LUST BRIGADE ☮

WICCAPHA$E$PRING$ETERNAL + ALANIX MORRISSEY INTERVIEW

2012-02-22T08:48:00.000-08:00

alanix: tell me about the rave you exist in.

WP$E: i am the only boy, the makeup is dark…it’s something i wake up in every morning, and something i participate in every night. like it comes out at night, you know? it’s something that always exists and everything i do contributes towards this party, and then on friday nights it becomes material…in basements, in yoga studios, at princess house in philadelphia.

alanix: when did this start?

WP$E: i spent a lot of time in a funeral home when i was younger, but um…2011, when i first noticed the metaphysical spam bot pouring over me like cough syrup. that’s when i decided to make my move, i think.

alanix: how do you choose who raves with you?

WP$E: there’s not really a choice, but there will be people that i hone in on, totally. every time i make eye contact with an attractive person, they’re like…there. totally.

alanix: what kind of people are in your crowd?

WP$E: everyone is gorgeous and has a singular perspective that contributes towards our partying. party all the time.

alanix: do you want to be kissed when you’re playing?

WP$E: yeah, but i also like when girls that are shorter than me hug me around my waist from the side so i can put my arm around their shoulder.

alanix: do you consider yourself an american god?

WP$E: yes but only because not many of my other friends are doing it. i can think of a few people that i think really have become god-like in that they have created worlds in their image, and most of the time our worlds overlap, or i’ll go to their place…

alanix: why do you reference so obviously?

WP$E: sometimes morrissey says things better than i can.

alanix: why wicca pha$e $pring$ eternal?

WP$E: i was given the name by the dark queen caroline bren. i’m really thankful that she let me run with it.

alanix: what about people that don’t get it?

WP$E: then those people have gotten too old…the young people will get it. oh you don’t have an iphone? oh yo where’s yr girlfriends? ohhhhhhh.

alanix: what do you do on wednesday nights?

WP$E: i take a sleeping pill around 9 and don’t wake up the next morning.

alanix: is the way you look important to your music?

WP$E: yes and i don’t think this is vanity but i don’t understand how a person’s looks couldn’t affect their own music…have you seen what i wear? it’s really important to what i’m doing even if it’s how i dress normally. well most of the time…

alanix: why don’t you call yourself adam?

WP$E: i do lol but srsly don’t call me that…

alanix: is dancing primarily enhancing?

WP$E: yeah definitely but now i dance more when i’m not playing…but really i guess i’m always dancing and always enhanced ; )

alanix: who else is involved in wicca phase springs eternal?

WP$E: i just write and record most of the music and other ravers like…take care of the rest and help me…i’m always too famished to do anything during mornings when i take medicine at night. hehe and um like i don’t know how to do much visual stuff and i don’t want to put out my own record so other people are really necessary and it’s c0o0o0o0ol when you’d be raving/partying with them either way, ya know?

khalifa manson is doing something on a track…dbyk too…

alanix: bite my ear.

WP$E: it’s a single coming out in $pring 2012 featuring moon princess brianna collins…photobooth records. that’s just the beginning though…

WICCA PHA$E $PRING$ ETERNAL

2012-01-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

dedicated to caroline bren, chuck keller, chase ries

invite yr friends to the funeral...click to download..."rest in peace"///blood man///final demo...

track listing

a+b+c+d+e+f

LUST BRIGADE MIXTAPE

2012-01-12T16:11:00.000-08:00

in 2012...

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

we'll meet...

one

two

WHY DO I THINK YR A GOD: wack-m-yone

2011-12-05T12:37:00.001-08:00

wack-m-yone creates supersensory worlds of distortion and overstimulation, layering images upon images comprehensible only to those willing to give themselves completely to the artist's noise visuals. PROG666 - yone's tumblr, and most frequently updated outlet - attacks with contrasting day-glo colors, pixelated images and glittery static, all things consistently mutated, mutilated and low.

grossed-out religious icons and media stars, product vomit and pop trash, warped into toxic memes and lysergic lanscapes that melt or swallow you whole. everything is faceless, as if yone's transmissions were hacked onto our desktops to judge us, to remind us of ourselves...

i swim blindly in the esoteric PROG666, always waiting for the moment when the mysticism of yone's world starts making sense in mine. and late, very late, when i've been hazy for a while and realize i no longer live in the same world i woke up in that morning, when i categorize behaviors and queue social interactions, when i'm spent...PROG666 is the world in which i live.

why do i think yr a god?

MATT SENECA'S AFFECTED (PT 3)

2011-11-21T17:27:00.001-08:00

I'VE BEEN SEEING THESE THINGS...

THEY LOOK LIKE UNMANNED DRONES.

IS ANYONE ALIVE WATCHING OVER US?

Since my last interview with Matt Seneca, his webcomic, AFFECTED, has become a straight up porn read, filled with every kind of indulgence that takes readers to the darkest parts of life in Los Angeles. Behind those indulgences are the rawest emotions and insecurities, leaving the characters starved for love and the feeling of home in a place where home does not exist.

The October installment of AFFECTED was also an exposé, in which both Matt and Druuna - and their respective real-life counterparts - were stripped bare with a closer pen than any other comic I've read. AFFECTED has become a comic about what people do when they are at their loneliest, but the saddest part is knowing that someone was lonely enough to write about such a low experience.

It is, at least, appropriate that such a great storyteller is the one translating that loneliness. I hung out with Matt a few times when he visited the East Coast and every story Matt told about himself was something that could easily be dropped right into AFFECTED. I have even been able to pick up on a few of those moments - as I'm sure anyone reading this comic that knows Matt might be able to do - and I'm telling you, Matt Seneca is AFFECTED. This comic is the real thing, and if you're looking to really indulge, AFFECTED is your book.

We started this interview after the first installment of the first November chapter, so most of the parts we refer to had probably happened in the October chapter.

ADAM: The AFFECTED site went through a minor redesign since the last chapter. What made you change the layout?

MATT SENECA: Mostly it was hearing one person tell me I should. I had always just assumed the site looked fine, whatever -- but then the first time somebody brought it up to me it was because they thought it was ugly. And the girl who told me that has this incredible looking website that gets like a million hits a day and got sponsored by Belvedere vodka, so I figured I should listen to her. Somebody else (was it you?) told me the silver bars along the side didn't work, which I agreed with, so I switched it to a flat black background. I think the comic reads easier against it. The banner image is just a drawing I really liked when I finished it, and I thought it worked pretty well as kind of a "movie poster". Just trying to make the page itself as attractive as I try to make the comic, really.

A: Since our last interview, you moved back to California from New York. I think it's always been clear that AFFECTED is your "LA story" - I read "Hipsters" as a LA vs. NYC/Hollywood vs. Williamsburg comic - and it's hard not to notice that LA, in both AFFECTED and "Hipsters," doesn't get the same longing portrayals as New York. What was it like writing about and drawing a place like AFFECTED's LA while in New York, knowing that you were going back there in only a few months?

M: Aw man, it was like a death sentence, dude! It should be pretty clear from the comic that I do NOT like Los Angeles, and when I went to live in Brooklyn this summer I discovered that I like it there a ton. Moving back to LA has been really tough for me, so much so that I've had to pretty much quit drinking entirely because when I'm inebriated here I just get too sad. Most of my thoughts on LA are there in the comic itself: to me this city is a cold place where everyone is so scared that the dreams they moved here to fulfill aren't coming true that they lose their humanity and start functioning at the base survival level. No genuine human interactions, no emotion, no compassion. And this is true for me too. In New York going out is actually fun, everybody is sincere in their desire to have a good time in their bodies. People here drink and do coke and get fucked like they hate themselves so much they actually want it to kill them. I feel like I live in a truly evil place.

That being said, though, I'm making a pretty evil book, and it was difficult for me to get into the right headspace to work on it while I was in New York. There's a certain kind of... hmm... of paranoia, I guess, that goes into this stuff. Like everyday the place I live is making an argument with me and this comic is my rebuttal. Making comics is one of the few things that I'm content in doing when I'm here.

A: Yeah, and that's exactly what's coming through...LA as a hell, if that's not putting it too lightly. Can you walk us through that scene when Matt first sees Druuna wearing a burka? The change from two-and-a-half white panels to that red shift works so well with it, but red means so much in this comic that I wouldn't want to assign any meaning to his reaction without consulting you first, I guess.

