There are only a handful of comedians whose album releases qualify as cultural events, but Patton Oswalt is one of them. Tracks from his new CD, My Weakness is Strong are already being dissected by comedy enthusiasts in coffee shops around the country and picked apart on social networks like Twitter for... more

There are only a handful of comedians whose album releases qualify as cultural events, but Patton Oswalt is one of them. Tracks from his new CD, My Weakness is Strong are already being dissected by comedy enthusiasts in coffee shops around the country and picked apart on social networks like Twitter for the exquisite one-liners, the acutely-lobbed political grenades, and moments of inspired lunacy that compare to his memorable tangle with a screaming heckler on his last album, Werewolves and Lollipops. That CD, released during the death throes of the Bush administration, was widely hailed for its stance of supreme indignation and undercurrent of soul-weariness that mirrored the national mood at the time, and cemented Oswalt’s reputation as a comedian who loses no ground by going topical and getting angry.

Since that time, the 40 year-old and new father has continued to play to rabid fans at intimate clubs, tossing out brief, memorable bits such as one in which a Youtube user is re-imagined as an insatiable Roman emperor. An acting career that began with a run on King of Queens has also accelerated, with Oswalt winning critical kudos for his voice work in the 2007 animated adventure Ratatouille. This week also sees the release of Big Fan, a pitch black indie comedy that marks the directing debut of Robert Siegel, screenwriter of The Wrestler. Oswalt plays Paul Aufiero, a 35 year-old trapped in a state of permanent adolescence, living with his mother, and pouring his love and his energy into an obsession with the New York Giants – a one-sided relationship if there ever was one. “He loves his team, and he shows them he loves them through suffering,” is how Oswalt summed it up to me when we met up last week at a Manhattan bar to talk about the film, as well as the state of comedy in 2009.


Patton Oswalt: I’ve done a lot of interviews with you guys, with the late, great Dan Epstein.

Ryan Stewart: I know, I think I’ve read them all. Great stuff.

PO: So, what the fuck happened? Did they ever know? No one has ever told me.

RS: I honestly don’t know. I read that it was sudden and unexpected, but I don’t have a connection there.

PO: But it was never explained. And I met him a couple of times and he always seemed so hale and hearty. I mean, what the fuck? That just sucks so fucking hard.

RS: I was sort of brought in during the wake of that whole thing. I would like to have gotten to know him, though.

PO: Oh, he was the best. I would get into fights with him. I would be like “Why did you just ask me that? That’s stupid!” And he’d be like “Oh, um, sorry…” I always just loved how we would go back and forth, it was so great.

RS: Could you back him down?

PO: No! He would totally defend it. He would hand it right back to me, and I loved it, it was great. I loved it!

RS: Someone just told me that the original title of Big Fan was Paul Aufiero, which kind of stopped me, cause that’s a way, way better title. There’s just something about it. Agree?

PO: Are you kidding? I think it’s a fantastic title. I also thought Sydney was a way better title than Hard Eight. But there you go! [laughs]

RS: The only other obsessive sports movie that comes to my mind is the one where Jimmy Fallon is one of those guys, but he’s also dating Drew Barrymore. Unrealistic!

PO: Yeah, but that character was a functioning guy. His fandom was the kind of fandom that enhances a life. Paul’s is fandom in place of a life. But you know, in a weird way, there’s also a love story in this movie. It’s just that, as Robert put it, it’s an unrequited love. He loves his team. And he’s going to show them he loves them through suffering. It’s that classic case of “You’ll really start to love me when I don’t leave you after I’ve been abused.” It’s that kind of thing, that whole pathology.

RS: I know guys like Paul. Mid-thirties, no ambition. They seem to get along okay, for the most part.

PO: Go to some rep. theaters in L.A. on a weeknight, like I do all the time. Go to the New Beverly and you’ll see some people for whom movies have completely replaced their lives. It’s no longer a supplement to their existence, it is their existence. It’s very, very sad, those autograph hounds, those guys with the weird, tattered copies of the Leonard Maltin movie guide, checking off what they’ve seen and haven’t seen – that’s really fucked up.

RS: Does Paul have an out? Does he have opportunity?

PO: I think he has nothing but opportunity, but there’s really no ability on his part to pursue it. The opportunities are there and they will continue to be there, but he’s actively waging a war against that door being opened. He does not want to change, at all, and it really activates him when someone comes along and tries to make him change. He really fights against that. He’s kind of a perfect combination of sad and noble.

RS: Was it easy to get into the headspace of a low-energy, low-ambition kind of guy?

PO: Well, as ambitious as I am with my comedy and as a writer, I do have that aspect in me where I just want to sit back and watch movies. And I’ve also seen people like that in my life. In show business, you see a lot of delusional, damaged people. People who’ve rejected life. They’ve really, really rejected life. I see that in a lot of my friends and in me – where we have one foot on the edge of having way too much passion for our own good, you know? You also see that in the biographies of some people like H.P. Lovecraft. That’s one that immediately comes to mind as a guy who was just, like, against life.

RS: The obsession is ultimately a symptom of what? Boredom or depression?

PO: That’s a good question. Which came first? Would this person have filled his life with something else if the object of his fan desire wasn’t there? Or would he just be this weird kind of empty shell? I can’t say! [laughs]

RS: What I loved most about the movie was that sudden ramp-up in the beginning of the third act. We’re suddenly made aware that we haven’t been privy to al of his thoughts. Did you like that?

PO: Yes! That’s what I really loved. This is one of those rare movies where it goes into the third act and you’re suddenly like “I have no fucking idea what’s going to happen now … but it seems to be going someplace really bad.” Things start to get really, really bad. Yeah, that’s also what I dug about it. The fact that you asked that question is, I think, what makes it such a good movie. It’s that you just do not know, and the movie is not going to go, okay, let’s hold up here and let me answer some of your questions. It just doesn’t do that. Instead, it opens this tiny window. It’s like those great movies of the early 70s, like McCabe & Mrs. Miller or Night Moves, where it’s like “Hmm..that’s all I’m gonna see, now I’ve got to put the rest together myself.” People used to get excited by that. They were like, okay, now I’m engaged – let’s figure this movie out.

RS: Now, not so much!

PO: Ehhhhhh, not so much! Didn’t Reader’s Digest just file for bankruptcy? A magazine that boils books and magazines down to shorter versions? People didn’t have the attention span to read that!

RS: Going back to the movie nerd parallel, I also saw a specific comparison to the way that today’s seasoned movie nerd is expected to have a finely-honed opinion about each studio, like it’s a team.

PO: Good lord, yes! I never thought of it that way. Or even a production company, like, saying “Oh, they always put out this or that.” I mean, just look at the Weinstein Co., with that New York Times Profile on Sunday. They’re being treated just like a sports franchise that’s gone into some weird twilight phase. It’s all like, what happened to their glory years? The company becomes a bigger personality than the people involved.

RS: Why can’t people just consume their entertainment without getting under the hood and getting a closer look at their icons?

PO: I’m going to argue that there is something inside of us that seeks out things to worship and elevate, if only to give us something to aim at in ourselves. The only way we survived as a species was that we evolved. The main thing about evolution is improvement and refinement, and it certainly helps that process if you have a target or a symbol that you can focus on for your improvement. Oddly enough, the fact that we have religion is proof that evolution is real. It’s further proof, to me, anyway. We seek a godhead or a demigod or some other elevated figure that we can evolve toward. We invented that and we focus on it, in order to give us something to aim towards, just subconsciously. So, the fact that we invented religion and the fact that we created God proves that evolution is real.

RS: I think you might have blown my mind.

PO: You’re welcome.

RS: I thought you were going in a simpler direction, of just saying that we want to best our own Philly Phil [Paul’s rival, who he spars with throughout the movie on a radio call-in show] across the street. We have to top our rival.

PO: That’s just a tinier version, though. That’s just a cul de sac of evolution. That might be the definition of a failure – a guy who picks a really lame target to defeat, and then once he’s defeated them, that’s it; that’s all he’s gonna get. He’s never gonna do anything amazing, because he picked a shitty target to focus on. Pick a better target! Get a bigger weapon, as Boots Riley of The Coup would say.

RS: I don’t think Michael Rapaport would mind me saying that he’s a spectacular douchebag.

PO: He was amazing. In scene after scene, this guy was completely tireless. He would just do take after take. And what was really weird was that, in talking to him in real life, he’s just this sweet, kind of goofy guy. He was like “Hey everyone, how ya doin?” and always talking with people, but then in the scene … and it wasn’t like he did some crazy thing where he was like “Oh, now I’ve got to put my actor face on.” He would just slowly crank it up. He was so fucking annoying! But you know, most actors don’t want to play that kind of abrasive, repulsive guy any more, and this guy, he just loves playing characters.

RS: I think Paul resents that Philly Phil doesn’t give a shit, he just spews forth whatever is at the top of his mind. Meanwhile, Paul is going as far as to craft his bon mots in a notebook ahead of time.

PO: Right, he’s just spewing forth the easiest things that everyone else says. Although, even through struggling in his notebook to write that stuff down, Paul’s still struggling for his art. “I showed my team my love through my industry and my labor.” It’s basically like Salieri pledging to Jesus, you know? I think in his mind, this is all a performance. “This is my art and I prepare, the same way that a musician tunes up or an athlete warms up, basically. That day job I have? That’s just to pay for my art."
RS: Do comedians tend to pocket some good comeback lines, in case they need them to slap down a heckler or fight with Carlos Mencia?

PO: I certainly don’t. I think it becomes so clear, if you’re up on stage, that you had a line ready. I prefer to talk to them and let them hang themselves. I never have something where it’s like “Just wait, I’m gonna wham him with this line.” Instead, I amplify whatever it is that they’re doing until they pop. I can handle hecklers pretty well, and it’s not because I’m so amazing. It’s because I’ve been defeated by hecklers many times and the world didn’t end the next day. That’s why I’m without fear now. I’ve seen it crash and burn so many times that it doesn’t matter to me, either way. It’s not going to change a thing about tomorrow. I think a lot of hecklers are like “Boy, he’s gonna remember me,” but I just tune that out and then I take care of them and then I reactivate what I’m doing. I go back to doing the material that I like. Hecklers really have no impact on me, you know? On my second album, I deal with a heckler on one of the tracks and when the producer of the album played me the thing to say, you know, you should leave this in here, I had totally forgotten that it happened. It just meant nothing to me. I find it so boring.

