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 tatistically speaking, if the name Evan Dorkin rings a bell, it's probably because of Milk and Cheese, "dairy products gone bad" who habitually dispense savage beat-downs and alcohol-fueled pop-culture jeremiads. In the best-known installment, they rampage through a city street while screaming "Merv Griffin!" at ever-increasing volume.Dorkin's other works include Dork, an anthology of various strips, and The Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club, a savage take on fan culture made into a TV pilot — then dropped — by Cartoon Network. But his best work may also be his least known: Hectic Planet, a funny, bittersweet "slice of future life." The sci-fi series follows a gang of semi-lovable losers through poverty and adventure; here, Dorkin shows his ability to craft real characters and dialogue, as well as a tenderness that's not always apparent in the over-the-top mayhem of his other books. In one memorable story, Ron Chitin, a four-armed ex-hockey player, agrees to play in an exhibition game for charity. What follows is chaos, satire and hilarity — until the last page, which gently and poignantly lifts the story to another level.
Sadly, Dorkin's skill has not brought him fame, or even enough stability to prevent a nervous breakdown. Said breakdown was chronicled in Dork #7, a startlingly dark evisceration of the artist himself and the junk culture that he can't seem to escape. Since the publication of that book, in 2000, Dorkin has kept busy with commissioned work, but his own material has become sparse; the recent publication of Dork #11 marks his first solo book in four years. Hooksexup spoke with Dorkin about his comics and his continuing struggle to make them. — Peter Smith So, Dork #11 is your first solo book in a while. By popular demand I didn't do a book for four years. No, it's been busy, my wife and I had a kid, and I just don't work as fast as I used to. It's not like there's a clamoring for my stuff. Why do you think you don't work as fast as you used to? Do you think your standards have gotten higher? I want to say I have no standards, but that's just flippant. I have standards, but I'm a nervous wreck and it's harder for me to get anything going. My work used to be pretty dashed out. I had the energy of youth, and nothing meant anything, I wasn't making any money, I just wanted to do it. And the work I was doing was pretty bad compared to what I think I'm doing now, but at the same time I wish I could recapture some of the enthusiasm and energy. I really don't know what the problem is other than I'm just an idiot. I have a midget brain and no confidence, and I keep working and waiting for the day that it just comes easily. A lot of people have this problem, it's not just cartoonists. But I think cartoonists are such an inherently fucked-up group. But comics may be bigger than they ever have been. There are certainly a few dozen people who are doing well and getting their work in front of people. This is a great time to be in comics by and large, but the fact is all this attention does not necessarily mean there's gold in them thar hills. Of course, it could always be worse, and I know a lot of people who're doing worse than me, and I don't care, because I only care about myself. That's what most of the people in this industry really are talking about when they're posting on their websites, "This is a great time for comics!" They're biting their lip, thinking, "Fuck, I wanted people to be buying my monkey-in-space comic!" Dork #7, a very grim book, details some of your struggles to write. Have things changed since then? In a lot of ways they have, and in some ways they haven't, unfortunately. And sometimes you backslide. But I know I could get more work done. Since I've been eleven years old I've been waiting to die, and the last year I've been to more funerals than I'm used to. The creepy big questions drift down when I'm trying to sleep. I have a two year old, and I don't believe in miracles, but it's the closest thing to one in my life. It's just amazing, this amazing little person in our world, and I just want the best for her, and I can't help but wonder what's going to happen to her. Do you worry about your daughter strugging with this stuff as she gets older?
I worry about my daughter having any sort of emotional problems. But you know, I don't want to make it sound like I'm this amazing walking fuck-up. I function. I drive my wife up the wall, but I'm getting other work done. I'm not going to be a morbid jerk around my daughter. I'm usually in some kind of depressed mood, but so is most of the planet. In the past, people probably didn't have time to walk around and have the luxury of worrying about everything. That's what a lot of my work is about — ambivalence about myself and my own problems. That ambivalence is present from the beginning of your work. I just don't think I'm right about anything. If I were a standup comedian I would have to go, "In general, Republicans are like. . ." and, "You know, for the most part, us Jews. . ." Tom Spurgeon reviewed work of mine and talked about how I overexplained some of my concepts, and I agreed with him. He was right. There's one Milk and Cheese strip where I practically apologized for going after fat people so much. It was just stupid. Milk and Cheese don't apologize for anything. A Milk and Cheese strip has to have the hubris of a wrestling promo or a rap song. Sometimes you have to wonder when your modesty's a false modesty, but at the same time, you know, I still don't look for work, I still don't send my work to people. There's that whole thing of actresses and models who think they're ugly. You might think it's folly, and I agree with a lot of that — after a while you feel like somebody's got to get their act together. And I have no problem making fun of depression even though I'm a depressed person. I got a nasty letter in Deadline magazine when I made fun of Ian Curtis for hanging himself. This guy wrote "You don't understand anything about depression!" and the editor wrote, "You don't know who you're talking to!" [laughs] Let's talk about Milk and Cheese for a minute, if you're not too tired of it. Hey, they're my guys! You've always said that Milk and Cheese is neither as smart nor as stupid as it looks. And you've made fun of people for reading too much into it. What do you think are the more significant themes of Milk and Cheese? Alcohol is funny. People are gullible idiots, celebrity worship is stupid, everybody's hypocritical. Think twice about everything. Dairy products with broken gin bottles smacking people are funny! It's not like I set out to make any statements, but sometimes they slip in there. There's fun to be had in stupidity. But it's not a cynical celebration of stupidity the way I think a lot of Hollywood stuff is. It's not an intellectual strip, but it's not an anti-intellectual strip. How much of Milk and Cheese #8 do you have? I've got about ten pages. Milk and Cheese is hard these days. I really like the way they're coming out, but I think I might be the only one. People think they look too clean and Milk and Cheese needs to be rougher. Maybe Milk and Cheese is like a punk band that's getting produced too cleanly. What was the genesis of Hectic Planet? Well, it was originally called Pirate Corps, and that was sort of Star Wars meets It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, with punk rock and ska in it, and girls. It might have been pre-Love and Rockets, might not have been, but I wasn't really hip to that stuff yet. I ended up with my own Star Wars, but the characters were all losers — loser guys in space. Then I started to get more interested in the punk rock stuff, and it was obviously an influence of Love and Rockets, but also my own life. I was going to clubs and getting crushes on girls who I knew would never talk to me, and then actually starting to date and having girls break up with me. Things like that.