M: I wanted that scene to be the first in a string of "you can't go back from this" moments that makes up the rest of the "October" chapter from that point on. So the slide from white into red is like that, just a move from one stage of the narrative to another.

But it's also really the moment where the story stops being about some depressed kid in LA, and starts being a story about Matt and Druuna, which to me is way more interesting. I wanted that picture to be the first time you look at her as a lead, and not a supporting character. And if I can do that by drawing her in a burka, which the Bush-era media narrative tells us takes away its wearer's subjectivity, then so much the better. Transposed in space from its natural environment in the Middle East, the burka is about the most powerful expression of difference, even of individuality, that someone can manage with fashion. I've seen women in burkas walking around LA twice and both times it's been a visceral shock, stopped me dead in my tracks. I also think it's just a great piece if clothing aesthetically. When I was working my fashion design job I kept trying to push through stuff that had a little burka to it, black women's sweaters with high back collars, jackets with lapels that would cover the cheeks a little bit if you popped them out.

I think the woman in a burka is also a waaaay more powerful sexual symbol for my (our) generation than anybody realizes. We've gone past the Paris Hilton moment in fashion where "skin is in", now it's about what you hide and how you hide it. And the story that Islamic culture uses to justify the burka is that if women's bodies were more displayed, men would think desirous thoughts about them. There's a subtext to that idea, one that's sharpened immensely by our wartime media's portrayal of the Arab woman as this super sexy, dangerous seductress. It's like this: we read the burka as hiding a woman so sexually powerful that a single glimpse of any part of her body would be enough to send all men into transports of uncontrollable lust. Seriously, anybody who likes this comic should actually do a google image search for "Iraqi women" or "Muslim women": there's a lot of rape shots, like the ones I've showed, but a lot more pictures of faces covered by veils with just this one pair of gorgeous, mascaraed bedroom eyes staring out at you with the most intense look in them.

So that red is also this violent surge of desire that Matt feels for Druuna, the first time he's looked at her as a sexually available woman and not just his roommate. He knows she's a prostitute, he's seen her in a towel, he's heard her having sex through the wall multiple times, but it isn't until he sees her in a burka that he can find that aspect of her. Which is also me saying something about how sexually twisted our generation of media consumers is, of course.

A: Yeah, I think since our last interview Druuna developed a much stronger voice - well, she definitely had that voice, but as her and Matt open up to one another she seems way more comfortable. And I think in most stories, two protagonists developing a relationship - not necessarily sexual, and not even necessarily sexual in this case - is seen as a positive thing, or at least not as heavy of a situation. But Matt and Druuna's relationship is also the product of this hedonistic environment that can't be good for anyone, and I can't anything come from this relationship but utter depravity for both characters. Are they both completely broken, just doing whatever they can to get by? Or is the sliver of a chance that they might rise above their heartbreaks so small that I just can't see it?

M: Well, that would be telling! I will say this though: our bodies are the single source of potential pleasure that no one can take away from us, the last thing we can turn to when everything else seems to have gone to pieces. And that's not trivial, that really matters. That's why I'm showing their sex scenes in so much detail in this comic, and trying to really draw them as attractively as possible -- because so often the camera of comics turns away or floats off to a detached perspective (*AHEM*chesterbrown*AHEM*) during scenes of the greatest sensual enjoyment they contain. That's when the focus needs to narrow, man! And especially in a narrative like this, with two characters who are full of sorrowful memories and terrified of the world around them, it's so important to recognize that the best they ever feel is when they're having sex with each other. I don't want to spoil what ends up happening in this relationship, but for now these two sad people are at least able to make one another feel good during the moments when one's inside the other. That's a sad thing, but I think it's also a beautiful one.

A: I totally felt that - what I'll call AFFECTED influence - when I was reading something the other day and the scene changed right as two characters began embracing, and I felt cheated out of getting to see the characters at their most raw, which is when you really see them for who they are, you know? And the October chapters of AFFECTED definitely had the best sex scenes in the comic so far - to the point where sometimes I'm reading AFFECTED as a sex comic. Which I think is fair, because throughout this comic sex feeds the story just as much as the story natural lends itself to sex scenes. Does that make sense? Is there anything you want to say about that?

M: Yes, I want to say stuff about that. Let me see if I can organize my thoughts. First of all, I want this comic to be able to function as legitimate pornography. Back when I was first planning this story out as a prose-form novel, I was doing a lot of thinking about high versus low culture, acceptance versus non-acceptance of forms, junk like that. I wanted to work in a form that had as little cultural acceptance as possible. Honestly, seeing comics gain so much cultural cachet over the past decade was a big part of it -- like, where did the excitement of the bastard form go? Before I knew what the story was, what its politics were, who the characters were going to be, even what art form I was going to use, I knew I wanted to work in pornography, because I wanted to make something against society, something that wouldn't go down easy the way Chris Ware and Dan Clowes comics (great as they are) went down easy as "American literature". The original title of the book was "Fuck You (Affected)".

And as far as actual sex COMICS, it's basically the same impulse. I like the forbidden, "low" aspect of comic books, I like the idea of making something that no matter how smart or accomplished I can make it, will always be seen first as base and venal. Because we all saw how cultural acceptance took the teeth away from comics, man! I'm annoyed at the very thought of working in a medium where the "heartfelt memoir" or "thought provoking essay" is a championed form. And this book, with the serious ideas and socio-political discussion I'm working from, is a little close to academia for me. I think the sex is just so important, to the book as an aesthetic object as much as it's actual story -- it needs something in there to dirty it up.

Finally, I'm just so in love with the comics of Guido Crepax: devastatingly beautiful, unrepentantly pornographic, deeply psychological sex comics that are also impossible to find and laborious for me to read in their original Italian. So I wanted to make the kind of comic that Crepax made, just so I would have another one like that to read when I was finished.

Oh yeah, and multiple nude human figures in motion, interacting with one another, is the most fun thing for me to draw, so I get a big kick out of drawing sex.

A: Did you actually write any of that prose novel? And how close is the story to what we're reading in AFFECTED? I'd imagine it's pretty similar, right? It's kind of strange to think that readers could have had a completely different experience with this story had it been written as prose, especially since the majority of your creative output over the past year has been in comics.

M: Yes, I wrote about 20 pages of the prose novel in one night before I realized it wasn't going to work. I just reread it now after not touching it since I started the comic. It actually isn't as bad as I thought it was at the time, but it's also very definitely not what I wanted. I spend a ton of time describing visual information -- North Hollywood streets, the layout of their apartment -- that the comic puts across in one or two images. And while I get off some nice turns of phrase, there's no quality of beauty to the writing whatsoever. That was a big part of why I stopped with the prose version: I knew I was going to tell an ugly story, but it was really important to me that it carry something beautiful too. And I was never a very lyrical or sensuous prose writer. The sex scenes especially weren't at all erotic, which basically means the book would have been a failure regardless of everything else. (Though to be honest, I've never read any prose that I thought actually achieved a real quality of eroticism. The visual arts just do that so much better.)

To me, almost all drawings, especially of the human figure, have some kind of beauty to them. So I figured if I just drew the story, drew the sex scenes, the beauty would take care of itself to a large extent.

It's almost exactly the same story in both versions. The prose is more introspective and less political, which I think is due pretty much wholly to form. It also moves a lot faster, which is the opposite of how I usually think of prose in relation to comics, but it makes sense. In doing the comic I've been cherry-picking the best of the prose bits I wrote in my notes and generally spreading them out over a few pages, but in writing it's only a couple sentences. A really different experience, like you said, even though the words are the same.

A: When I first found your blog I think you were still releasing short stories on what has now become your non-AFFECTED, MATT SENECA COMIX blog. Did you make a conscious decision to focus on comics for an extended period, or is creating comics just more interesting to you right now than working in other mediums?

M: Both. It's more than just being more interested in comics, though that's obviously the case. I actually stop feeling good when I haven't drawn comics in a few days -- like, I lapse into a pretty deep depression. That was one of the biggest reasons I started doing AFFECTED at all, to have a longer project to work on that could sustain me. And I feel like I understand the most about comics, like I have the most to give to comics.