RS: Was that the guy who gave a kind of Lynyrd Skynyrd yell?

PO: It was a guy who makes some weird noise during a bit where I’m building up to something, and there’s some silence on there, and then he starts yelling. I can barely even remember what I said to him, because it didn’t mean anything. I had totally checked out during that, and I didn’t want to include that on the track, because if you actually listen to what I’m saying you can tell that there’s no passion in what I’m saying. I’m more like, “Ugh, I gotta deal with this guy,” and then I go right back to what I was doing.

RS: I think that was also the album where you commented on the state of comedy at the time, and you said it was a golden age because comedy fans were having to seek out the comedians.

PO: It’s gotten ten times better. Those audiences have stuck around and the comedians who are flourishing now are so fucking good.

RS: Like who?

PO: Well, where do you live? They’re out there. Anthony Jeselnik. Natasha Leggero. James Adomian. Kyle Kinane. There are so many that are coming up right now that are just fucking amazing. Not just good. I’m talking about holy-shit-they’ve-found-their-voice-way-early. They’re just gonna run with it, they’re amazing. And these young comedians are starting to get looked at for TV, and the fact that Conan O’Brien is in L.A. now and is very interested in showcasing young comedians, and the fact that Jimmy Fallon is very much looking for young comedians in New York, both of those scenes are just so fucking fantastic right now. It ended up getting way better than I described it back then. I thought that it was happening in waves, and maybe it is, maybe this will end up being a wave, but if it is it’s gonna be a fucking huge one, with all of these people coming up. It’s just ridiculous right now.

RS: But I want open-mic wingnuts, too! I want Dr. Pepper.

PO: Hey, I hope those guys come back too – they’re fun! Nothing wrong with that, but for the most part the shows themselves are not being put on by the clubs, they’re being put on by other comedians. The ones putting them on are lovers of comedy. And every night, there’s some great shit going on. It’s fantastic.

RS: Do you expect your comedy to become less political going forward, now that we’ve sort of said goodbye to all that?

PO: No. There’s plenty of political stuff on my new album. I think, if anything, politics is always affecting the world in one way or the other. What’s great about Obama is just watching to see how certain people react to him. I mean, that is fascinating. It’s just as crazed and insane as how I felt about Bush, you know? What’s really great about it is that I can look at a lot of the ways people are dealing with Obama – not just comedians, I mean the public – and I see a lot of what I did wrong during the Bush years, a lot of the easy stuff like the Hitler comparisons.

RS: The stuff about Bush causing the biblical apocalypse, and that stuff?

PO: Well, actually, the apocalypse one was one where I felt like I went for something a little better. But I do look at what they’re doing with Obama and I know that I was just as guilty of that. I fucked that up. It’s good to see it from the other side and be able to go “Oh, so that’s where I was wrong.

RS: So, how does a comedian approach Obama?

PO: Well, I’ve never found more ways to say “There’s a black guy in the White House” without actually saying “There’s a black guy in the White House.” [redneck voice] “I want my country back! We are on the verge of fascism!” It’s so great, it’s fascinating! There is nothing more fun for a comedian than watching a country lose its shit.

Big Fan opens in select cities this Friday. My Weakness is Strong, Patton Oswalt’s new comedy album, is in stores this week.

Steve Niles remains best known for “30 Days of Night,” a three issue comic series that grew into a massive hit and later a successful film. Since then Niles has written a number of sequels to the book, but he’s also moved in different directions including Batman, Simon Dark, Criminal Macabre and... more

Steve Niles remains best known for “30 Days of Night,” a three issue comic series that grew into a massive hit and later a successful film. Since then Niles has written a number of sequels to the book, but he’s also moved in different directions including Batman, Simon Dark, Criminal Macabre and collaborations with Rob Zombie, Thomas Jane, Richard Corben and Tim Bradstreet.

Last month IDW, the publisher of “30 Days of Night,” released “Mystery Society,” a new book written by Niles, and a hardcover collection of “The Ghoul,” a book Niles did with legendary artist Bernie Wrightson. Niles agreed to appear and sign at every comic store that bought 1000 copies of “Mystery Society” and thirteen stores across the country took him up on that offer.

Between now and the end of the year there are number of Niles-written books coming out including an “X-Files/30 Days of Night” crossover miniseries that starts this month. He’s also writing a novel that’s scheduled for release next year in addition to co-writing the movie “30 Days of Night: Dark Days” and working with filmmaker John Carpenter to write the video game “F.E.A.R. 3.” In the midst of a long month that included criss-crossing the nation, signing thousands of books and his birthday, Niles poke with us by phone and gave us an exclusive look at artwork for his upcoming books “Something Monstrous” illustrated by Stephanie Buscema, “Edge of Doom” illustrated by Kelley Jones and “Lot 13” illustrated by Glenn Fabry.


ALEX DUEBEN: I’m glad we could find the time to talk. You’ve been on tour for Mystery Society and the deal was that you would appear that any shore that bought 1000 copies, is that right?

STEVE NILES: One thousand issues. I signed over ten thousand books in three weeks.

AD: I’m amazed you can hold the phone to talk at this point

SN: It’s not too bad. Everybody’s been really nice. Believe me, I’m so happy they ordered a thousand copies, I’m more than happy to appear at the store and do the signings.

AD: You’re pegged as a horror guy, but one of your big influences, at least I’ve thought so, has been pulp, and Mystery Society is really in that vein.

SN: Definitely. That’s what’s really funny. For all the horror I do, I probably read and watch a lot more pulp stuff than anything. It’s definitely much more in the vein of classic movies. Action adventure as opposed to horror.



AD: Where did this idea come from?

SN: I really like writing about happy couples. I did it in 30 Days of Night and I’ve done it a couple other places. You just don’t see that anymore. I always loved the old Thin Man movies with Nick and Nora. That they were really in love with each other and just happened to always have to deal with these mysteries. When I was talking to Ashley Wood about it, we just sort of collided it with Unsolved Mysteries, In Search Of kinds of things. Again not so much horror, but strange phenomenon and just weird stuff. We meshed those two ideas together and came up with the Mystery Society.

AD: The book may center around a happy couple but there is an actual society that you’re building.

SN: Oh yeah. By the second issue there will be six members total.

AD: Any strange odd characters you want to mention?

SN: One of them turns out to be a robot with a brain in it that looks almost like a turn of the century diving suit. His name is Verne and when questioned a little further they realize he spells his name V-E-R-N-E. It’s very possible that he is in fact Jules Verne, or at least his brain is. Again, a little macabre, but mostly for fun. Comics have gotten kind of deadly serious over the last few years and it’s nice to just have some fun.



AD: It is and people probably wouldn’t expect you to be the one to bring the fun back.

SN: I guess. I’m enjoying everybody being so surprised by this, but I guess I can’t blame them considering what my output has been for the past ten years. I’ve definitely been focusing on horror but I have a lot of other interests in my life and it’s really nice to just have fun for a change.

AD: Every time we’ve met, you’re always a nice, fun guy. I don’t know why we should expect you to always create morbid and dark work.

SN: Thanks. I don’t know. You meet the guys who do horror and starting with Clive Barker, who writes some of the darkest stuff in the world, he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. I find that to be the case almost across the board with horror guys. Generally we work our shit out on paper. [laughs] People are always surprised. I don’t know what they expect. I’m going to be a little troll with an axe? I always get that. You’re so nice. You seem so happy.

AD: Your other big project, which starts next month is the X-Files/30 Days of Night crossover.

SN: That turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t really sure how that was going to shake out. I had been offered other crossovers for 30 Days of Night in the past and just thought they didn’t quite work. When Wildstorm and IDW came to me with the X-Files idea, I immediately saw potential. Mostly because they both sort of exist in a real world sensibility where X-Files always tries to find some basis in reality that these horrors can exist and for 30 Days of Night, one of the things I did in the series was strip away all of the mythology and things that were more on the supernatural side. At the time I was trying to find a project for me and my friend Adam Jones to work on and I asked if he wanted to join in. Being a big X-Files fan like I am, he jumped in and came up with the hook that I think made the series work.



AD: What was hook, can you say?

SN: I can’t tell you other than one of the big issues we had to address was making sure the continuity worked. Keep in mind this is a crossover between X-Files the TV Show and 30 Days of Night the comicbook. Adam came up with a really cool twist on that, so I’m very happy. What I can elaborate on is we wound up exploring that the Arctic Circle is this really perfect place for vampires. The attack on Barrow is just one of many over hundreds of years.

AD: That’s interesting because you look at the Arctic and every year there’s disappearances and strange deaths and bodies going missing and lots of really odd circumstances.

SN: You look back at some of the original explorers, there are cases of entire ships disappearing and neither the crew nor the ship ever seen again. We dipped into a little actual history because there’s a large amount of actual Arctic disappearances and saying that maybe they met with a grimmer fate than people think wasn’t too big a stretch.

AD: Will the next one be “Global Warming: Polar Bears and Vampires Move South?”

SN: No. [laughs] We’ll stay away from all that. Despite the changes in the climate it still gets dark up there for a long time.

AD: You mentioned old movies earlier and recently you’ve been doing books with the great artist Bernie Wrightson. Most recently The Ghoul, which just came out in paperback and you have another one coming out this fall, Doc Macabre.

SN: It started with Dead, She Said which was about a detective, Coogan, who basically has to solve his own murder and find out why he’s still alive after being murdered. It was followed by The Ghoul and in The Ghoul for people who’ve read it, there’s an appearance by Coogan and an appearance by Doc Macabre. On top of being self-contained books, going back to the idea of old Universal movies where everybody lived in the same universe and would interact and team up and all that. And so what Bernie and I are building towards with this, after Doc Macabre we’re going to do a thing called The Moorpark Rejects. That will be a series starring the Ghoul, Doc Macabre and Coogan and possibly some other characters.



AD: And this all started with City of Others that you both did for Dark Horse years ago.

