Matt Fagan
by Meg Daly
Punk Planet, January/February 2006
By his own admission, cartoonist and writer Matt Fagan is “an underground press addict.” A regular reviewer for Xerography Debt and proud employee of Chicago’s comics/DVD store Brainstorm, Fagan is the creator Meniscus, a zine “dedicated to upholding the rights of the ugly—but not the stupid.”
Fagan started Meniscus a decade ago just before leaving Oregon for graduate school in Chicago. A few years ago, two characters from a novel he’d been working on snuck into his comics and have dominated his creative energies since in the comic series Love. Jack and Pokie are lovers and also the most refreshingly non-stereotypical gay guys you’re likely to meet in a comic, on TV or on the dance floor for that matter. Bitch magazine says Love “ring[s] true in dialogue, timing, everything.”
Fagan’s short fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, Thought Magazine and Little Engines. He also pens the hilarious comic, Hobbeson & Chives—Crimefighting Butlers in Love and Battle.
I caught up with Matt Fagan via email this fall to talk about not (yet) becoming a world famous novelist, the indisputable merits of queer punkdom and where Pokie got his name.
MD: In Meniscus you write about the evolution you’ve gone through in creating zines, from it being a sort of frantic, impassioned side thing you did when writing fiction was what you “really” wanted to do, to now when the zines, especially Love, are the real work, the mainstay, and you’re not doing much fiction writing. Does this evolution surprise you?
MF: The evolution is always surprising because I never know what direction I’m heading, but over time I’ve started learning not to panic when such an evolution takes place. The problem started somewhere in childhood, when I decided that I was “going to be a writer when I grow up.” As soon as I applied the label I began to aspire to achieve it—and in a way, I’ll always be a writer, no matter what I might be pursuing at the time.
In real life though, my interests and creative impulses tend to change, and cycle. I might spend a year painting, or performing at an open mic, or building giant papier-mâché masks. Years ago, this terrified me, and I’d wring my hands and wonder what have I become? But now, I’m old enough to know that even if I’m doing something new, the change isn’t new, and I always emerge from a phase like that as a stronger person. And I tend to pick up some skills along the way.
What is especially surprising about my zine and comics work is the sheer longevity. When I printed my very first zine (about eleven years ago now) I could never have guessed that I would still be making them in my thirties, or that I would find a community through this activity. I’ve been making zines for a third of my life now (the best and most interesting third, by far), and that has really shaped and changed me as a person.
MD: What can comics do that fiction can’t, both for you internally and in terms of the stories you want to tell?
MF: The dominance of comics in my creative life is just the newest development, and it’s one that I have finally embraced. The Love comics got their start when I was in college, where I wrote a novel as my thesis. Pokie and Jack were secondary characters in that novel, and I always had a particular fondness for them. Later, I wrote a short story that picked up their relationship a few months after the end of the book, and writing that story reminded me of how much I liked those characters. Three years ago, I was jonesing for them again, so I drew a one-page comic just to see how they were doing.
It was really one of those split-second decisions that have unpredictable, far-reaching ramifications. I’d made a single page format for this comic and slapped the title Love at the top because I needed a name. And now I have about a hundred and fifty of those pages!
As a writer, I tend to spend a lot of time planning out my stories before I get down to the nuts and bolts of writing them. But the Love comics allowed me to build an entire world out of these little glimpses, anecdotes and story fragments. The story developed more organically than my normal process would have allowed. I began with characters that I already knew, who had a history I’d established through my usual fiction writing, so I was very comfortable working with them in this new medium. I was able to bring these characters to life as cartoons because I understood them. Over time, the narrative grew quite naturally out of their comic adventures.
I feel like comics are really the right way to go with Jack and Pokie, because these guys have always had an absurd edge to them. You can get away with a much more whimsical tone in comics than you can in fiction—you can interrupt a serious plotline with a flight of fancy and not come off as being schizophrenic. Also, as an artist, it’s refreshing to be able to take a break like that. Sometimes I want to be playing in Jack and Pokie’s world but I don’t feel like working on the story. If I were writing a novel, the result of that impulse would be a scene that needs to be cut because it doesn’t serve the story. But in comics, you can do almost anything.