Writing fiction was something I started doing both when and because I fell in love with the girl I ended up getting engaged to, both so I could get her to notice me and explain to myself how the particular sensation of loving her felt. All my novels were about being in love with Olivia in one way or another. Shortly before we split up I wrote a novella that made her cry when I read it to her. When I'm honest with myself, that was all I ever wanted my prose to achieve. And once she was gone the whole reason I ever wrote to begin with was too. I always liked comics better, and I didn't think I was a good writer anyway, so I didn't see any reason to continue. Now I'm so in love with making comics that there's no doubt in my mind that this will be how I express myself artistically for the rest of my life.

A: So what did you do after deciding to make AFFECTED a comic instead of a novel? I would imagine that AFFECTED as prose had different influences than AFFECTED as a comic, right?

M: Yeah, but also a lot of the same ones. And the comics-specific influences kind of took a while for me to develop. All the classical art I'm quoting now obviously wasn't part of the prose version... but it wasn't part of my idea for the comic until long after I started it. I wasn't even that deeply into classical painting when I started the comic back in February. Part of it is just that allowing the comic to reflect my interests of the moment rather than this crystallized picture of what I was into when I started it or when I first got the idea makes it more interesting to work on. But also I realized that by the time Matt and Druuna start up their sexual relationship both he and the audience have already seen her acting as a sexual being. So the quotations from fine art are there to give his sexual interactions with her a more rarefied, "felt" sense than the rest of the sex we see the two of them having. Plus I really like those references as linchpins of the erotic scenes, pinnacle images to hang everything else around -- to work up to and then down from.

Those callbacks to paintings are really the only influence that the comics medium has brought into the story though, besides Guido Crepax. And they're strictly visual. Even with the Ditko and Watchmen quotes I'm mostly interested in the narrative/content aspects of those works. Criticism of Moore and Ditko's takes on the Question character was part of the prose version too, though it sure works a lot better in comics form.

Most of my influences in AFFECTED are literary, not visual, honestly. The poetry if Tristan Tzara, specifically his Approximate Man (which is my favorite work of art in any medium), and H. Rider Haggard's beautiful Orientalist novel She are the two verbal works that make it into my text, but that's more for their symbolic qualities than their actual influence on the story. The big ones as far as that goes are Dennis Cooper and Leslie Marmon Silko. I didn't discover either author until I came to LA, and both are firmly connected with this place for me.

Cooper more than any other artist presents a view of Los Angeles and existing within it that rhymes with my own. His horror/porno novels and the line they walk between those two genres were the bug inspiration for the kind of book AFFECTED is. And the amount of genuine, heartbreaking human emotion he layers into his pyrotechnic content is just incredible. My story is pretty different from most of Cooper's -- he's writing queer literature and I'm not -- but in terms of tone, genre, the levels it hits you on, there's no way it could be too close to what he does for me. And the quality Silko's stories have of occurring in a world that's both very much the real, gritty thing and a supernatural place with a mythical past that in a lot of ways is still living was the other thing I wanted to capture. It's my favorite fictional space to inhabit.

A: It's really amazing that Matt and Druuna found each other and live with each other, when I get the feeling that both characters are essentially homeless - or, they had homes, Matt having been at home with Olivia while Druuna's home was a pre-war Baghdad. Is that fair? Where else could he call home?

M: I think that's fair. That's certainly what it says in the text -- I'm coming at Matt's character as biographically identical to myself, so when I'm thinking about it his real "home" is specifically with Olivia before they came to LA. The one page we see the place he had in LA with Olivia on, it's a completely empty white box -- and that has a lot to do with her absence, but also plenty with the place itself. I'd hope that the book at least implies that such a thing as a real "home" doesn't exist in Los Angeles.

A: What are those diet pills doing to Matt's head?

M: You'll see. Without giving too much away, a more apt question might be what they're doing to Druuna's head. Things are moving faster for both of them. Did you notice how many jump-cuts I was using toward the end of the October chapter there? Everything is getting harder to see, more difficult to negotiate with. More dangerous.

A: You mentioned in an e-mail that the first few pages of the November chapter were done all in brush, and the ones you posted in the November chapter so far look great. It's tough to tell so early in the chapter, but is that style change reflective of the story at all? Or are you just trying new things out?

M: It's a little bit of both. I'm not doing the whole chapter in brush, much as I'd love to. The paper size I'm using isn't big enough for me to have the same kind of precision in brush as I do with the quill pen I've been doing the vast majority of my inks with. But the two-tier page I use to kick off this chapter gives me a lot more space to work with than the three-tier that I'm using everywhere else, and I love the brush so much that I'll take any opportunity to draw with it. Also, in November the weather in LA shifts really dramatically from hot to cold, and with that comes a shift from the radiant lux perpetua of spring, summer, and fall to a more shadowy, somber kind of light. It's such a strong shift, and so peculiar to LA, that I wanted to spotlight it by putting a little more black on the page to open up the November section.

A: Thanks again for agreeing to do this. Is there anything else you want to add?

M: If anyone reading this besides the people who have already gotten in touch gets themselves off or has sex to this comic, please drop a line and let me know. It's really encouraging.

AFFECTED

MATT SENECA COMIX

DEATH TO THE UNIVERSE

LUST BRIGADE: MATT SENECA'S AFFECTED (PT. 1)

LUST BRIGADE: MATT SENECA'S AFFECTED (PT. 2)

LUST BRIGADE: MATT SENECA INTERVIEW (DEC. 2010)

2011-11-18T18:54:00.001-08:00

free yrself from illusions

"ADAM" AGAIN

2011-10-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

i posted about blaise larmee and white shasta/jcorp/j-shasta in august.

days later, i posted about a string of fake "adam" blogger profiles with their own lust brigade blogs, a twitter user named "gaycorps" and a fake "adam" facebook.

earlier this month, blaise sent me this e-mail:

i'm reading your 'who is adam' blog post
funny
i actually thought you were making it up in a desperate bid for attention
i guess i was confused
wow still reading
i didn't see the updates
oh weird i thought you were gaycorps too
lol i thougth it was another desperate bid
weird
you should review cruise ...

and from a later e-mail:

still don't understand the motivations for it

last week, matt seneca posted a great article on/interview with j-shasta (who has talked to matt using the names "VCR Ltd" "T-1000 Energy Savings" and "Yellow5" - ha ha). and "adam" commented on the comments section:

using the "adam" profile that links to LUSTBRIGADELUSTBRIGADE, which runs blaise's tumblr feed over a 2001 backdrop.

shasta's "Mean Ppl Sucks" post (written under the "cough syrup" name) at THE HOODED UTILITARIAN might give this context...identity and identity manipulation, how my identity is warped and becomes a small part of shasta's persona...how blaise's tumblr is used as the basis for an evil clone (© MS) of LUST BRIGADE...and i don't think blaise has much to do with this anymore (as in, um, maybe he was never involved beyond giving shasta a platform when COMETS COMETS was still around). every move, conceptual comment, blog created contributes towards an aesthetic that's often abrasive, tinged with viciousness. a syrup that just sits in your brain and stomach and you wonder if it's ever going to do something violent or malicious.

and it's not until i scroll down DEATH TO THE UNIVERSE or see blaise's comics reblogged on LUSTBRIGADELUSTBRIGADE that i remember the connection comics in the first place. and even then, the tether is so thin, and i wonder if it even exists...

thanks matt. thanks blaise. cruise review later this week.

2011-10-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

2011-09-27T07:05:00.000-07:00

playing two dance sets this week. thursday in scranton, friday in philadelphia.

listening to that plutothecat mixtape now.

trying to get this interview with mary eng together but i'm never able to get on skype. mary's response to my apology e-mail: "it will happen like magic."

matt seneca sent me the cover to the first issue of por, which means i have to have it out soon. what it is, later..

working on a presence overhaul...

kournikova dot tumblr dot com
kournikova dot tumblr dot com
kournikova dot tumblr dot com
kournikova dot tumblr dot com

LUST BRIGADE MIXTAPE: PLUTOTHECAT

2011-09-16T05:38:00.000-07:00

PLUTOTHECAT is Apollonia - a 20-year-old tumblr blogger and one of the first people I followed on tumblr that wasn't a friend or something. god vomit was probably the first, and Apollonia knows god vomit. Apollonia's reblogs are always good and her personal posts are super interesting, funny, usually drug related. This was going to be the first in a series of interviews with people from tumblr, and that didn't work out, but I liked this interview too much to not post it. Crush on plutothecat, this mix is sooooooooooo good.

download

1. "Beauty Beats" by Beats Antique

2. "Ketto" by Bonobo

3. "Foxy" by Big Gigantic

4. "Zealots" by The Fugees

5. "Polarize" by Big Gigantic

6. "Seven" by Yoshida Brothers

Adam McIlwee: How long have you been on tumblr?

plutothecat (Apollonia): The birth of my tumblr took place in Fall 2009. I was introduced to it by a good friend of mine (also known as godvomit), and my original intention for using it was to keep track of all the hilarious shit that I would find on my MacBook after various drunken nights. My original URL was 'drunkmacbook' for that reason, and I kept that name for about a year - well after the original theme of my tumblr quickly disappeared.