SN: City of Others was supposed the umbrella title that we did this under, which is why we were going to call it “City of Others,” which would we populate with all these characters, but Dark Horse crapped out after the first run. We took the idea to IDW and started doing them all as individual series and this two year plan that Bernie and I had is starting to come together. We’ve got two of the books out. We’re halfway through Doc Macabre right now. We’re already making plans for what The Moorpark Rejects will be like. It seems to be working.

AD: It feels like you’re having a lot of fun.

SN: Getting to work with Bernie Wrightson. I mean, it doesn’t get any better than that.

AD: Are there plans to continue after The Moorpark Rejects? Are you leaving it open-ended to possibly continue?

SN:[/B} The idea was to keep feeling around to see what people respond to and people seem to have really responded to the Ghoul, so we’re thinking that after The Moorpark Rejects, we’ll probably do more Ghoul books. We’re having fun with all of the characters, but we definitely want to see what readers seem to respond to the most, and right now that seem to be the Ghoul.

AD: I wanted to ask about the sequel to the 30 Days of Night movie, Dark Days. It doesn’t have a release date yet, does it?

SN: It does not have a release date. I’m actually waiting to see a final cut of it. I helped write it almost a year or two ago. I did some story meetings with Sam Raimi and the director Ben Ketai. This is very much Ben’s movie. My involvement was fairly limited and we had much less to work with than the first one, but Ben was responsible for doing the webisodes that came out on FEARnet. I was really happy with those, so I have high hopes that this movie will be on par with those.

AD: It helps that the first one is set in Barrow in this almost hermetically sealed world that had to be recreated while this one takes place in Los Angeles mostly.

SN: Exactly. 30 Days of Night and it all takes place in LA (laughs) We’re hoping that what will wind up happening is we’ll get to do the third one, Return to Barrow and then have the whole trilogy made. Like I said, I have high hopes for it. It’s a very different world because it’s going to have limited theatrical and we recast and all that so I’m curious to see what happens.

AD: You have Mia Kirshner as Lilith, the Vampire queen, which I’m excited about because I think she’s always amazing.

SN: You know more than I do! (laughs)

I’m curious to see the reaction to Dark Days. Like I said, we had a fraction of the budget and recast and limited theatrical but Ben did so well with much less with those webisodes. I’m really curious. I’m just now starting to pay a little more attention to the direct to DVD market and it seems like there’s a lot of really interesting stuff, especially scifi and stuff that has a following. We have to figure out different ways to get movies to people. It gets harder and harder to do theatrical and so I’m very very curious to see if it works. I’ve been talking to other people about doing lower budget horror movies and try to get them right to people.

AD: That’s a nice segue because one company that’s had success is DC and Warner Brothers and their animated direct to DVD films.

SN: I wrote the short Spectre for the last Justice League [movie] and I had a blast. The response to that has been really positive. It seems like there’s a market for it. I know there’s been a lot of scifi stuff and I’m hoping for the same thing for horror.

AD: Had you written for animation before?

SN: No. Well, this was first thing that was ever produced that I wrote for animation. I wrote something for Heavy Metal with Bill Sienkiewicz that hopefully will someday see the light of day.

AD: I wanted to ask about Ashley Wood and Fiona Staples with whom you’re doing Mystery Society. You mentioned that you and Ashley came up with idea.

SN: Ashley and I have known each other now for well over ten years and we worked together peripherally. He did the covers for the first run of 30 Days of Night. We worked together for Todd MacFarlane on Hellspawn for a short amount of time. We did Book of the the Dead together, a history of Spawn. Mystery Society was one of these things that we’ve been wanting to do for a while, but either I was too busy or he was too busy. We finally decided to seek out another artist and I found Fiona and I just can’t say enough about her. I feel like her artwork really helped solidify Mystery Society as something different. So many people associate me with a lot of the work that I’ve done with these very dark artists. She has, I don’t know if you can tell from the first issue, it definitely kicks in on the second, but she has this amazing sense of comic timing. She can do action and people’s expressions and all these little touches that really help bring out the fun and the humor in particular scenes and she’s added so much to this series. Like I said, I can’t say enough about her. She’s one of my favorite artists right now.



AD: The only other project I’ve seen from her was “North 40” from Wildstom the other year.

SN: Yeah I feel bad because my editor at Wildstorm actually sent me an advance copy and asked me for a quote. Basically I swiped her. [laughs] I called her right away and was like, I don’t know what you’re doing after North 40, but I would love to do something with you. I lucked out because she wound up being nominated for an Eisner for North 40. I’m really glad I got her for at least the first run of Mystery Society before she went off and became all famous, which is going to happen. I’m hoping one day we’ll get Ashley to do an issue. I’d love to do a giant size one with him. In the meantime he and I are creating other stuff and we’re always talking. We’re on skype together all the time. We’re working on a very dark paranormal story together right now that we might do in short installments in one of his publications.

AD: We’ve covered god knows how many things, but I know you’re in the midst of so much more. It’s a lot to juggle.

SN: You juggle half a dozen and you’re lucky if two see the light of day. I have permanent freelancers disease and I can never relax. I’m always worried about where my next job is going to be coming from. I’ve got a few things going on at once. One of them is with Glenn Fabry called Lot 13 that I’m doing through Wildstorm. We’ve got about four issues of that in the can. It’s so visually over the top. It’s easily some of the most graphic stuff that we’ve ever done, both me and Glenn. He has a way of making it look so beautiful.

I’ve got a new creator owned series coming up with Kelly Jones at IDW called Edge of Doom and I’m playing around with the short form. It’s a five issue series that you can read in any order. Every issue is a standalone 22 page horror story and they all wind up being tied together but you can read them all in any sequence you want. You can do a series of one shots and they wind up just getting lost in the shuffle, but we wanted to come up with a way to tie it together. The Twilight Zone is always brought together by the fact that these stories happen in the Twilight Zone. In Night Gallery they’re always brought together by the fact that they come from these paintings. We came up with a similar add-on to the stories that make them all interconnected, but again at the same time each one is a little mini-movie within itself. It’s the best Kelly Jones artwork we’ve ever seen. He’s just it’s amazing.



Kelly, like Bernie, is one of those guys where we spend hours talking about our favorite movies and obscure stories. Being able to sit down and jam on our own stories especially with Edge of Doom. The first one is a Gullivers Travels in Hell kind of story. The second one is a story about a guy marooned on a planet. The third one is a completely over the top just unbelievably graphic story about scientists out of control.

I have a novel I’m working on. I’m doing this book for Pocket books, Simon and Schuster, called The World of Hurt which will be out July 2011

AD: Do you want to say anything about the book or should I ask in year?

SN: I’m going for more cops and monsters, like Cal McDonald, but with no humor. People always look at Cal McDonald as being a horror series, but I’ve always looked at Cal as being comedy. To me it’s much more comedy than anything else, so I want to try to up the ante and do it dead serious.

AD: So this fall, F.E.A.R. 3 comes out that you worked on with John Carpenter. What was that liked?

SN: I was scared to death at first [laughs] Like Bernie, he’s one of those guys who has influenced me on every level. Especially John, because John did movies independently, he made his own music, he did some of my favorites. The Thing has had a huge influence on me. I was so nervous and he turned out to be one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. We’ve struck up a friendship and working with him was so easy.

AD: It’s been a while since he came out with a movie.

SN: He’s working on one now. We met to work together on a movie that didn’t pan out. When I was working with him on that I discovered that he was a big video game fan, so when the F.E.A.R. 3 offer came in for me, I was already a fan of the series and I knew John was too, so I suggested that he come on with me. We worked really close with Day One and Monolith and Warner Brothers and I think we managed to come up with a way to tie the two previous games together but at the same time kind of restart the whole thing, too, without giving too much away.

They’re running demos right now where if you run it in this new co-op mode, one character can telepathically hold a soldier off the ground while the other one empties clips into him. It’s so freaking violent it’s unbelievable. F.E.A.R. 2 ended on a very specific, odd note and John and I took that idea and ran with it. There’s some pretty dark shit coming.

AD: So a John Carpenter-Steve Niles film collaboration is in fact a possibility?

SN: That would be a dream come true. I’m hoping to talk with John about doing some comics, but right now he’s been filming and editing his latest movie so I’m hoping when the dust settles we’ll get to sit down and figure out some new stuff to work on.

AD: You’ve worked with so many artists with a defined style, but you really create a story that is a collaboration in a way that many other writers don’t.

SN: I really do try. That comes from working with the artist. Also, when I look at my favorite writers or filmmakers or artists, it’s the variety of their work and the body of their work that inspires me. That John Carpenter, for example, can do Halloween and The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China, you can hardly believe it’s the same filmmaker who made the three movies. If I can come within a mile of that, that makes me really happy. I’d hate to think I was doing the same thing over and over again.

AD: You want to be one of those old hollywood filmmakers jumping from one film and one genre to another.

SN: At the end of the day I’m still a sixteen year old nerd making super-8 movies. I just love telling stories for whatever reason and it’s what motivates me and gets me excited. I have fun with Mystery Society because I’m having so much fun with the characters and then seeing what Fiona did with them got me even more excited. I like to do a lot of stuff because it’s kind of all I do. I don’t have much of a life outside this stuff, I’m afraid to say.

AD: Maybe we should end on that note. [laughs]

SN: [laughs] Let’s end on, I have no life.

AD: You’re on facebook. Doesn’t anybody want to be your friend? [laughs]

SN: [Laughs] Really, the best part of doing this tour is finding out how much I like my fans. They’re really nice people and I can have ten people in line and nobody brings me the same book. They’re not even aware of the other ones. People come up and they’re like, I love 30 Days and they don’t know Criminal Macabre exists. Or they just read the Batman stuff. I had somebody come in and the first thing they ever saw of mine was the Spectre cartoon and so they were working backwards. I talked to IDW today and said let’s do more of connecting directly with the retailers and the fans. I think it really helps.