MD: It strikes me that with comics you can ensure that your audience gets to know your characters in a different way if they were only part of a written work because we literally see Jack and Pokie and their wonderful expressions (I’m thinking of all of Pokie’s different faces and outfits when he’s applying for jobs!) The fact that you understand them, as you say, really comes through in the art.
MF: Thank you! I always hope it’s working, but it can be hard to tell (partly because I know them so well, it’s easy to project qualities into the comics that might not actually be there on the page).
MD: Speaking, as we are, of art, I’m inspired by the way you seem to just give yourself over to whatever genre is wanting to surface in you. You say you used to worry about that more than now, but your worry never stopped you. How about the desire for fame or other outward markers of “success”—has that ever been a stumbling block? How much do you care about getting famous or making a name for yourself?
MF: I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care. There’s a part of me that always imagined I would go to college and then just become a famous novelist—not through effort, but because it was inevitable. And then when that didn’t happen (as the wiser part of me always knew it wouldn’t), I had to reassess my motivations. I am still sure that being famous would be pretty cool, and I would absolutely Love to try it sometime. But I had to admit that I would be doing this stuff whether or not the projects were leading to any kind of exterior goal.
Plus, I think there is a way in which fame would be limiting. Once you’re famous, people pay attention to you, and they have expectations. I like to imagine that I wouldn’t be swayed by that, but who can be certain? If I was famous for, say, acrylic painting, then I might fight the urge to draw a comic or write a funny monologue, because that’s not what my fans are expecting. And if I fought that urge, there’s no telling what I might miss.
It sounds a little corny (and far too much like the moral of a road movie), but you come to realize that it’s the journey that matters and not the destination. I mean, we all wind up at the same destination, rotting in the ground. What the hell kind of goal is that?
Pursuing fame is really a pass/fail undertaking, and if I fail then I’ve wasted my entire life. So instead I devote myself to the projects that I love, the art that interests me, and trying not to do very many things that I hate. I get a lot of joy out of my process, and I decided years ago that the only reward I would ever demand from my art is that I bring some joy to other folks too. If I’m going to be doing it anyway, it’d be selfish to expect more.
The great thing about zines is that I can actually connect with readers directly, and know whether they like what I’m doing. It’s nice to be sure that an audience really does exist for Love. But Love would exist whether or not the audience did. Of course the dream is that someday I’ll be able to pursue something like this full-time. That would be the true measure of success, and I would Love to get there eventually.
MD: I gotta ask: Where did the name Pokie Spout come from?
MF: All right, but this will probably sound pretty silly.
As I mentioned before, Jack and Pokie originated from a novel I wrote for college. Pokie was the main character’s best friend and roommate, and his introduction to the story was a scene in which the protagonist accidentally ate some dosed Halloween candy and kind of freaked out, so he called his roommate to come and walk him home.
I had an idea of who the roommate was, but I was more interested in creating the character by writing him than by planning him out. So the very first time that I found myself writing about this roommate was through the eyes of a protagonist who was tripping balls on acid, and he was a product of that scene. In all honesty, the reason he was initially named Pokie is because his most prominent physical features were the metal spikes on his leather jacket and the enormous spires of his Mohawk. I imagined that if I was on acid and I looked at this man, I would feel like I was in danger of being poked. Therefore, the name Pokie seemed pretty funny to me.
Disappointed?
When my characters have silly-sounding names, they are usually metaphorical and extremely obvious. I have kind of a thing for the mechanics of reality plays. The name Spout was chosen because Pokie’s function with regards to his roommate was to act as a conscience and a Devil’s advocate, constantly saying things that this friend wouldn’t necessarily want to hear. Spouting off, as it were.
It’s goofy when you hear the back story, but the name really worked for me.
MD: I’m not disappointed at all!
One of the things I love about your characters is that they seem like real people. They remind me of a gay male couple with whom I’m close friends who don’t really fit the stereotypes of gay guys. I remember reading in Meniscus that one of the reasons you created Love was to create characters that were more like people you know—or yourself—and not mass media produced images of a gay men. Can you say more about that?