AM: Yeah, the url I started following was definitely drunkmacbook, ha. Is that the only place you blog at?

ptc: Yes, tumblr is the only site I use for blogging. I've never had a blogger or blogspot or any of that. I don't even tweet or whatever.

AM: Do you consider tumblr posting blogging? I know I treat it differently than my Blogger, but I also know a lot of people that use tumblr for everything they do.

ptc: I definitely consider my tumblr to be my blog. Although the images I reblog are not my own, I do include quite a bit of personal text posts and photos that make it personalized enough for me to consider it my blog. I will say that in general tumblr is less of a blog site than some of the others out there. A lot of people never post anything that could be considered personal.

AM: What tags do you track?

ptc: I only track a few tags - "science", "anatomy", and "remix". The first two are because of my own fascination, and the last is because so many people on tumblr find such amazing music on the internet that I would never find on my own. I've really found a lot of great artists via tumblr.

AM: What is your situation right now? Are you in college? Are you working on any projects or anything? Do you treat your tumblr like a project?

ptc: Right now I'm working on a degree in environmental studies which I find to be a decent bridge between my ever-conflicting right and left brain. I would have liked to go to school for art or something fun, but I tried to take the 'responsible' route and I think it's turning out fine. I still enjoy drawing and painting though, and occasionally I'll post what I've done on my tumblr, particularly anatomical drawings.

AM: What's your favorite drug? Because you seem pretty open when it comes to talking about that on tumblr, and a lot of people are, which I think is pretty funny and kind of cool (drug-tumblring, ha).

ptc: My favorite drug has to be mdma, without a doubt. On a day-to-day basis however, it's the marijuana that I can't seem to put down. Tumblr is very drug friendly, or at least the people I follow are. Regardless of the fact that you're broadcasting yourself to the world over the internet, there's just something comforting about posting a pic of yourself smoking and getting a few notes from strangers. I say that jokingly, but but really there's something about the semi-anonymity of tumblr that makes it seem okay. I happen to be quite a fan of the smoking pictures myself, and my followers seem to enjoy them.

AM: And do you post more after you've taken something?

ptc: I've noticed that I write a lot more text posts when I'm stoned. For some reason, being high makes me feel like I need to share every ridiculous thought that pops into my head - as if my followers actually care. As far as reblogging goes, I spend a lot more time going through my dashboard when I'm stoned but I rarely post anything because I get way too indecisive - "oooh! i like that! shit, but that won't look good on my page right now. oh well! nahhh…i'll post it later"

AM: Is this an MDMA mix? Whatever that is...

ptc: I think my mix is perfect for right after the main event. Like, you've just gotten home from an awesome show and your body is exhausted but your mind's still racing and you've just started to toke. It all has a positive, upbeat vibe and some rhythm which is good for a nice late night trance, post-roll.

AM: Is there anything else you want to add?

ptc: I can't really think of anything else I'd want to add right now…. I guess if something suddenly comes to me I'll let you know…..

Actually - you should include somewhere in it that I just purchased a bong made from a ceramic bust of Beethoven. I think that the internet just might need to know that.

Okay that's all.

lol

2011-09-08T06:43:00.000-07:00

that "hand on my breast/i'll keep you warm" zola jesus part in the m83 hurry up we're dreaming intro is soooooooo good

silent stimuli drug talk and mix soon

braingarbage/agoraphobic fashion/hijab niqab/the real lacc talk and mix soon. we're talking about wikileaks, the collapse of monetary theory and how the FBI stole her friend david's laptop.

next tuesday i'm seeing xiu xiu

the tuesday after that i'm playing with mount eerie

where is affected?

lol omg

WHO IS adam

2011-08-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

omg

Blaise Larmee is a twenty-six-year-old comics artist and publisher.

JCorp, according to Matt Seneca, is "an association of Internet memesters who like to hang out on Larmee and friends' Comets Comets website."

Last Thursday night I posted a piece about Blaise Larmee, JCorp, "digital role-playing, the far side of the obscure-art-comix world, and just how diffuse the question 'who am I' can get online." I left a link to the post on JCorp's blog, with this comment:

"i tried to figure out blaise larmee's persona circle. your name came up."

On Saturday night, someone with the same name, profile picture, profile, blogroll, and close amount of page views left this comment:

"Can't feel my toes."

But it wasn't me.

Here's a capture of my blogger profile:

On Blogger since October 2009, 569 page views, and since I'm logged in, the "EDIT PROFILE" option is there.

Here's a capture of "adam's" blogger profile:

On Blogger since August 2011, 568 page views (it was about 560 when I first found this, but I KEPT CHECKING to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious), but since that profile isn't mine, there's no option to edit it.

Cruise is a series of "50 single edition booklets, individually and arbitrarily released" that Blaise has just started releasing. It's the only book listed in my profile. Here's a capture of a list of the other people whose favorite book is Cruise:

Two adams.

But it gets WEIRD too. Because I found all of this about 20 minutes ago, and when I first found "adam's" profile, the link to "LUST BRIGADE" just redirected back here. Now, there's a new site:

LUST BRIGADE ZERO.

So is this Blaise/JCorp/Shasta fucking with me? It has to be, RIGHT?

UPDATE: A THIRD PROFILE

This morning I found a third "adam" profile that commented on Matt Seneca's blog. Here's a capture of the profile:

And here's a capture of the comment:

And yeah, that second one definitely isn't me (see how there's no delete icon under the second one?!) When I checked the profile to see if anything had changed, I noticed that the blog registered to that account wasn't LUST BRIGADE ZERO, but LUST BRIGADE LUST BRIGADE - some of Blaise's tumblr set over the background to his website. Here's a few screenshots:

AND THEN...a fake twitter. username "gaycorps," with the same profile picture as my own. Another screenshot, just in case these all get deleted soon:

Is any of this is...malicious?

UPDATE 2: A FACEBOOK

(Thanks Tave Domain for the capture.)

WHO IS @BLAISELARMEE

2011-08-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

Blaise Larmee is a twenty-six-year-old comics artist and publisher.

I called Blaise Larmee an "internet fucker" in June.

I first contacted Blaise to do a mix and interview to post here because I wanted to know more about him. I had read his interviews with The Comics Journal from 2010 and 2011, I had read 2001, I fucked with Comets Comets (RIP) from when I found it a few months ago until it was recently shut down, and I still felt like I knew nothing about Blaise Larmee. Everything surrounding Blaise was obscure, or seemed to have been intentionally obscured, sometimes to extreme lengths: Comets Comets was Comics Comics obscured, which is easy to recognize; the URL to Blaise's tumblr reads "isabellamare(.tumblr.com)," which looks like an anagram of "Blaise Larmee," has an extra "A" and is short an "E" - a fucked permutation that would probably only be recognized by people trying to figure Blaise out.

Look at this picture of the "Comets Comets gang" I took from Jason Overby's Wikipedia:

Jesse McManus' "C" and "O" are clear, Jason Overby's "M" is clear, and Blaise's "E" is clear...until he obscures the sign with what is either an "S" or a "T" - neither of which would complete the word "comets." There's a pattern, right?

PLAYERS

BLAISE LARMEE/WHITE SHASTA/JCORP/TIDAL SLUT/HAL HASSI

"At some point this past year I felt I changed characters."

"My internet life is very important to me. White Shasta is an anonymous person online whom I feel close to, who is responsible for most of the conceptual comments, all the C.F. tweets, and is amassing a fairly interesting online presence in general."

Taken from his second TCJ interview, and this is where we start getting into identities and personas. The wording in that second sentence of the second quote ("White Shasta is...") is super interesting: while White Shasta and Blaise Larmee could be separate people, Blaise's phrasing also suggests that White Shasta might be an online personality Blaise assumes when leaving "conceptual comments," tweeting as C.F., etc. I found White Shasta's tumblr and figured that he and Blaise were the same person, because of this short profile:

So I assumed that White Shasta was a Blaise Larmee character, and while there aren't many noticeable differences between the two (perhaps White Shasta is more talkative), I assumed that Blaise left certain parts of his internet life to the White Shasta part of his personality.