When Scissor Sisters first burst forth with their debut self-titled filthy gorgeous album in 2004 their brand of hedonistic dance was too hot for mainstream America to handle (the CD was even pulled from Wal-Mart's shelves). It was a different story across the Atlantic in the U.K. however, where... more

When Scissor Sisters first burst forth with their debut self-titled filthy gorgeous album in 2004 their brand of hedonistic dance was too hot for mainstream America to handle (the CD was even pulled from Wal-Mart's shelves). It was a different story across the Atlantic in the U.K. however, where the band were welcomed with open arms - and notable record sales. There the release spawned a total of five Top 20 singles, and became the country's top-selling album that year (and the 9th biggest seller of the decade). The band's follow up full-length, Ta-Dah, released in 2006, also fared much better outside of the U.S. It went straight to the top of the U.K. album charts, and the first single, "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'"(a collaboration with Elton John), also hit the number one spot - and stayed there for four consecutive weeks.

The wide chasm in reception and record sales between the two continents - the Scissor Sisters' first two albums each sold in excess of 3 million units across Europe - can easily be explained when looked at in the context of cultural attitudes. The more liberal Europeans have been dancing continuously since the '70s and dance-based music is ingrained in the fabric of European life. In America however, seizing on the opportunity afforded by AIDS, the disproportionately influential Christian right whipped up a frenzy of anti-dance "disco sucks" hysteria, stopping the party in its tracks and creating a deep-seated prejudice against the genre as a whole that remains prevalent to this day in significant pockets of society.

However mainstream America has started to loosen up, shake its collective booty and dance again. The success of European-produced tracks from the likes of Madonna (who enlisted William Orbit for Ray of Light and Stuart Price for Confessions on a Dance Floor) and Britney Spears (who prominently featured Bloodshy & Avant's production talents on her past two albums) has brought the dance aesthetic back to the mainstream, and paved the way for 100% domestic-raised spawn of disco to return to the fore.

So as Scissor Sisters prepare to step back on the dance floor with their much-anticipated third album, Night Work, the mirrored ball is at least proverbially spinning above middle-American heads. Though this bodes well in many respects, it does pose a new set of dilemmas for the band. Previously, against a background of overbearing earnestness as practiced by a generation of shoe-gazing indie bands, their tongue-in-cheek flamboyance seemed refreshing. Now, their once unique style has become de rigueur in pop culture thanks to the Scissor Sisters-influenced and much-imitated House of Gaga. Hence, to stay ahead of the pack, they’ve been forced to switch things up visually and musically.

SuicideGirls caught up with Scissor Sisters' frontman, founder and driving force, Jake Shears, to talk about Night Work, what inspired it, where his party is headed, and what he'll be wearing to it.

Nicole Powers: This album was quite a long time in the making. I know that you recorded a third album which you then shelved. It's actually something I really admire - that level of self-editing.

Jake Shears: It's true. It was about a year ago and it just felt like we'd been working on songs for about fourteen, eighteen months. We played some of them live and the shows were really fun. We'd play some tiny shows for friends, but I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't feel like the songs themselves were reason enough to come back out again. It was really important that we had something to say when we came back out, and had a record that was about something and meant something. It was a tough decision to make. I mean, I just wanted to go on tour and be out there again. It was going to be a lot longer if we were going to make a whole other album, but I knew in my heart that I wasn't going to regret it. In fact, now I'm happier than I've been in a long time. This whole last year, it's been amazing. From exactly about a year ago when we started making this record, it's just been a blast. It's been really fun and I feel super confident.

NP: At what point when you were recording this record, which I understand you started doing in June 2009, did you know that it was going to work? What track were you working on when you started feeling it again?

JS: This song called "Fire With Fire," which is our first official single. That's sort of what the song’s about. It's a very different song from the [rest of the] album, and it's a very different kind of song for us. It's very sincere and sweet and earnest. It meant a lot to me. It was really one of those moments where I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I realized we'd done something amazing, and that it was all going to be OK - that we could go forward with our heads high.

NP: Once you'd nailed "Fire With Fire" did other tracks start tumbling out?

JS: That was one of the last things we wrote. That really felt like the culmination of everything. Everything had sort of been tumbling out anyway. These songs really came quick, and it felt really inspired.

NP: This is the first time you’ve worked with an outside producer. What made you decide to do that?

JS: Well, we produced our first two albums ourselves. I'm so proud of our first two records and I'm really proud of how we made them. They're very kind of homemade and really have all our fingerprints all over the songs. But I knew that we had to have another set of hands working on this record with us. It was what we wanted. We really wanted a third person to make the music with us, to produce the music with us, but we just had no idea who that was going to be...

So it was Neil Tennant's idea, I was hanging out with Neil in Berlin. He's got a house there. It was his idea actually to call up Stuart [Price]. He was an old friend of the band. His band Zoot Woman was the first band we'd ever toured with in 2003 before our first record came out. So we'd known Stuart for a long time, and just his enthusiasm right away...We started working on the record three weeks later.

Working with Stuart, it's funny, because we'd always thought about it before, but it always just seemed too obvious. It sort of seemed like he'd be the most obvious person, and I sort of realized it was obvious because it was a really good match. It just made a world of difference for us. Just having somebody that could help us step outside the music a little bit and gain some perspective. His energy is so positive and infectious.

NP: Was he involved in the songwriting process, or were the songs already written by the time he came on board?

JS: No, we co-wrote tons of stuff together. Two thirds of this album we co-wrote with Stuart, and so he really became another member of the band and kind of feels like a member of the band now. He really became one of us. We have a huge amount of love and respect for each other so it was a blast. I can't wait to get started on the next one as soon as we possibly can. I can't imagine making a record now without him.

NP: You talk about wanting to come out with a record that means something. What does this record mean to you?

JS: When we shelved that last record I felt really fed up and lost, and so I left for Berlin for a couple of months by myself. I got an apartment there and just kind of reset my wiring a bit. I really just found a freedom again - and my youth. I had started feeling old. I'm 31 now, and it's just too young to be feeling old.

So the ideas for the record really started up in Berlin. I was doing a lot of clubbing and going out a lot and meeting a bunch of new friends and gay people and being out at some incredible gay parties. It got me thinking about New York in the late '70s / early '80s and the gay scene. How liberating that moment must have been, and the excitement, and how great the music was that everybody was so hedonistic. The dancing and the drugs and the sex, and how much fun that must have all been. But unfortunately, of course, AIDS came along and wiped a lot of people out - and a lot of creative people died.

I sort of asked myself the question, where was the party headed? Where was that whole world going? What would have happened if Sylvester hadn't of died? Or Patrick Cowley? Or just tons and tons of people. A whole world just kind of stopped - ended - and I think that we still feel those repercussions from that today. So this record as a whole is really dedicated to those people. I really want this album to carry the torch for all those who really didn't die in vain. And to pose a hypothesis of where that party was headed. Even though that's kind of a heavy sentiment, the record is infused with an insane joy.

NP: I think it's necessary to remember. I mean you look at the music industry in general today, and the club scene, and it's so sanitized and there's a lack of any real excitement or danger - it's all just been safely prepackaged for the masses. You have that combined with how the Christian Right in America was able to frame AIDS as some kind of retribution from god for a whole style of music, which also helped suppress it.

JS: Yes, of course. And just to think about how far back it set the gay movement - what a wrench into our future, our plans. Imagine how much further we would be today without the terror of what happened then.

NP: Well I know that you've spent a lot of time in Europe, and in most of the continent the whole gay marriage thing is such a non-issue. They've passed that and moved on. The fact that it's still a big discussion in America...

JS: Yeah, it's quite absurd I think, and in fifteen or twenty years we're going to look back at this moment. I find it really shocking. [But] look back fifty, sixty years ago - when was interracial marriage legalized? That wasn't that long ago. So it's slow going, but I have faith that it's going to happen here.

NP: It's a little terrifying living in California; It seems like such a cool and open society, but then with issues like Prop 8 you realize that there's a lot of hate bubbling under the surface.

JS: It feels like there's an impulse we have as humans - in probably all of us - that we feel this desire to control what everyone else is doing.

NP: And to judge, because by judging we make ourselves feel superior.

JS: Exactly. I believe in people's personal responsibility and the right to police themselves. That's what I really loved about being in Berlin, this amazing attitude of sort of be and let be.

NP: Well there is something about sitting in judgment that's really big in popular culture now. Judge Judy has taken over from Oprah as the queen of afternoon TV and in primetime we have American Idol and all these other similar shows that allow us all to be sofa judges.

JS: Well it's a humiliation culture. We love to humiliate one another, and that's become a real form of entertainment. That's what I think about red carpets. Red carpets are my least favorite thing in the world. I find them heinous. I would rather roll over in a pile of thumb tacks then walk down a red carpet 'cause it's pure humiliation.

NP: Right. The moment you set foot on a red carpet you're offering yourself up to be judged.

JS: Totally. It's like you're there for people to throw tomatoes at you. I think the red carpet is a real symbol for a blood bath. I don't even know how to end that statement but it's really a symbol to me of that kind of mentality.

NP: Talking of symbolism, you're known for your strong sense of style and your live shows, which are always pretty spectacular. What sort of imagery are you going to incorporate into your artwork and performances this time around?

JS: I think at this point in time it's interesting, because we've been gone for a few years and a lot's happened in pop culture. Gaga's come out and turned everything upside down. It's really made us rethink where we are and where we're going, and that's an exciting thing to have to sort of reconfigure. I don't want to keep doing the same things over and over again. I think overall stylistically, artistically, restraint means more to me now than anything. Restraint is more important now. I think it almost says more than coming out with a live lobster on your head.

NP: Well Lady Gaga has made what you were doing completely mainstream, so you have to react to that.

JS: Of course. And I think it's amazing. I think it's a really beautiful moment in pop culture right now. But once you've got everyone following that mould, it just seems like everything starts to become noise.

NP: So we're going to see a reserved Jake Shears?

JS: It's just going to be more sexy I think. I don't know if you've seen our press photo, but we're all in front of these blinds and it looks very formal. I've got a tie on but I'm pulling my coat back and you can see I'm wearing little panties. I think that says it all, where we're at at the moment.

NP: "Invisible Light" is such an epic track. How did the Ian McKellen vocal come about?

JS: We'd been working on the song for quite a while, and there's a two and a half minute build. We went over and over that with a fine toothcomb. The production on that moment I'm so proud of. If you turn it up real loud on a good set of speakers it'll make your face melt. We were talking about Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Trevor Horn and how great the whole "Pleasuredome" 12-inch was, and Michael Jackson had passed away and "Thriller" was on everybody's minds, and somebody said we need a really deep British man's voice right here.

