics readers. You've already gotten some mainstream press for the series but is there any sort of promotion you have planned for outside the comics medium?

Tristan: It's a very tricky thing, getting a comic book noticed outside the comic community. We have been written up in 'Girlfriend's (a national lesbian magazine), which was actually our first bit of 'queer' press. We were in the 'Wedding issue', which I found quite amusing. We are sending the usual press releases to local Queer community newspapers, and hopefully that will generate some interest in the book. I'm actually relying on our publishers, NBM, for some of this. They've handled material like this for years now, and sell into bookstores and the like all the time. I let them handle it in the way they know best.

Ted: It's complex. You do a book that potentially has a large audience within a specific demographic, but find that to target that demographic can pigeonhole the book, and prevent a wider audience from seeing it. I personally never intended How Loathsome to be a "queer" book. At least, I never intended it for an audience comprised only of queer people, or alternative people, or goth people, or young liberals or whatever. That's like saying "I only intended my astronaut movie for astronauts, or my pirate movie for pirates."

Hopefully, anyone can pick up How Loathsome and find characters they dig and can relate to. But it's tempting to aim it at a particular market, hoping they'll champion it as a furtherance of their own agenda. Personally, my agenda is to produce an interesting, enjoyable comic. It does further, for example, the queer agenda, simply by being what it is, a comic with queer characters that queer people might relate to. But I'd like to think it's interesting enough to be embraced not merely for it's queerness, but for it's quality as well. That being said, it's tough to find venues outside of queer magazines to promote it. But we're working on that.

Pre-Op or Post?

Tristan: Both.

Ted: Yes, please.

Thanks boys.

Jonathan Ellis is Co-Editor in Chief of PopImage.com and wishes he went to that Robin Black video shoot instead of staying home that one day.


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