Here is White Shasta's twitter.

In June I asked Blaise about the difference between Blaise Larmee and White Shasta, and he told me that they are different people. And I said I didn't believe him, and I still don't, really, so I've kept my eye on Blaise's internet posts, hoping White Shasta might pop up somewhere else. And he did, on Blaise's list of "favorite/best/most significant" comics works at The Hooded Utilitarian. Here's a picture of the list:

1981 by White Shasta. But is 1981 a Blaise Larmee comic drawn under the name White Shasta? Is White Shasta an ultra-elusive artist whose name and identity are known in an extremely limited circle? Maybe the latter, because Matt Seneca texted me last month saying that White Shasta is definitely not Blaise Larmee, but someone - or a group of people - named JCORP.

In a March, Matt wrote about 1981 (in a great post about the future of comics and webcomics), crediting it to artist David Gray "with 'conceptual oversight' by JCorp." Matt's description of JCorp:

"...an association of internet memesters who like to hang out on Larmee and friends' Comets Comets website."

On August 9th, JCorp left a comment on the Blaise Larmee mixtape (which is a pretty individual action, unless a few people are using that name communally), which lead me to JCorp's Blogger profile. It reads:

"JCorp grew out of a public commitment to distributing high quality Shasta and Shasta Lite juices and sodas at competitive prices. It is now the world's leading self-esteem and motivational lifestyle design firm. At JCorp we are very serious about not taking things seriously. No one i smuch liquid poison"

Here are some captures from the JCorp blog:

(And two out of three pictures he posted are the same.)

Is Blaise Larmee doing all of this? The person who left the initial comment on his mix and interview post had Comets Comets listed as their homepage. Was that a joke from Tidal Slut, Blaise hater? Or was it set up by Blaise and/or/with/ JCorp to confuse anyone who would actually look in to the profile? What did JCorp mean by "It's just a 2011/2001 thing?"

In an Inkstuds listener request thread, user "Shasta, White or Grape" seconds a Blaise Larmee request, and I don't think Blaise Larmee would do that.

In 2009, Hall Hassi released a bootleg Kramers Ergot 7 - titled KE7 - shrinking the giant hardcover down to a 96-page, black-and-white zine. Comic Book Resources covered the story, as did Blaise, although his initial comments are gone now that Comets Comets has been deleted. However, right after the White Shasta comment in his TCJ interview, Blaise stated:

"Hall Hassi received legal threats for a zine she never made, the photographs of which were digitally manufactured, as was the character herself."

Sean Collins even mentions that he heard the name Hall Hassi before the name Blaise Larmee, and tells Blaise he believes they're the same person - which, in the quote above, Blaise doesn't really deny, but definitely doesn't confirm. He does state in his 2010 TCJ interview that the Hall Hassi story was the first Commets Commets post to go viral, but doesn't mention anything about Hassi's identity.

In October 2010, Hall Hassi interviewed Blaise Larmee about an upcoming project, which became 2001. You can read the 666-word interview here. This looks like an interview Blaise created himself: the typography matches, the questions are very specific to 2001 (which hadn't even been released at the time), and it doesn't appear to have been posted anywhere but on Blaise's site.

Hall Hassi is always referred to as a woman, but I don't think that matters. Here is her twitter.

Hassi's KE7 is also listed on Blaise's Hooded Utilitarian list, and the link attached to the title redirects to the Arthur Magazine Archive.

I still don't know if Blaise Larmee is White Shasta, JCorp, Hall Hassi or even Tidal Slut. It's just as strange to imagine a single person spending large amounts of time creating and covering up characters, personalities, and even actual work as it is to imagine a group of kids doing the same, maybe in the same room, on their own macbooks, scheming. If these trails have been left by one person, that person must have been meticulous - and Blaise Larmee is meticulous (his current project, Cruise, consists of 50 single edition comics, released "individually and arbitrarily." I got the first one.) But it also seems as if these people/personas have created a pocket community across different comic sites, and that community's output might not be uniform enough to not have the different people behind those personalities involved.

I'm not sure that Blaise is White Shasta. I am fairly certain White Shasta is JCorp, or at least a part of JCorp. Tidal Slut might actually have a problem with Blaise, but I don't think that's the case.

Blaise said that Hall Hassi was "digitally manufactured," but I think that Blaise Larmee was digitally manufactured too.

If anyone has any information on any of those people, leave me a comment and I'll update this post. Until I start to get the impression that Blaise is just feeding me false information under fake names.

Thanks for the help, Matt Seneca.

UPDATE: Blaise responds.

NOT ON TOUR

2011-08-22T07:42:00.001-07:00

i'm home from tour. i give it a 10/10. you can see pictures from it here.

this week
two blaise larmee posts. don't feel bad if you don't know who he is. i don't either. that's what the second post will be about.
a new mixtape from me.
throne watching.

<3

MATT SENECA'S AFFECTED (PT 2) + LUST BRIGADE MIXTAPE SIX

2011-07-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

AWRIGHT, WHAT WE GOT?

GLUE IN A SPRAY CAN

NICE.

This is the second installment of a regular feature I'll be writing on Matt Seneca's ongoing AFFECTED comic. Here's the comic, and here's the first installment I wrote back in May. Interview AND playlist this time. And of course Matt's answers are insanely generous, and of course the playlist is just so good. Thanks, Matt Seneca.

download

AFFECTED PLAYLIST/LUST BRIGADE MIXTAPE SIX

1. "Puerto Rican Ghost" by Mars

2. "Chopin: Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48 - Lento" by Tamás Vásáry

3. "Die Slow" by HEALTH

4. "Hollywood (Fenech-Soler Remix)" by Marina and the Diamonds

5. "Burning Sage" by Cold Cave

6. "Fuck Me" by Captain Ahab

7. "Distractions" by Insides

8. "Candles" by John Cale

9. "Armenia" by Einstürzende Neubauten

10. "Before Tigers (Blindoldfreak Remix)" by HEALTH

RAW AND RED. Man, this comic is good. AFFECTED's Matt Scyzoryk is desperate as hell, and nearly every beat in this comic is a desperate act that just scrapes the bottom. Everything is extreme - when Olivia comes over, she's not easing Matt into the idea of her being with other guys, but bragging about those guys; Druuna is not just from a different country, but an Iraqi prostitute who hasn't left her apartment in four months. Matt's sniffing glue from a spray can, playing Russian roulette. Druuna stabs herself in a restaurant; it's one of Matt's wildest experiences. But AFFECTED's Los Angeles is desperate, and the comic's characters are living in AFFECTED Hollywood because of extreme circumstances, living wild lives out of necessity - not to move forward the plot of a comic, but because they think it's what they need to do to survive in that city, in the world, in that moment, wherever, whenever. And I don't think I've been ever been driven to act so desperately, but you know that Matt and Druuna have.

And we're getting progressively more extreme. Remember that this is a finite comic, and these extreme events just keep building. Matt still has that gun from the first part of the comic, still fucked from that breakup, still caught up in a corrupt police game. Druuna still needs to make money somehow, and there's no way those Craigslist ads are being taken down. Both of them are still living in that North Hollywood apartment, and their desperation isn't going to disappear just because some of it has been exposed to one another. The only colors we're getting in this comic are reds, pinks, blacks, whites, the only excitement we're seeing is dangerous, we're getting empty sex, violent pasts, and even those moments that hint at compassion are somehow tinted - Matt lets those kids stay in front of his apartment, but from that comes a glue high and near-suicide. He takes Druuna for dinner, but that ends corrupted and violent. And even in that last page, our impression of Druuna as some sort of innocent is turned off by that one panel of naked flesh. Seneca's not giving anyone much hope, and readers can only sit back and see how bad things get.

Adam McIlwee: That drug scene makes me squirm every time I read it, but it's so good. Alright. Does Druuna know Matt's fucked up? Would she care? Because I'm not reading her as a conservative character (how could I?), and I don't think her initial reaction to Matt refusing to pay dinner has anything to do with her personality or anything- she just doesn't want her life to get fucked by some broke kid making a statement. (Also, this comic is authentic as hell, so I'm sorry if I'm really calling you "some broke kid," but whatever.)