That's what started to take over from the space opera. And that's why I renamed it Hectic Planet, because Pirate Corps was not only unpronounceable to nine out of ten arthropod slope-brains..."Pirate Corpse," I just couldn't stand hearing that anymore. I'm like, look, I'm not the smartest person on earth, but I know how you pronounce "corps!" Please, stop! The other thing was people were like, "There's no pirates in here!" I remember I had sent my work to Deadline, because an editor there told me to send my work in. He apologized to me later, but he said "I'm sorry, but I saw 'space pirates' and I just put it on the bottom of the pile! I didn't want to look at that shit!" On the other hand, I was never going to take the science fiction stuff out entirely, because then I didn't have to write the same old dreary, "Here I am, dealing with being unemployed and unhappy." I could sugarcoat it and play with it. And true, maybe that's not great art, but I was just trying to do fun comics. The problem with Hectic Planet was it became neither fish nor fowl for a lot of people. It didn't have enough screwball chases and fights and violence and space opera material for some people, and then it had too much for others. People who wanted characters and romance were annoyed that there would be a robot walking around, and then there were the robot people, who were annoyed by the romance. I think the balance is just right, though. Well, the balance is just right for a couple thousand people, no more, no less, and that's fine... Something like the hockey story has a bunch of pages of total comedy and then you sort of end it on a wistful note. God, it's nice to hear somebody remember this stuff. [laughs] There's a very poignant sense of twenty-something desperation in Hectic Planet. Now that you're married and you have a kid, do you relate to this stuff? Hypothetically, if you could sit down and write as much Hectic Planet as you wanted right now, would you still be able to channel that tone? I think so, because basically I'd be going back and just thinking about the way things were then. It wouldn't all of a sudden be about what it's like to struggle with your work. And you know, having money doesn't make your relationships go any better, or how you deal with your friends. You know, Hectic Planet is mostly a fun book. People have a lot of fun even when they're depressed or having a bad time of it. When you're bouncing from bad relationship to bad relationship, working in a comic shop during the day and a punk club at night... it wasn't romantic or anything, but it was messy and it was fun and it was pathetic, and when you're growing up in a city like New York, there's so much going on. The Eltingville strips have a little bit less affection for their characters. One of the things that makes them so funny is the honesty of portraying these guys as really merciless, unpleasant people.
At the same time that I'm sympathetic to them, and empathetic to them, and am them, they're also a big steaming heap of my hatred for the comic book industry and the obnoxious parts of junk culture. There's a lot of comics about the "soft side" of fandom. The meek shall inherit the earth — these poor put-upon square pegs. But you know what? Football players are idiots, but nerds can be bastards too. Eltingville is about the tyranny of fandom, and fans who believe that everything that they buy and are into is just for them and no one else. And they hug it so close to themselves that they suffocate it. And they are not just these loveable little losers — well, a lot of them are [laughs]. You know, I worked in a comic shop, I am a fan, I go to conventions, I've worked conventions, and I make these things professionally. I've looked at this from a lot of angles. My own behavior at conventions when I was kid was not necessarily the nicest. I played D&D, I like video games and all that stuff. I mean, I know this stuff. That's why Eltingville is a pipe bomb, as well as a mash note, to fandom. But I really got tired of that whole "benevolent, misunderstood" nerd thing that always seemed to be in popular culture, and I wanted to do a comic about the viciousness and the tunnel vision and the miserable pecking order. Quick last question. How's parenting? That's a quick question? I can't articulate my feelings about comic books and the media and my place in this toilet and you're going to ask me about parenting? It's the most important thing in the world. In my world. I would drop everything for the baby. She's awesome. I've got my little picture of her right in front of me to remind me of what it's all about. She really is the best thing. She's the most difficult thing that ever happened to us, she's the best thing that ever happened to us. It really is more work than I ever thought it would be, and we were really prepared for a lot of work. We want to give her the best life possible under whatever circumstances we find ourselves, and... I don't want her to be a moron. I want her to be a good kid, a good adult. I don't want her to have my problems and my fears, so, keep those to myself. And I want her to know how to read, I want her to appreciate books, though I'm not gonna force anything on her. How's that coming? How's what coming? Her verbal skills. Oh, they're really good. She called me a cocksucker this morning. So she's getting the compound words down. She's an incredibly happy kid, and that, to Sarah and me, is paramount. We don't care if she appreciates classical music, we don't care if she knows how to speak romance languages, we don't want to put her in pre-pre-preschool, we don't want her to be a genius, she doesn't have to be president. I just want her to be a good person. n°
©2007 hooksexup.com and Peter Smith. |
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