Ian was the first thing that popped into my head. I've been acquainted with him for years. He's come to our shows. He's such a kind, amazing man. So we contacted him and two days later we took a bunch of recording equipment into his dressing room. He was doing Waiting For Godot with Patrick Stewart in the West End. It was pretty amazing, I'll never forget it. There was just dead silence in the room. We had all these mics hooked up and him reading this monologue that we wrote. Once you started hearing it come out of his mouth, it was just really cool. We were trying not to burst out laughing, it was so amazing.

NP: So who wrote the monologue?

JS: Babydaddy and myself. We wrote it the night before. The song is very kind of abstract. Somebody asked me if it was Shakespeare and I was really flattered.

NP: It does sound as if it could be, and Ian says it with such a level of conviction and theatricality so you feel like it must be some great speech of the theater.

JS: Totally.

NP: But you said Ian McKellen was performing with Patrick Stewart - I can't believe you didn't get some Patrick Stewart on tape too. Scissor Sisters and Star Trek would be my wet dream.

JS: Patrick Stewart intimidates me a lot more than Ian McKellen. He's poses a very formidable figure - I'd be scared to talk to him.

NP: Well I know you don't do requests, but that would be mine.

JS: [laughs] Alright, if I ever come across him in a sleazy nightclub I'll have to tell him.

NP: Well I'm sure Ian McKellen can introduce you. You've got connections.

JS: Oh, I'm sure. You always wonder though, if they even get along, you know, personalities that big. I'm always curious. Who knows how people feel about each other.

NP: Right, two big personalities together - is the stage big enough? I should ask about your tour. You've announced a bunch of European dates but nothing in America yet.

JS: No. We're going to be all over Europe, Japan and Australia 'til August. It looks like end of August / early September when it's going to shape up [that we’ll] be touring America. I'm sure we'll end up touring America multiple times in the next year and a half.

NP: You're just teasing us and making us wait.

JS: Yeah. But what's so great is we're going to be so practiced, and by the time August rolls around the show is going to sound amazing.

NP: Well I'm looking forward to seeing you again live. It's been way, way too long.

JS: I'm excited too. I love performing, so I'm very excited as well.



The Scissor Sisters' new album, Night Work, is released on June 29 via Downtown Records. The single "Invisible Light" is available now from iTunes. For more info go to ScissorSisters.com/ .

Gail Simone has been one of the highest profile women in comics for many years now. The writer, who came to prominence on the internet as the woman behind “Women in Refrigerators” and the long-running humor column “You’ll All Be Sorry,” has in the past decade become one of the best superhero... more

Gail Simone has been one of the highest profile women in comics for many years now. The writer, who came to prominence on the internet as the woman behind “Women in Refrigerators” and the long-running humor column “You’ll All Be Sorry,” has in the past decade become one of the best superhero writers in comics. In books like “Birds of Prey,” “Wonder Woman,” and runs on “Superman” and “Deadpool,” she’s shown her skill at writing great action adventure stories with a sense of humor.

Simone is wrapping up a run on “Wonder Woman,” where she was the first and so far only regular female writer and returning to characters she left years ago, relaunching “Birds of Prey” for DC, getting the band that is Oracle, Black Canary, Huntress and Lady Blackhawk back together. Simone is also writing “Secret Six” for DC, a book with supervillains that’s dark and edgy and adult, not in a cheap or exploitive fashion as is so often done, but in a way that’s thoughtful and sometimes even sad. She’s also bringing back her comedic series “Welcome to Tranquility” this summer and we spoke with Gail over e-mail about my contention that Scandal Savage from “Secret Six” is the best new comics character in more than a decade, gender politics in the recent “Wonder Woman” animated film and Ed Benes’ skill at drawing the human ass.


ALEX DUEBEN: You wrote Birds of Prey for over four years, which was really successful for the book, for the characters, and for you. Did you have any trepidation over returning to the book and these characters?

GAIL SIMONE: Oh, yeah, sure, in fact, I’d kind of programmed myself not to even consider going back, in light of the fact that some of my best friends in comics had gone back to books they had done really well on, and struggled upon their return.  There’s always that concern that you’re treading on past ground, somehow.   So even though I missed the book and the characters terribly, I really didn’t allow myself the notion of going back.

AD: How did you end up writing a new Birds of Prey series? Did you ask DC to relaunch the book or did they ask you?

GS: Actually, our new CCO [DC’s Chief Creative Officer], and probably the most successful writer in comics right now, Geoff Johns, convinced me.  He said that the book’s fading left a hole in the DC Universe, and even a bit of a whole in comics in general.  When I was on the book, it had always been a bit of a gateway drug, in that it was a comic with female superheroes that actually attracted female readers, and not just masturbating guys, although I’m sure we get some of those too, bless their filthy little hearts.

It’s a bit like the Suicide Girls, as well, in a way…it’s a book that’s sexy, but there’s no question it’s an inviting, warm, and inclusive kind of sexuality in the book.  There’s gorgeous women, and there’s also a lot of steamy hot guys. The women in the book want what they want, they dress how they dress, they really don’t care what anyone else thinks about it.  And I think that had a lot to do with why it appealed to a wider swath of readers than most of the abortive female-led cape books out there.  The Birds don’t apologize.  They own what they are, which is what I love about the Suicide Girls, since this is on that site.

Geoff asked if I still had stories to tell, and that really became the crux of it, because I absolutely felt I did.  It’s not that other writers can’t write the characters, they can, there were some great stories in my absence.  But the mix of THESE characters and this creative and editorial team, there’s just a lot of love and care and dedication to the book, and I believe the readers respond to it.

AD: Is it natural to get back into these characters voices?

GS: Oh, absolutely.  Once a character is really in my brain, they never really leave.  When I was a reader of comics, my big pet peeve was always boring dialogue. I have no interest in hyper-realism, at least not in superhero books. I like the dialogue to be lively and surprising. I want each voice distinctive and layered.  There are still a lot of books out there where the characters, particularly the female characters, all have the same patois and cadence, and it just feels so empty to me.  I want to be surprised.

All the writers in comics that I love the best have that ear, that amazing gift of sparkling dialogue that doesn’t call attention to itself for its own sake.
 
AD: So the team that we think of, Oracle and Black Canary and Huntress and Zinda, Lady Blackhawk are joined by two characters, Hawk and Dove. I'll admit I have no idea who they are. Who exactly are they and what do they add to the dynamic?

GS: Birds of Prey has always been a rarity in fiction: a female buddy adventure story. It’s weird how few of those exist in the combined weight of all media. 

Now for the first time, we have an actual penis-bearing GUY on the squad, which is fun.  Hawk and Dove are two characters who were given powers based on their ideology.  Hawk believes in aggression and the value of war and combat, whereas Dove, well, she searches for peaceful solutions.  I don’t want it to be so simplistic as war-mongering killer and tree-hugging pacifist. What’s interesting is to genuinely present those cases…what to do when confronted with a hostile aggressor. While philosophy is more likely to protect the innocent?

That’s interesting and meaningful stuff, told through brightly clad super-weirdos.
I really enjoy that. My love of superheroes is partially based on trying to imagine what is going on in the minds of people who would dress up like that and go looking for trouble.  I suspect there’s a huge number of beloved heroes who are actually closet perverts and I couldn’t be more proud.

AD: You're reuniting with Ed Benes on the book who you worked with on the first Birds of Prey years ago. He's a much higher profile artist now after relaunching [I}Justice League of America. What do you love about his art and collaborating with him?

GS: I have to admit, the guy draws the human ass like no one else.  I’m being flip, but he really, really does. Admirers of rear ends should buy two copies in case one gets drool on it.

But there’s a lot I love about his work.  Ed’s story is amazing, he comes from a tiny village in Brazil.  He taught himself to draw by looking at a single old issue of Conan the Barbarian and trying to draw the characters with a ball-point pen.  You can’t teach that kind of love, that kind of fire.  He doesn’t speak much English, but he still manages to nail even the most subtle acting, it amazes me every time. I can ask for very, very emotionally subdued scenes, and he always brings it and improves it.

That said, he is of the Brazilian tradition, so his art is always hugely sexy and sexually charged.  It can be a bit much for some, but I never sense the, you know, the hate that some artists bring to their sexy drawings.  Again, it’s like the Suicide Girls, and I’ve used them as an example before.  What they do is so free of the kind of self- and other-loathing that infuses so much porn and cheesecake. It’s more about a sense of joy and freedom, and the effect is different. I suspect a lot of traditional porn consumers are utterly baffled by the Suicide Girls, it’s just not something that makes sense in their limited worldview.

I’m not condemning all traditional sex imagery, just trying to point out the difference. 
Ed’s also a delightfully equal opportunity sexy picture guy…some of the hottest guys in comics have traipsed through the book half-naked.

Which I support completely, may I add!

AD: Zinda's derriere is nicely featured in the first issue for people on the fence, we should mention. Now besides making sure that Benes has the opportunity to demonstrate how well he draws half-naked, muscular men, what are your plans for Birds of Prey this time around? Do you have a master plan, long term goals, or how do you work?

GS: Oh, yeah, I am scrupulous about character arcs in particular. One of the reason some of these drastic stories don't really work is that the context hasn't been provided. You can't care what happens to SpudMan if the work hasn't been done. So there's some long-term stuff that will jolt long-time BoP readers, I think.

We have stories around the world--too many DC stories take place in the same three cities and I want to do away with that notion. But yeah, one thing never changes, badass chicks kicking bad guy ass.

I mean, it's a tradition.

AD: You’re also finishing a run on Wonder Woman and you've been talking for years about how much you love the character and how passionate you are about Diana. Why is it time to leave and let someone else take on the character?

GS: It’s odd, but 30 issues is actually considered a long run on the icon books. I did love writing Wonder Woman…it’s an aggravating and inspiring assignment.  Aggravating because there are limits placed on what you can do at every turn.  I wanted to have Wonder Woman’s mother, Hippolyta, become engaged to marry another woman, the soldier Phillipus.  Now, I mean, really. It’s an island of only women, men haven’t been there in 3000 years.  Is it really that odd to imagine that they might fall in love and want to marry?