Matt Seneca: Nah, I don't think she knows. That scene is supposed to be their first real interaction -- there aren't any that happen off-panel except maybe him knocking on her door and asking what kind of groceries she wants right before it. Maybe they pass each other on the way to the bathroom once or twice, but I don't really think so. So it's like when you first spend real time with anyone: she's focused on herself, the impression she's making, and also she has no baseline of his "normal" behavior to judge against. For all she knows he's just a really spacy, vacant guy. Her mind isn't going to jump to "he's high"... because she isn't getting high.

As to whether she'd care, yeah, for sure. Probably not enough to break social decorum by saying anything about it, but it would definitely disturb her. This is a woman who hasn't even gone outside for months in an effort to place as impregnable a barrier as possible between herself and all the craziness that rules the streets in LA -- and here's her new roommate bringing it right in through the door, breathing it right in through his nose. When you're hanging on by a thread, especially to so little, any non-normative behavior from the people around you pretty much scares the shit out of you.

It's interesting you bring up her politics: you're right that she's not a political conservative the way we have them here, but those classifications become really difficult, maybe even meaningless, when you apply them to people from other countries. The Druuna character is based quite heavily on a Muslim woman I dated a while ago, and while she obviously didn't support the American conservative mindset that like, Islam is evil and the Middle East needs to become a permanent military garrison, she would come out with some surprisingly rigid views on social interaction and economics especially -- and sexuality to a lesser extent as well. What was really interesting was watching how those views got twisted and blurred by a pretty unconventional sex life, which is definitely something Druuna's got going too.

And I'm broke as hell, brother. Let me hold ten dollars.

A: I have no idea what to make of this American noise. (I kind of love it.) The reaction to Druuna's ethnicity in the first part was an American reaction, and I read the hanging of the American flag in this most recent chapter as a drugged action that stemmed from that post 9/11-trip, but even that is interesting. Here's what I'm thinking- this kid, living in LA, into going to noise shows, into comics, into drugs, fucked from this relationship he was in, doesn't seem like someone who would also be weighing his patriotism. And that is just a total uninformed judgement, but maybe not, because I think I'm into those things too and I'm never thinking about my American identity, or myself within the context of United States events, you know? So what can you say about that?

M: In my experience it's really difficult not to consider yourself as American when you're around people who aren't. We as a culture are just so monumentally ignorant -- I can feel that in myself all the time when I'm with people from other nations, and I really wanted to caricature that, blow it up as much as possible. It's probably too subtle, but in the restaurant scene I just wanted him to seem like the biggest, dullest jerk. He's smearing food all over his face, sprawling all over the table, literally too big for the environment, asking "what was Baghdad LIKE" through a mouthful of spaghetti. The Ugly American in the flesh, even though he's trying with his cardigan and his displays of sympathy.

The flag-hanging scene is something else entirely. I drew that and the 9/11 pages completely spontaneously, they're not in the story notes I'm working from at all. It's a weird story: I was out in a quintessential LA bar (noisy, glitzy) with a quintessential LA girl (beautiful, a little tragic) one night, three sails to the wind, and I got a text from a friend that said Bin Laden had been killed. The girl put her hand on my shoulder, really concerned, like "are you okay? You just went white as a sheet." The next morning I watched Obama's speech, still drunk from the night before, and in the middle of it I just started weeping. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Such powerful emotions, and why the fuck should I care? Like you said -- I'm an LA noise hipster, about as far from the heart of American patriotism as it gets... but the reaction was still there, I'm still not disconnected from the way this country breathes in and breathes out. Even though I guess I probably want to be.

So I went back and put them in. I felt as though I had to draw those pages. I had to make that statement. I had to draw Bin Laden. Those 9/11 and Iraq War images followed by the hammer drawn back, poised right in front of the flag, that's really my attempt to do something openly symbolic, something that will speak to Americans and make them feel something about their country, anything -- I don't want to prescribe a meaning.

But yeah: this is first and foremost a comic about contemporary America. I want to show how menacing and intense and surrealistic the possibilities of life here have gotten -- hell, how crazy my life here has gotten at points -- and keep people conscious of the fact that while yes, it addresses a lot of things that are specific to Los Angeles, this could happen anywhere in this country. That's one of the reasons I'm including such detailed screenshots of familiar websites: the LA landscapes are mostly pitched to people who will actually recognize them, natives, but the pictures of the internet landscape are a reminder that the real nasty stuff, the commissioning prostitutes and buying guns, is always only a few keystrokes away. Having that flag hanging in the background for the entire book is another reminder: though this is Los Angeles, it's more broadly America, and you too are a part of what I'm talking about.

A: That's super interesting, because the internet is where most of the dirt is in this comic - or at least starts, and then becomes action. And I think that people tend to see the internet as something separate from reality, or see internet interactions as less meaningful than physical, face-to-face ones - which is obviously not the case in your comic (the interactions don't always turn out to be what the parties involved expect, but that doesn't make them less real or anything). Because aside from being this springboard into the wilder parts of the story and Matt's life, the internet is a familiar place for a character who is completely displaced (in every sense), and even that's not really working out, creating this loop where the familiar pushes the character back into the unfamiliar, which creates a longing for the familiar, etc. Does that make sense, or am I placing way to much emphasis on the internet?

M: I'm definitely trying to have the internet play a big part in the story. You got at it with that mention of displacement: this isn't a guy who belongs in LA, or who even really has it in him to deal with the place as it is; but at least in the physical world he can try, you know? He's got a room, his comics and his clothes and bed are in there, he hung something on the wall, we can assume the kind of food he likes to eat is in the fridge and his favorite music is in the computer. He has his creature comforts. But the internet is an environment that nobody really belongs in. I mean our bodies and psyches have been evolving to adapt to the physical world for thousands and thousands of years, but our brains have only been divorcing themselves from it with the internet for a decade and change? Just look at the Facebook or Yahoo Mail screenshots, how impossible it is to get a real sense of place or relative importance, especially when compared to the panorama shots of North Hollywood. These are the harshest landscapes of all, and every time he deals with them it brings more harshness into his life.

A: Watchmen is the book your feeling now, and in the first "October" installment you actually take a few panels from it. Should readers be keeping that book in mind when reading earlier installments? Does the influence extend beyond that one page in Affected? (Something like, the dinner scene with Matt and Druuna reflecting on that Dan/Laurie sequence, I don't know). Or are you lifting that part because you're reading Watchmen now and found something that agreed with your comic? NOTE: There are a few more Watchmen references up since I talked with Matt about this.

M: No, the Watchmen part starts now. The "September" chapters are Ditko's Mr. A and Dino Buzzatti's Poem Strip mostly, with bits from CF's City-Hunter, Laurence Hubbard's Real Deal, Jaime Hernandez's Hoppers stories, some Steranko... lots more. Guido Crepax's Valentina, my favorite comic of all time, hangs over the whole thing, as I'm sure it will continue to. It's a lot more planned out than just vibing off the comic I'm reading, though. I don't want to spoil a part coming up, but I'm copying those Rorschach panels to put them in dialogue with the copied Mr. A panels from earlier. Rorschach is basically Alan Moore the arch-liberal's take on Ditko the arch-conservative's character, the same system of political/moral thought considered from a diametrically opposed viewpoint. Of course, both are based off an earlier Ditko character, The Question. They're all basically the idea of the superhero taken to its logical end point, a man whose knowledge of what is just is so great that he's willing to deviate from societal norms to enforce it. Ditko's genius was to show this man at a point where his actions went against the approval of a morally questionable society; Moore's was to ask whether he, the hero, might be in the wrong after all.

I think that character type is a great symbol for the viewpoint that led America into the Iraq War (and now the one in Afghanistan too) -- this unflagging sense of conviction and moral correctness, one that never questions itself and takes action without caring about the human aspect of the consequences. It's fun to examine other comics authors' views on that system of thought as long as I'm examining it myself, and it's also a good way of satisfying the desire to let my comics work as comics criticism that I talked about in our last chat. I'll be examining another take on the Question character in this story, and hopefully the way the quotations from other books interact with my own text will end up being interesting to people.

