Joey Comeau Interview

Joey Comeau creates the web comic A Softer World with photographer Emily Horne. He also writes stories and novels, including Lockpick Pornography and We All Got it Coming (which are both available online) and the recently released One Bloody Thing After Another (available on Amazon). Joey writes funny letters and conducts interviews too. I’m Dan Copulsky, and Joey Comeau answered my questions in May 2010.

You’ve recently put online We All Got it Coming, a sequel to your novel Lockpick Pornography. You say that it’s a sequel in the sense that it’s about the same things even while it’s about different people. While both feature gay characters, sex, and some righteous anger, Lockpick Pornography seemed to have a lot more about gender and We All Got it Coming seems to have a lot more about jobs and sexual harassment and discrimination at work. What are the two books about to you?

I’m not sure what I mean when I say that they’re both about the same things, just in different ways, because, on the surface, they are about very different things. But they’re both about homophobia, and they’re both about violence. I mean, at the end of the day, you can put those two things together, can’t you? These are two books that are about violence. I don’t know if violence is ever acceptable. It is something that I get upset about.

These are two characters who feel very differently about violence. The guy in Lockpick is almost always being violent somehow, and the guy in We All Got it Coming would on the surface rather do anything than have to be violent.

It feels a bit simple to say these are both books about violence, though. We All Got it Coming is a book about Arthur and Clay being in love, primarily. It’s hard to describe what books are ABOUT. I mean, if they could be summed up in a few sentences they wouldn’t have to be whole books. I don’t sit down to make a book about violence. I sit down and think, “Oh man, I want to write a sex scene where rape-play is somehow the sweetest and gentlest thing ever.” Which to me makes sense, because you’re talking about two people who are in love. Of course it’s going to be sweet. But I guess I’ve never read a sex scene like that.

Your work frequently touches on sexual orientation and gender identity. How do you identify, who are you into, and what’s your relationship status?

I’m queer. That’s the easy part of the question. The other parts seem too personal to me. Also, I don’t know how useful they’d be to your interview. Who I’m into changes all the time. Also, what could I say here? Bookish types. Punks and queers. Sure! But not ONLY. I don’t think an exhaustive list is possible. I find the weirdest things sexy, and the most common things. My relationship status is way better when I don’t talk about it in a public forum.

Ideas and stories seem to reappear often in different pieces of your work. Something from a Softer World comic will show up in your fiction. One Overqualified letter will turn into a story and a bunch will become part of a novel. Do you return to the same things just because they continue to interest you? Do you come back to them because you have something new to add?

Sometimes I don’t use an idea as well as I could. Or I’ll think, “This old thing would be amazing as part of this other thing I am working on.” But I have rules I guess. Not absolute, but guidelines. I don’t really want to use something that’s already in print in another project. But if it’s an old thing that not many people have seen, and I really think it’ll work better in a new form, sure, why not? A good example of this is Halt!, a funny essay I wrote about being a security guard. I wrote this years ago and never really did anything particularly exciting with it. I printed a few zines. Put it up online. But when I was working on We All Got it Coming, it occurred to me that it’d be perfect for the character of Arthur. So it went in. And this way, instead of just being a bunch of funny one liners, it contributes to characterization, and the overall plot of a bigger story, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that more people will read it in this form.

It’s easy for someone to stop by a website each week to read a quick comic. It’s also easy to share comics with your friends. And once you know you like someone’s work, you might be willing to invest more time in reading it. How useful do you think doing a web comic has been building an audience for your other work?

Oh, yeah for sure. There’s not much to say about it that isn’t right there in the question, but people who love the comic are more likely to check out a novel by the same writer. That makes sense to me. It’s like that with everything. I bought Hugh Laurie’s novel, because I liked his acting. I bought Greg Rucka’s novels, because I love his comics. It makes perfect sense to me.

A while ago you posted a series of four interviews online. It was interesting that you didn’t follow a regular update schedule, included an interview with your brother, and were happy to spend substantial portions of the interviews doing the talking yourself. Do you think your way of doing interviews is better, or is it just the kind of interviews you wanted to do?

I’ve been working on new interviews for that series. It was something I wanted to do—talk to these people who were very important to me, but talk to them about things that were important to me too. I didn’t want to ask Helen DeWitt, “Where do you get your ideas?” because, well, for one I don’t care where she gets her ideas. That doesn’t affect me in any way. But her ideas themselves do. Her writing about suicide. I connected with it, and I wanted to know more. I wanted to talk to her about it, too, not just hear more. I wanted to have a conversation about it.

What’s an average day for you like? (Do you keep a regularly schedule for getting creative work done? What else do you do with you time?)

I don’t have really average days. I write the comic a few times a week, working with Emily, usually over MSN. When I am working on a book, I will work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I become obnoxious to talk to, because I don’t want to think about anything else. When I am not working on a project like that, I’ll do whatever seem the most fun that day. Chess has been a big part of my days lately. Video games. Watching Television (Criminal Minds lately. Dr. Reid! Dreamy! Hotch! Smoldering! How do they make a crime show that dreamboaty?). I love to go to the movies and read comic books. I like to hang out with friends. I try to have a pretty good time, is what I’m saying.

Joey’s New Book, One Bloody Thing After Another
Lockpick Pornography and We All Got it Coming
Joey’s Interviews
Joey’s Livejournal – untoward.livejournal.com

Also On Question Riot:
Mike Lecky, publisher of some of Joey’s books