I do give DC credit, as they have actively supported LGBT content in comics in the past few years. I just feel we could still be doing a lot more.
 
But inspiring as well…I talk about this a lot, but I had people telling me endlessly how Wonder Woman had helped them get through some hurdle in their lives, not my stories in particular, just the character in her long history.  People who came up and said that they got through chemotherapy with Diana’s help, or out of an abusive relationship, or to come out of the closet.  One woman was inspired to become an honest to gosh astronaut.  A reader told me his very ill daughter was  a Wonder Woman fan, and DC sent her a care package of Wonder goodies and she made a full recovery. I mean, it’s more than just a gig, writing her.

But eventually you have to pass the torch, and I’m very excited about the next writer, who is a superstar in many different media, James Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5.  I think he’s going to do huge things.

AD: What did you want to do with the Diana during your run and how well do you think you pulled it off?

GS: I wanted to heal some rifts, for one thing.  It’s an odd singularity with Diana that every writer tends to write her completely differently.  They bring all their sexual politics to it.  Some of the previous writers have been, I’ll be blunt, a little messed up, to put it kindly.  And then she had magnificent writers like George Perez and Greg Rucka.   But she seemed very fractured. Every new writer would ignore the previous run and it got a little neck-breaking. My idea was to say it all happened, and every different version of her was simply an aspect of a complex character.

Wonder Woman is often asked to represent all women, in a way Batman and Superman are not asked to represent all men.  It makes her weighty and often a bit dreary.  

So priority two was to give her a sense of humor. I think we accomplished all of that.  She had a tribe of super-intelligent albino gorillas as her roommates. I think that kind of thing lifts the curse quite a bit.
 
That said, you always look back and wish you could have reached a bit higher and grasped a little more firmly. There’s a lot I’d have loved yet to make happen.  I did want to get her laid, for one thing.   Poor girl’s been without for since the 40’s!

AD: You worked on the animated Wonder Woman movie that came out on DVD last year, and I'm curious how much of what we saw on film was you and what you thought of the final product because the film wasn’t bad, but Diana was very different from how you write her in the comic. Rather than just let her be powerful and thoughtful and wise, the way that Superman is usually portrayed, the gender politics of the film really made the character not just weaker, but less interesting.

GS: I did the first two drafts, and a lot of the plot and characters are still mine, and some of the dialogue, but a talented guy named Michael Jelenic came in and did the final draft. He made a much tighter script, and I really love it, but I regret a couple things...I regret the loss of the character humor. My script had a lot of Comedy of Errors type stuff, that fish out of water thing I love, but might easily have been lost on an audience looking for a straight adventure story. And I found the gender politics a little baffling. I just felt it was very first wave. I don't ever write Wonder Woman as man vs. women.  I feel Diana is past that.

And taken to extremes, it's insulting to everyone, it paints women as victims and men as victimizers.  I have a pet peeve when women who are enjoying the full fruits of the choices offered purely because of the struggles of early feminists disavow feminism entirely, "Oh, I'm not really a feminist." I find that terribly frustrating.

But to give the benefit of the doubt, I believe what they are saying is that they reject what they see as some notions of First Wave feminism that they don't believe apply to them or their lives.

When I took Wonder Woman, I told DC flat out, I will not write any gender war stories. I will not do the man-vs-woman shtick. Because I hate it.  And inevitably, that is the first thing people request when they don't understand the character. We actually subverted the idea, by having gods try to arrange a gender war, but the men and women end up respecting each other and choosing to tell the gods to go to hell.

So while I found some of that stuff a bit off-putting, I still really like the movie. It's sharp and smart and funny.  Terrific writer and a great new director, Lauren Montgomery.

AD: Your other current ongoing series is Secret Six which is a book that feels like it’s flown under the radar. What is Secret Six for people who don’t know it?

GS: I don’t know if it’s really flown under the radar, really.  It’s been kind of a critical smash and big seller in collected editions.  The Secret Six are a half-dozen b- and c- list villains in the DC universe just trying to survive, not conquer the world.  It’s fun to see them with their petty squabbles, doing awful things to each other and to other people.  They’re more amoral mercenaries than villains, and yet they keep crashing up against moral lines they didn’t know they had.  

I say this a lot, but I honestly think it’s the ballsiest straight superhero book going. It’s disturbing and funny and very very black, with odd little redemptive spotlights along the way.  These aren’t world-beaters, they’re basically petty crooks by Luthor/Joker standards. 

AD: What are the restrictions placed on you by DC because I have to say, Secret Six really is much more, for lack of a better word, edgier, than I thought it would be. And more than I thought you’d be able to get away with doing in a comic from DC.

GS: Yeah, the stuff we get away with is sheer murder sometimes, and it’s not because DC is stupid. They love and understand the book and know that it has to push that edge a lot harder than, say, Teen Titans.

But still, there’s quite a bit there that is subtextual, or left to the vile recesses of the reader’s imaginations. I always feel like it’s easy to shock. Who cares?  But to disturb, to create the chill like a person’s just stepped barefoot into the carcass of a dead possum by mistake, that’s priceless and a lot harder to achieve.

A huge portion of the credit goes to the artists, the book has had some of the most fearless artists in comics. I can always think of this stuff, but these poor bastards have to DRAW it!

There’s always one or two things an issue that have to be rethought to stay in the confines of what a mainstream DC book can be, and often it forces us to be more creative, a little more clever, to get the same effect. I have zero complaints. A book like this couldn’t have existed twenty years ago in the main DC line.

AD: I mentioned to you before we started that Scandal Savage, one of the main characters of the Secret Six and a character you created, is my favorite new comic character since Starman in the 90s. Who is this character and what is it about her?

GS: Thank you, I love her lots, too!

Scandal Savage is the daughter of one of the DCU’s first great villains, an immortal guy who has been around since the days of the caveman, causing bad things wherever he goes. He’s had tens of thousands of children, but Scandal’s mother was the only woman he ever genuinely loved, so he considers her his only true heir, and she wants nothing to do with him.

She’s a matter-of-fact gay woman, not the usual softcore nonsense that’s usually passed off for lesbianism in mainstream media.  She’s Brazilian, very hard to kill, and the only thing of her father’s that she hasn’t thrown away are the Lamines Pesar, the blades she has in her wrist gauntlets.

She’s in love with a sex worker who is as optimistic and positive as Scandal is pessimistic and world-weary.  She’s desperately loyal and one of the few in the Six capable of genuine kindness.

I think what I like about her is that she has doubts. About her life, her career, about being a mercenary at all.  I never trust anyone who lacks the ability to doubt themselves.

She’s been a favorite of the gay community, I think at least partially because she’s not at all sensationalistic about it. She’s just who she is, couldn’t care less what others think about it.

AD: You also have a new Welcome to Tranquility series starting this summer, which is such a fun book I love. What are we going to see in the new series and why has it taken so long to come out?

GS: A lot of the delay is simple scheduling, availability of the schedule and creative team. Thank you for the kind words, by the way.

The cool thing is the book is completely written and drawn, so when it starts out next month, there will be no delays, it’ll be there every month til it’s finished.

Tranquility is a retirement community for superheroes and reformed supervillains. I got the idea for the book from hearing about a town specifically for retired circus and carnival people, a place where they could live and not feel ostracized or stared at. At the same time, I was born in a retirement town, a little place on the Oregon coast, and I can verify it’s weird to grow up in a town that doesn’t really value young people. At its heart, the book is a generational story, and a lot of fun. I hope people will give it a try.

And I want to thank the Suicide Girls for what they do, and all their kind support of my work over the years, it’s much appreciated.  But mostly, I want to thank them for the spark they bring to the conventions they attend. It’s always more fun with the SG’s around.

Frank Portman is best known as the lead singer/songwriter for The Mr. T Experience but now that he’s written his first novel, King Dork, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you referred to him as the next JD Salinger. But that’s a non de plume that the main character of King Dork, Tom Henderson, would hate. more

Frank Portman is best known as the lead singer/songwriter for The Mr. T Experience but now that he’s written his first novel, King Dork, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you referred to him as the next JD Salinger. But that’s a non de plume that the main character of King Dork, Tom Henderson, would hate. You see Henderson calls himself King Dork because of his status in high school. He only has one friend, Sam Hellerman, no girlfriends or friends that are girls and he hates the fact that every teacher in his school is obsessed with making the students try to be obsessed with The Catcher in the Rye. Henderson spends his time making up band names for him and Hellerman and obsessing over girls he will never get to touch. But all that changes when he finds his dead father's copy of The Catcher in the Rye with many mysterious notes in the margins.

Buy King Dork

Daniel Robert Epstein: How long have you been working on King Dork?

Frank Portman: From the first time I had lunch with the editor to the publication was just about two years. My band was on tour in New York and the agent who was trying to talk me into trying to write a novel set up a lunch with an editor at this publishing company. I didn’t have a book idea and I didn’t really think I was going to write one, but I thought, “Hey, free lunch.” So I went there and talked to her and I had to admit that I hadn’t written anything and I didn’t have an idea. So she was like, “Well, that’s okay. You’ve written a lot of songs. Why don’t you try to turn one of the songs into a book?” So I thought about it and gave it a shot. But then it was a long process after that because I procrastinated for awhile and then I typed out the first draft, which took about a month. That’s the thing with a book, you have to keep doing it over and over again. So you turn in your draft and then you wait while you get it back with notes. It’s like being in school and turning it homework. You wait until you get your grade back and then you’ve got to go work on it again to improve your grade. Two years later, it’s published and then it’s all over.

DRE: Did you really adapt a song?

FP: Yeah, pretty much. The book turned out to be quite a bit different from the song as you’d imagine. But the song that I got the title from is called King Dork. In the song there was the character of the narrator, who is the same character who had been the narrator of several other songs actually. I just thought King Dork was a pretty catchy title, so I just tried to imagine what that guy in the song would’ve done as a little interior monologue and then eventually it turned into a book.

DRE: It’s amazing that the character in the book came up with all those band names and there wasn’t one having to do with Mr. T.