Also, Watchmen is basically a book about (well, not "about", but dealing with) the end of fantasy, the end of childhood... the book that went down in comics history as telling people that their beloved superheroes were a buncha perverts. It puts a tone into Affected when I bring it up, I think. It's also been a surprisingly important book for me as a cartoonist, considering it's not one of my special favorites as a reader. This isn't the first time I've done a comic about Watchmen. If you look at my "career" in comics (ha), it starts with a few experimental strips, but mostly it's me doing "takes" on corporate superheroes. Painfully over-earnest Superman stories, silly gags, straightup copies. Unoriginal, uninspired. Then the last superhero comic I drew was a Watchmen strip, another pointless thing without much to say for itself... except that I was compelled to put a ripped up photograph of Lou Gehrig right in the middle of it. That guy was my absolute hero as a kid, I've watched "Pride of the Yankees" at least two hundred times. He was the man who never quit, and that appealed to me as much as any of the superheroes. It took death to end him -- before that, he was on the field every day.

Now, that Watchmen page was on the table in between pencils and inks the day my relationship with the girl I was engaged to at the time ended, nothing in the center panel. This is the love affair I'd spent five years believing only death could ever possibly end, the one that started when I was a fifteen year old kid. If you look at me as living a life tied to that fifteen year old mentality, of course I was making trite, childish superhero comics! And of course I ripped up a picture of my childhood hero, glued it to the page, and started making (to my eyes, anyway) much better work as soon as I'd done so! I could never go back after that. Watchmen -- drawing it, specifically, much more than reading it -- is so much a part of that moment in time to me that it seemed perfect when I found a way to put it into a book set during that period of my life.

A: What's happening between the nights that we're seeing? Because I'm under the impression that Matt's closest friends are those kids hanging outside his apartment, and there's obviously not much there.

M: Yeah, that's right. He's got no one. All his friends were his ex's friends, like he says at the beginning. Everything interesting that he does is on-panel, I think: other than that he sleeps, eats, reads, listens to music, maybe watches a movie or two. A lot of aimless walks around North Hollywood, some of which we see, plenty of which we don't. He's not making art and he's unemployed, so there's a lot of free time there to fill. For now I'll leave it up to the audience to decide whether he writes a comics blog or not, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility.

A: Is this playlist what you're listening to when working on Affected? Because I know you mentioned that readers should be listening to that Chopin piece, and I think it's cool to have a soundtrack to accompany a comic, especially when there's music referenced or bands shown in that comic.

Pretty much. I mean, I'm listening to plenty of other stuff too, but that's what I put on most often. All the albums those songs are from are in heavy rotation. The night I came up with the germ of the idea that became Affected was the first night I'd ever heard both the Chopin song and the Neubauten song. Those are the important ones in that playlist, the pieces of music that I actually came up with the comic wanting to dialogue with. Those are the ones that I'm going to make them put in the movie version when it comes out. If you want to listen to something while you read Affected, it's them.

The rest is more tonal, stuff I play to put myself in the right headspace -- LA bands, noise, creepiness. "Puerto Rican Ghost" is in there because the ex-fiance is Puerto Rican: he's literally being haunted by a Puerto Rican ghost on a lot of these pages. The Insides track is from their "Euphoria" album, which is all gorgeous pop songs about how repulsive and dangerous sex is. "Hollywood" is kind of lyrically appropriate to the book, corny but whatever, I like that song. "Candles" is a great piece of music because it's so cold and methodical for almost the whole thing, but there's a devastatingly beautiful little twenty-second passage right at the one-minute mark that changes the whole temper of the song. The way a little bit of beauty can transform a mass of ugliness is something I really want to achieve with this book. The playlist as a whole is designed to mimic the dramatic action of the entire story -- not as simple as a film soundtrack, if I were to make one it would be different, but the progression in tones over the whole thing is comparable to the tones I want the comic to hit as it goes from beginning to end.

A: What song is playing when Druuna stabs herself?

M: The stabbing part itself is a silent sequence for sure. Everything cuts out there. In the restaurant itself, something classical and romantic but not too arresting. Probably Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade", to go with the Baghdad flashback. I love that piece of music.

Matt's into the "October" chapters of AFFECTED now, so make sure you check those out. I hung out with Matt this past weekend in New York and he blew my mind with what he told me about AFFECTED (and that's JUST the beginning, for real), so make sure you look for my third AFFECTED piece once those chapters get posted.

AFFECTED

MATT SENECA COMIX

DEATH TO THE UNIVERSE

LUST BRIGADE: MATT SENECA'S AFFECTED (PT. 1)

LUST BRIGADE: MATT SENECA INTERVIEW (DEC. 2010)

LUST BRIGADE MIXTAPE: BEN KUPSTAS (I)

2011-06-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

download pt. 1

download pt. 2

UNCOVERED: SOME SONGS, THE CHORDS & LYRICS OF WHICH I'VE LEARNED & PLAYED IN FRONT OF PEOPLE

1. Lee Hazlewood - "I'm Glad I Never..."

2. Magnetic Fields - "Grand Canyon"

3. New Order - "Ceremony"

4. Smog - "Bathysphere"

5. Prince - "When U Were Mine"

6. Saturday Looks Good to Me - "Spring"

7. Abner Jay - "I'm So Depressed"

8. Sharon Van Etten - "Give Out" (Daytrotter session)

9. Galaxie 500 - "Tugboat"

10. Viking Moses - "Sandstorms"

11. Vic Chesnutt - "Stupid Preoccupations"

12. Arthur Russell - "That's Us/Wild Combination"

13. Palace Music - "New Partner"

14. Tigers Jaw - "I Saw Water" (acoustic version)

15. Daniel Johnston - "Peek A Boo"

16. Stars Like Fleas - "See For The Woods"

17. You Aren't My Mother - "Just Like Honey" (Jesus & Mary Chain cover)

18. Future Wife - "I'm Gonna Die" (Mr. Jenkins Remix)

This is the first installation of a three-part mix by Ben Kupstas. (Two links because the songs are too big for one file.)

I met Ben a few years ago when he played at Test Pattern in Scranton. I think he used the name Yer Sweet Chimneys- now both a band and a blog- but sometimes he plays with other people in and as This Sheep Those Sheep, You Aren't My Mother and Fin Fast Fun. (All of those projects have attractive websites.) He's also playing in Future Wife with playwright Young Jean Lee and just finished a residency at Joe's Pub performing YJL's We're Gonna Die. (Lou Reed said this about her:

Isn't that cool?)

Alright. Ben lives in Brooklyn. We're good friends now. We talk on g-chat all the time. The first time my band played in New York was at Goodbye Blue Monday with Ben and when I went up to cover "Tugboat" by Galaxie 500 I asked, "Do you want my guitar clean or distorted?"- what a stupid question! (Ben said "I hadn't thought about that, good question."- I remember that very clearly.)

BROUGHT TO YOU BY G-CHAT

I've been doing interviews through e-mail, but we did this one through g-chat. I only took a few clips from the chat because it was very long. I thought these were the best parts. I tried to keep it in chat-format. I hope I don't fuck up the formatting.

Adam: Are you a permanent member of Future Wife? Or is that a band where no one is a permanent member?

Ben: It's a weird band, in that it was put together primarily for a show that Young Jean Lee was creating, which had a run at Joe's Pub in April.

But we all sort of feel like it became a real band at some point.

It feels like everyone is pretty essential in the band.

A: That's cool. I think I assumed they were separate but also never really thought of them as existing apart from one another (which is what separate means). And Yer Sweet Chimneys is still a band and a blog?

B: Yeah, it's more often a blog than a band at this point, but yet it's still a band before anything else.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but I am a bit interested in the fuzzying of what it means to be a band.

A: Well I think I always associated Yer Sweet Chimneys with you, and the band as your project that other people helped out with sometimes. And I thought of the blog as the same thing, or existing in the same way, so at least it's consistent.

B: Yeah, that sounds spot on.

It might be the longest lasting name I've stuck with

(Later)

B: Just got back to my desk. Went outside for a quick afternoon snack.

A: That sounds great. What did you have?

B: I had a coconut cookie, but I only had one bite, because it was ridiculously dry. It was like eating oily sand.

A: Ew. Gross.

B: Yeah, my friend Allison got a peanut butter cookie, and that was even worse. We tossed them out, but now I'm realizing we should have fed them to pigeons or something so they didn't go to waste.

A: It's okay. I had a piece of taffy before that someone brought back from the beach. It was a mint flavor and I thought it was only alright.

(Later)

A: I think I've heard ten- at most, I think- songs that you've recorded. Do you just not have a lot of songs?