MF: As a rule, I don’t read a whole lot of “gay comics” and I don’t watch “gay movies.” There is this whole gay culture out there that I have no interest in being a part of, and I don’t feel the need to participate in entertainment that purports to represent me just because it’s filled with homos. In the past few years, though, since I’ve been trading zines and writing reviews for Xerography Debt, I’ve been exposed to quite a few comics that I might not otherwise have seen. And when I spent a little over a year working at a video store in Chicago’s Boystown, I was exposed to a lot of gay movies that I never would have watched by choice.
What became clear over time is that all of these movies and comics seemed to think of themselves as an alternative to normal entertainment, like a mirror image of a “real” movie or a “real” comic, produced in a gay alternate universe. But I don’t come from an alternate universe! This crap did not represent me or anything that I could identify with. My feeling was that this gay entertainment was a supremely segregationist undertaking, declaring to the world that gay people were some sort of other species that required their own separate but equal entertainment industry.
I have a huge problem with gay culture, I’m not going to beat around the bush. I think that a lot of gay people go out of their way to perpetuate the same stereotypes that nervous straight people hate them for. I think gay pride parades are disgusting, and they make gay people seem incredibly shallow and promiscuous. There are a lot of decent but backwards people in this country whose only understanding of homosexuality comes through news-bytes about gay pride parades, and watching Will & Grace. If those were the only things I knew about gay people, I’d hate us too.
Within the gay community, parades and clubs and ghettoization do have a certain amount of value, particularly to young people who are just coming out of a bad situation and trying to find a place to belong, where they can get a grip on who they are. I understand that and I wouldn’t want to take that experience away. But in the long run, circuit parties and all-night bars and obnoxious displays of hot-pants are not going to make anyone a better, happier person, and I was getting sick of seeing those things held up as the emblem of “what it means to be gay.”
In real life in American society, being gay is political. For the time being, that is just an inescapable truth. But I have no intention of living my life that way. Being gay is what I am, not who I am. I’m also Cherokee and hazel-eyed and a little pudgy around the middle. But I don’t go around making some big deal about those things. If I make a list of adjectives that define me, my sexual orientation is pretty far down the list because sex really doesn’t have a controlling interest in my personality. I’m a writer. I’m a cartoonist. I also enjoy having sex and whenever I have it, it’s with my boyfriend, but that doesn’t affect me as an artist.
I’m offended when artists create gay characters that are shallow, safe and clownish. If gay people want to be accepted as normal, they should stop allowing themselves to be portrayed otherwise in the media. The first few Love comics I drew were just an exploration, to see what would happen if I translated those characters into a new medium. But along the way I developed a definite agenda, aside from telling a fun story. Since I had these two characters, guys that I thought were pretty great (the best gay couple I can think of, besides the one I’m in), I felt like I had a terrific opportunity to demonstrate my gay lifestyle. I wanted to tell stories about gay people who didn’t think with their dicks, go to gyms and parties, or surround themselves with an exclusive circle of gay friends. I wanted to tell stories about people with souls and mundane problems, people who struggle and worry and over-react but, at the end of the day, really love each other.
MD: What is your relationship to punk gay identity?
MF: I’ve never really belonged to an easily classifiable social group, but punks are the only group for whom I’ve ever really felt a strong kinship. It’s partially political and partially aesthetic; I’m not a super-political individual, but I certainly appreciate a good dose of anarchy. I really enjoy punk music, though I don’t go to shows. And on a basic animal level, punks are very attractive to me. But the die-hard punks I know are some of the happiest people I’ve ever met, and I think it stems from their absolute commitment to having no commitments. They make art and music and are never afraid of chaos, and when they die there might not be any record of their lives at all. But I’ll bet they enjoy those lives more than most people ever do.
There are so many people who live their lives in fear, and I think that they strive for money and power to make themselves feel better about being helpless. Punks are not afraid. That’s what I admire most.
Queer punks are a peculiar animal, and I think it takes a very strong sense of self. When I created Pokie, I didn’t know any queer punks at all. Now I know a few, and they’re exactly what I’d always hoped. Every queer punk I’ve met has been funny and fearless, willing to embrace what they love and give up what they don’t need. Being a punk puts you in a position outside of normal society, and being gay does the same thing. To be both, you have to dare the world to stop you, and then have the balls to stand up to the world if it tries.