FP: Yeah I had made that mistake myself. I didn’t really feel like forcing it upon my fictional character. But the book takes place over three months so he was coming up with band names for much longer than that. By the time you get out of high school and have your own band there is no telling how many fake band names you’d end up accumulating.

DRE: Is that how you came up with Mr. T Experience?

FP: It was something like that. People often don’t seem to realize how little difference there is between the fake band that you make up in high school and actually having a “real band,” where you play shows and put out records. It’s all imaginary. But the way that my band ended up being called Mr. T Experience is similar. We’d be sitting around watching TV and drinking Budweiser and someone says, “Hey, let’s call it I Dream of Jeannie on Acid.” Everyone goes, “Yeah. That’s good.” So someone said at some point, “Hey. How about Mr. T Experience?” Everyone laughed and we were making a flyer for a show and we got stuck with the name because it happened to be what we put on the flyer. Then I was in denial about it for years. I never really thought I’d have to be explaining it 20 years later. That’s a pretty terrible name, but it’s by no means the worst name. Anything can be a band name. That’s really the lesson. I just noticed a brazil nut on the linoleum there in my kitchen. Brazil nut linoleum, that’s a band name.

DRE: That’s why you’re an author.

FP: That’s right. This is how the content gets provided.

DRE: Why’d you meet with those guys in the first place about doing a book?

FP: The guy who’s my agent now was a fan of my band when he was a youngster and he grew up to be a pretty sharp literary agent. He thought, “Hey. Maybe this guy could write a book.” So he contacted me several times over the last few years and I never took it very seriously because I didn’t really have any literary ambitions or the idea that I could really write a book. But in the end I gave it a shot. I typed out a few chapters like a demo book, just to ask him, “Is this the thing you’re talking about?” and then I didn’t hear from him for awhile and I thought “Okay, it sucks and that’s why I’m not hearing from him.” But then when I did hear from him, he said, “I sold this to Random House.” I was like, “Man. Now I got to finish it.” So it took awhile and it was scary because if you don’t finish it, then you have to give at least part of the advance back. So that’s a real incentive.

DRE: There are a lot of blowjobs in this book for a young adult novel.

FP: Yeah. There’s a long tradition of YA novels that deal with sex. A lot of traditional teen lit and movies tiptoe around the actual reality of it. I’m not the only one who ever thought this would be a good idea, but I just thought, “Let’s not tiptoe around it.”

DRE: I’m not criticizing it. I’m just saying.

FP: Yeah. I think a lot of people are surprised. “Wow. I can’t believe they let you do that.” But I was surprised because Random House is a big company so I thought there would be some attempt at censorship or trying to make it more commercial. But there was nothing like that. They made suggestions, but it was like, “You’re the writer.” That was a pleasant surprise.

DRE: I thought it was cool when she wrote “slurp” on the note.

FP: That was cool. I’d like to get a note like that.

DRE: Why aren’t I getting notes like that?

FP: Yeah, sometimes you get lucky. You should go around telling people you’re in a band because that’s a good first step towards getting notes like that.

DRE: If I had known when I was young that being in a band would’ve done for me, in terms of girls, I would’ve been in a band since I was five.

FP: I just stumbled onto it blindly. No one told me. But it’s a valuable lesson.

DRE: My kid’s going to be jammin'. I’m going to shove an instrument in his hand, if and when I have a kid, If I have a girl she won’t be in a band!

FP: Yeah. The dynamic might be a little different. You make your decisions on child rearing yourself though.

DRE: Is the book autobiographical at all?

FP: Not really. The narrator is not me. But the general experience of what happens when you are an alienated teenager, even alienated from within the alienated subcultures, is what I experienced. If you were on the A list socially in high school, it’d be hard to write a book like King Dork, but by definition most people were not on whatever the A-list is, so I think that’s why it’s relatable.

DRE: What age did you start a band?

FP: I first started to say I was in a band around 13. But I was in a “band” long before I even had an instrument or anything. In fact I probably had like 20 or 30 bands before I actually learned how to play the guitar. If there’s any message to that book it is that having a band where you play instruments is optional. It’s more the concept and if you say that you are in a rock and roll band, you pretty much are in one.

DRE: When did you get your first girl as a result of being in a band?

FP: It was almost immediately. It’s the strange power of rock and roll, but I merely point it out.

DRE: When did the idea of the mystery of the Tom Henderson’s father come into your mind?

FP: One thing that writers often say that I always found pretentious is that once you have your characters and your setting, you start writing to find out what’s going to happen and the characters take on a life of their own. That is sort of what happened. One of my hobbies is that I collect found objects like letters and cards and various things from other peoples’ lives that are interesting or amusing or poetic. So I really like to go to yard sales and used bookstores and the Salvation Army and look through the books because a lot of times people have interesting things written in books. I noticed that the book that tended to have the most things written in it is The Catcher in the Rye. So as I was writing this book and I was engaging in my hobby of looking through these books, I had the idea, “Well, what would be interesting is if something written in one of these books turned out to have a mysterious significance in this character’s life.” Once I had that idea, then the plot snapped in. But of course the mysteries and the paranoid idea of conspiracies is really just a structure to hang the characterization on.

DRE: Is Henderson a good looking guy?

FP: He doesn’t think so. He’s probably not bad looking though because if you remember his sister’s really good looking. His parents are good lucking. But he’s a nerdy guy with glasses so you don’t really tend to think of yourself as really great looking when you’re in that mode. But if you’re anywhere shy of being a hideous monster and maybe even if you are a hideous monster rock and roll can counteract almost anything.

DRE: Is Sam Hellerman based on anyone you know?

FP: He wasn’t really based on anyone I knew. I was a little more like the Sam Hellerman figure in my childhood than I was like the Tom Henderson. You always find that books and movies are from the point of view of a single person with another person there so that there’s something to interact with or else it’s very hard to get anything going. For dramatic purposes I needed there to be a friend of some kind.

DRE: Do you like Catcher in the Rye?

FP: I reread it while I was writing the book and I liked it better than I did when I was a kid. I didn’t hate it as much as Tom Henderson does but I did feel that there was something weird about how everyone was in love with it. The only explanation Tom can come up with is that it’s a sinister cult. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone that far, but I did think there was something a little spooky about how everyone was under its spell without reservation. Now that I’ve written a book that is more or less an attack on it, although an ironic attack, I’m running into more people who say, “Yeah. I’ve always hated that book.” I never met anyone who did when I was a kid or up until now. I just thought it was required that you love it or else they put you in jail or something. Any time you are forced to feign enthusiasm for something, it fosters an antipathy. There’s a lot of stuff in school like that. It doesn’t have to be that particular book. It’s anything that your teacher is really excited about. Your job is to come up with the best way to act like you’re excited about it as well, but you want to find your own things to be excited about. So there’s a classic tension there with Catcher in the Rye.

DRE: Whose idea was the cover?

FP: That was actually my editor’s copy of the Catcher in the Rye that she used to carry around with her when she was a kid. We just took that and defaced it. It was fun. I was originally worried about being sued by the Salinger estate because I know they sue people and he’s still alive, which I was surprised to learn. But the result from the legal department is that it’s the same company. They can’t sue themselves. We can do anything we want to that cover.

DRE: What’s going on music wise for you?

FP: I have my eye on doing another rock and roll album, although it’s not completely in the planning stages. It’s past the fantasy stage and now it’s more in the daydreaming stage. But I’m writing some songs and trying to pull together some ideas. I’m really hoping I can get my act together enough to do another tour in the fall.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

When Scissor Sisters first burst forth with their debut self-titled filthy gorgeous album in 2004 their brand of hedonistic dance was too hot for mainstream America to handle (the CD was even pulled from Wal-Mart's shelves). It was a different story across the Atlantic in the U.K. however, where... more

When Scissor Sisters first burst forth with their debut self-titled filthy gorgeous album in 2004 their brand of hedonistic dance was too hot for mainstream America to handle (the CD was even pulled from Wal-Mart's shelves). It was a different story across the Atlantic in the U.K. however, where the band were welcomed with open arms - and notable record sales. There the release spawned a total of five Top 20 singles, and became the country's top-selling album that year (and the 9th biggest seller of the decade). The band's follow up full-length, Ta-Dah, released in 2006, also fared much better outside of the U.S. It went straight to the top of the U.K. album charts, and the first single, "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'"(a collaboration with Elton John), also hit the number one spot - and stayed there for four consecutive weeks.

The wide chasm in reception and record sales between the two continents - the Scissor Sisters' first two albums each sold in excess of 3 million units across Europe - can easily be explained when looked at in the context of cultural attitudes. The more liberal Europeans have been dancing continuously since the '70s and dance-based music is ingrained in the fabric of European life. In America however, seizing on the opportunity afforded by AIDS, the disproportionately influential Christian right whipped up a frenzy of anti-dance "disco sucks" hysteria, stopping the party in its tracks and creating a deep-seated prejudice against the genre as a whole that remains prevalent to this day in significant pockets of society.

However mainstream America has started to loosen up, shake its collective booty and dance again. The success of European-produced tracks from the likes of Madonna (who enlisted William Orbit for Ray of Light and Stuart Price for Confessions on a Dance Floor) and Britney Spears (who prominently featured Bloodshy & Avant's production talents on her past two albums) has brought the dance aesthetic back to the mainstream, and paved the way for 100% domestic-raised spawn of disco to return to the fore.

So as Scissor Sisters prepare to step back on the dance floor with their much-anticipated third album, Night Work, the mirrored ball is at least proverbially spinning above middle-American heads. Though this bodes well in many respects, it does pose a new set of dilemmas for the band. Previously, against a background of overbearing earnestness as practiced by a generation of shoe-gazing indie bands, their tongue-in-cheek flamboyance seemed refreshing. Now, their once unique style has become de rigueur in pop culture thanks to the Scissor Sisters-influenced and much-imitated House of Gaga. Hence, to stay ahead of the pack, they’ve been forced to switch things up visually and musically.

SuicideGirls caught up with Scissor Sisters' frontman, founder and driving force, Jake Shears, to talk about Night Work, what inspired it, where his party is headed, and what he'll be wearing to it.

Nicole Powers: This album was quite a long time in the making. I know that you recorded a third album which you then shelved. It's actually something I really admire - that level of self-editing.

Jake Shears: It's true. It was about a year ago and it just felt like we'd been working on songs for about fourteen, eighteen months. We played some of them live and the shows were really fun. We'd play some tiny shows for friends, but I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't feel like the songs themselves were reason enough to come back out again. It was really important that we had something to say when we came back out, and had a record that was about something and meant something. It was a tough decision to make. I mean, I just wanted to go on tour and be out there again. It was going to be a lot longer if we were going to make a whole other album, but I knew in my heart that I wasn't going to regret it. In fact, now I'm happier than I've been in a long time. This whole last year, it's been amazing. From exactly about a year ago when we started making this record, it's just been a blast. It's been really fun and I feel super confident.

NP: At what point when you were recording this record, which I understand you started doing in June 2009, did you know that it was going to work? What track were you working on when you started feeling it again?

JS: This song called "Fire With Fire," which is our first official single. That's sort of what the song’s about. It's a very different song from the [rest of the] album, and it's a very different kind of song for us. It's very sincere and sweet and earnest. It meant a lot to me. It was really one of those moments where I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I realized we'd done something amazing, and that it was all going to be OK - that we could go forward with our heads high.

NP: Once you'd nailed "Fire With Fire" did other tracks start tumbling out?

JS: That was one of the last things we wrote. That really felt like the culmination of everything. Everything had sort of been tumbling out anyway. These songs really came quick, and it felt really inspired.

NP: This is the first time you’ve worked with an outside producer. What made you decide to do that?

JS: Well, we produced our first two albums ourselves. I'm so proud of our first two records and I'm really proud of how we made them. They're very kind of homemade and really have all our fingerprints all over the songs. But I knew that we had to have another set of hands working on this record with us. It was what we wanted. We really wanted a third person to make the music with us, to produce the music with us, but we just had no idea who that was going to be...

So it was Neil Tennant's idea, I was hanging out with Neil in Berlin. He's got a house there. It was his idea actually to call up Stuart [Price]. He was an old friend of the band. His band Zoot Woman was the first band we'd ever toured with in 2003 before our first record came out. So we'd known Stuart for a long time, and just his enthusiasm right away...We started working on the record three weeks later.

Working with Stuart, it's funny, because we'd always thought about it before, but it always just seemed too obvious. It sort of seemed like he'd be the most obvious person, and I sort of realized it was obvious because it was a really good match. It just made a world of difference for us. Just having somebody that could help us step outside the music a little bit and gain some perspective. His energy is so positive and infectious.

NP: Was he involved in the songwriting process, or were the songs already written by the time he came on board?

JS: No, we co-wrote tons of stuff together. Two thirds of this album we co-wrote with Stuart, and so he really became another member of the band and kind of feels like a member of the band now. He really became one of us. We have a huge amount of love and respect for each other so it was a blast. I can't wait to get started on the next one as soon as we possibly can. I can't imagine making a record now without him.

NP: You talk about wanting to come out with a record that means something. What does this record mean to you?

JS: When we shelved that last record I felt really fed up and lost, and so I left for Berlin for a couple of months by myself. I got an apartment there and just kind of reset my wiring a bit. I really just found a freedom again - and my youth. I had started feeling old. I'm 31 now, and it's just too young to be feeling old.

So the ideas for the record really started up in Berlin. I was doing a lot of clubbing and going out a lot and meeting a bunch of new friends and gay people and being out at some incredible gay parties. It got me thinking about New York in the late '70s / early '80s and the gay scene. How liberating that moment must have been, and the excitement, and how great the music was that everybody was so hedonistic. The dancing and the drugs and the sex, and how much fun that must have all been. But unfortunately, of course, AIDS came along and wiped a lot of people out - and a lot of creative people died.

I sort of asked myself the question, where was the party headed? Where was that whole world going? What would have happened if Sylvester hadn't of died? Or Patrick Cowley? Or just tons and tons of people. A whole world just kind of stopped - ended - and I think that we still feel those repercussions from that today. So this record as a whole is really dedicated to those people. I really want this album to carry the torch for all those who really didn't die in vain. And to pose a hypothesis of where that party was headed. Even though that's kind of a heavy sentiment, the record is infused with an insane joy.

NP: I think it's necessary to remember. I mean you look at the music industry in general today, and the club scene, and it's so sanitized and there's a lack of any real excitement or danger - it's all just been safely prepackaged for the masses. You have that combined with how the Christian Right in America was able to frame AIDS as some kind of retribution from god for a whole style of music, which also helped suppress it.

JS: Yes, of course. And just to think about how far back it set the gay movement - what a wrench into our future, our plans. Imagine how much further we would be today without the terror of what happened then.

NP: Well I know that you've spent a lot of time in Europe, and in most of the continent the whole gay marriage thing is such a non-issue. They've passed that and moved on. The fact that it's still a big discussion in America...

JS: Yeah, it's quite absurd I think, and in fifteen or twenty years we're going to look back at this moment. I find it really shocking. [But] look back fifty, sixty years ago - when was interracial marriage legalized? That wasn't that long ago. So it's slow going, but I have faith that it's going to happen here.

NP: It's a little terrifying living in California; It seems like such a cool and open society, but then with issues like Prop 8 you realize that there's a lot of hate bubbling under the surface.

JS: It feels like there's an impulse we have as humans - in probably all of us - that we feel this desire to control what everyone else is doing.

NP: And to judge, because by judging we make ourselves feel superior.

JS: Exactly. I believe in people's personal responsibility and the right to police themselves. That's what I really loved about being in Berlin, this amazing attitude of sort of be and let be.

NP: Well there is something about sitting in judgment that's really big in popular culture now. Judge Judy has taken over from Oprah as the queen of afternoon TV and in primetime we have American Idol and all these other similar shows that allow us all to be sofa judges.

JS: Well it's a humiliation culture. We love to humiliate one another, and that's become a real form of entertainment. That's what I think about red carpets. Red carpets are my least favorite thing in the world. I find them heinous. I would rather roll over in a pile of thumb tacks then walk down a red carpet 'cause it's pure humiliation.

NP: Right. The moment you set foot on a red carpet you're offering yourself up to be judged.

JS: Totally. It's like you're there for people to throw tomatoes at you. I think the red carpet is a real symbol for a blood bath. I don't even know how to end that statement but it's really a symbol to me of that kind of mentality.

NP: Talking of symbolism, you're known for your strong sense of style and your live shows, which are always pretty spectacular. What sort of imagery are you going to incorporate into your artwork and performances this time around?

JS: I think at this point in time it's interesting, because we've been gone for a few years and a lot's happened in pop culture. Gaga's come out and turned everything upside down. It's really made us rethink where we are and where we're going, and that's an exciting thing to have to sort of reconfigure. I don't want to keep doing the same things over and over again. I think overall stylistically, artistically, restraint means more to me now than anything. Restraint is more important now. I think it almost says more than coming out with a live lobster on your head.

NP: Well Lady Gaga has made what you were doing completely mainstream, so you have to react to that.

JS: Of course. And I think it's amazing. I think it's a really beautiful moment in pop culture right now. But once you've got everyone following that mould, it just seems like everything starts to become noise.

NP: So we're going to see a reserved Jake Shears?

JS: It's just going to be more sexy I think. I don't know if you've seen our press photo, but we're all in front of these blinds and it looks very formal. I've got a tie on but I'm pulling my coat back and you can see I'm wearing little panties. I think that says it all, where we're at at the moment.

NP: "Invisible Light" is such an epic track. How did the Ian McKellen vocal come about?

JS: We'd been working on the song for quite a while, and there's a two and a half minute build. We went over and over that with a fine toothcomb. The production on that moment I'm so proud of. If you turn it up real loud on a good set of speakers it'll make your face melt. We were talking about Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Trevor Horn and how great the whole "Pleasuredome" 12-inch was, and Michael Jackson had passed away and "Thriller" was on everybody's minds, and somebody said we need a really deep British man's voice right here.

Ian was the first thing that popped into my head. I've been acquainted with him for years. He's come to our shows. He's such a kind, amazing man. So we contacted him and two days later we took a bunch of recording equipment into his dressing room. He was doing Waiting For Godot with Patrick Stewart in the West End. It was pretty amazing, I'll never forget it. There was just dead silence in the room. We had all these mics hooked up and him reading this monologue that we wrote. Once you started hearing it come out of his mouth, it was just really cool. We were trying not to burst out laughing, it was so amazing.

NP: So who wrote the monologue?

JS: Babydaddy and myself. We wrote it the night before. The song is very kind of abstract. Somebody asked me if it was Shakespeare and I was really flattered.

NP: It does sound as if it could be, and Ian says it with such a level of conviction and theatricality so you feel like it must be some great speech of the theater.

JS: Totally.

NP: But you said Ian McKellen was performing with Patrick Stewart - I can't believe you didn't get some Patrick Stewart on tape too. Scissor Sisters and Star Trek would be my wet dream.

JS: Patrick Stewart intimidates me a lot more than Ian McKellen. He's poses a very formidable figure - I'd be scared to talk to him.

NP: Well I know you don't do requests, but that would be mine.

JS: [laughs] Alright, if I ever come across him in a sleazy nightclub I'll have to tell him.

NP: Well I'm sure Ian McKellen can introduce you. You've got connections.

JS: Oh, I'm sure. You always wonder though, if they even get along, you know, personalities that big. I'm always curious. Who knows how people feel about each other.

NP: Right, two big personalities together - is the stage big enough? I should ask about your tour. You've announced a bunch of European dates but nothing in America yet.

JS: No. We're going to be all over Europe, Japan and Australia 'til August. It looks like end of August / early September when it's going to shape up [that we’ll] be touring America. I'm sure we'll end up touring America multiple times in the next year and a half.

NP: You're just teasing us and making us wait.

JS: Yeah. But what's so great is we're going to be so practiced, and by the time August rolls around the show is going to sound amazing.

NP: Well I'm looking forward to seeing you again live. It's been way, way too long.

JS: I'm excited too. I love performing, so I'm very excited as well.



The Scissor Sisters' new album, Night Work, is released on June 29 via Downtown Records. The single "Invisible Light" is available now from iTunes. For more info go to ScissorSisters.com/ .