B: I've actually probably written a few hundred songs. I've forgotten a lot of them, some maybe for the best. That used to bum me out, but lately I sort of enjoy the idea that those ideas were ephemeral. The majority have probably only been heard by a handful of people; a lot were only played in bedrooms to audiences of one. I'll often stumble across old setlists and honestly don't remember any of the songs the old bands used to play...

But, yeah, anyhow, I just haven't recorded very much.

Even that's not true

I have so many hours of recordings, but I keep most of it to myself.

Someday maybe that will change.

[Is any of what I'm saying actually interesting? Please let me know!]

A: Yes. If it's not interesting I just won't include it.

B: I've also always been cautious of sending too much out into the world, in the same way that I don't like to waste much (I really want to figure out how to compost in the city without too much of a stench).

A: That makes perfect sense and exactly what I was getting at. Because nothing I've heard from you has been bad and I've liked it all. SO

I figured you were either just spending months/years on a song until it was the best it could be

Or just being selective in your recording.

B: I do obsess over recording, and because I am not technically adept (a "gear-head" I am not), it's probably often to the detriment of the songs. I think I would be the sort to spend years on a song or album, and I'd love to say that's what I'm doing with my time, but I actually haven't had a decent recording setup since college.

I've never really had the normal recording experience, either in a studio or DIY.

I spent a day in a converted chapel once recording a soundtrack. That was the closest I've come.

All the songs you've heard were either home 4-track or laptop recordings, one song at a time.

(Later)

A: Was “Marco/Polo” written as like, a one-off pop song? It sounds way more accessible than most of your other songs, and I think I read something you write about it to that effect.

B: Yeah, it was absolutely a pop experiment. I forget exactly how it came about, but I think Nicole had dared me to write a pop song, and that was the result. I think it was the second thing we recorded as You Aren't My Mother, which was originally conceived as just a recording project. We covered "Just Like Honey" and then did "Marco/Polo"...

A: Okay, so is that one of the main differences between You Aren’t My Mother and Yer Sweet Chimneys? Or did You Aren't My Mother actually start playing shows? I can't remember what name you used when we would play

B: YAMM become a real band when André Joel Paul joined, and we played a bunch of shows.

We never really figured out what type of band we were, but it was fun.

Usually.

One show we'd do improvised drones, the next we'd play poppy songs.

Fred Thomas wrote about a show we played with him and described it as "a really all-over the place set with an amazing thumb-piano/delay interlude"...

A: That's cool. So what have you actually released? Just the Tunnels Above Yer Roofs EP?

B: I also recorded another EP back in '05 or so for a randon documentary about Binghamton, NY. That was with Malav (who had been in one of the permutations of This Sheep Those Sheep) and this band called Idatel from Ithaca.

A: Under Yer Sweet Chimneys?

B: It was "released" as This Sheep Those Sheep, but that was a bit of a misnomer. All my band names have been pretty sloppily applied over the years. By me, I mean.

I've been very elastic with the names, in the same way that Yer Sweet Chimneys is a band and a blog.

A: Right.

(Not saying right to the sloppiness)

(Because I don't think it exists)

Am I totally fucking up your work day?

B: Ha! Nah, it's a nice diversion.

(Later)

A: Did you ever wonder if the pants you're wearing are really as skinny or wide as you think they are? I wear like tight jeans all the time so whenever I wear pants that aren't tight jeans I wonder if they look too baggy. Such a problem.

B: Yes! I have the exact same problem...

It's tough being skinny.

No one ever believes me when I say that.

I told you I'm drinking Ensure, right?

It's gross.

A: I think that ALL the time. Yes you did. Well you said protein powder, maybe you said the brand.

B: I think our interview should be dedicated to spreading the word on the perils of skinniness.

Do you eat meat?

A: I think so too. I do not, do you?

B: Nope.

Well, fish occasionally.

Ben's second mix will be posted soon.

LUST BRIGADE MIXTAPE: BLAISE LARMEE

2011-06-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

download

1. "Mayonaise" by The Smashing Pumpkins

2. "See Water" by Beck

3. "Tiger Trap" by Beat Happening

4. "Buzz Saw" by Xiu Xiu

5. "Opium" by Marcy Playground

6. "Feel So Different" by Sinead O'Connor

7. "Lover" by Nite Jewel

8. "The Most Beautiful Name" by High Places

9. "Mousey Toy" by Xiu Xiu

10. "Side B" by Criminals

The first in a series of guest-mixes/guest-mixers.

Blaise Larmee is a comic creator, critic and publisher. He won the 2009 Xeric grant, published Young Lions, serializes ongoing webcomic 2001 and runs Gaze Books. Comets Comets, which he runs with Jason Overby, is one the coolest websites- look at it, it's visually the coolest website- and the comics criticism on there are dead on, very smart, always several levels above what I am (and, I imagine, most people are) thinking.

I have no idea how I heard of Blaise Larmee. Matt Seneca said The Whale was his favorite comic of 2010, and Gaze Books published that book, so maybe somehow through that piece, but then I remember reading Blaise talking about his internet life in an interview with The Comics Journal, so maybe through there? But then I also remember some criticism I read somewhere that was only like, one or two lines, but really stood out...but he's someone I made a point to follow. He's a character, or maybe several characters- I really don't know. I think he's elusive, but I think he might say that he isn't. But I don't know Blaise Larmee at all.

I did a quick interview with Blaise last week to post with his mix. When he sent me his answers, he included a note that said "I spent a long time editing my answers down." I don't know if I believe him.

Adam: I heard about you when I really got into comics criticism, and more specifically critics-as-artists (and even more specifically, critics I agree with making comics I agree with). But then I really got into Blaise Larmee the character, this internet fucker making really great comics that really gets comics. Is there a part of you (the Blaise Larmee persona) that you want people to see first?

Blaise: No.

A: I've listened to your mix a few times, and while I really don't know you at all, it made sense that the mix would come from the same person who wrote Young Lions and 2001. It's all delicate, really thin, sometimes lo-fi- is that aesthetic something that you apply to all mediums?

B: I don't consciously maintain a single aesthetic but the perception of an author's output as a continuum is unavoidable.

A: What's the difference between Blaise Larmee and White Shasta?

B: We are different people.

A: I don't believe you. What's your favorite song on that mix?

B: I don't have a favorite.

A: Has Gaze Books become a full-time thing?

B: No.

I'll talk about 2001 for a minute, too, because every time I'm at Blaise's site I end up rereading it (and I did it again when grabbing the above picture). Because it's really nice-looking- and that's not really an opinion of the series (I'm not saying that it reads "nice"), but a description. The comic is super gentle, not hard or abrasive at all, and I haven't read anything like that in a while.

(I really wish I wasn't listening to this Matt Seneca podcast right now, because I asked him to comment on 2001 and I just listened to his response like, twenty minutes ago.)

2001 is a full-screen scroll-down comic that isn't really broken up into panels (or at least not panels that should be read and recognized as panels). I can't help but think that this is being drawn on an endless roll of paper that Larmee keeps scanning, because this thing is so fluid. Even though I know I'm reading a comic and not seeing every motion the characters are making, for some reason I read the comic in real time as if I am seeing it. And that probably has something to do with how deep that black background is. The characters are constantly moving, and it's as if Blaise is controlling the space (like OUTER space, really) around them and manipulating the characters, and readers, so that the characters are constantly moving in and out of the readers' frame, going someplace and then coming back but only making a few small motions between appearances. (Less like a carousel ride or something where you're repeatedly going past the same thing off the ride, more like you're in a car and the car next to you keeps slowing down for you to pass, then passing you, and you're a passenger able to see everything that's happening in that other car every time you two pass. You know?)

agoraphobic fashion: julian assange-themed san francisco street art: if you don't know now you know

2011-06-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

agoraphobic fashion: julian assange-themed san francisco street art: if you don't know now you know

Mike Skinner comments:

"modeling...sushi...horses..."

2011-05-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

Purging who I follow on Twitter, found this:

And now I finally have an image to put at the top of this blog. Maybe I'll go for sushi tonight to justify a "modeling/sushi/horses" tag.

MATT SENECA'S AFFECTED (PT 1)

2011-05-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

I COULD HOPE TO DO GREAT THINGS IN THIS EMPIRE.

IF SUCH BLOOD RAN THROUGH ME...

Matt Seneca is doing wild stuff right now. AFFECTED--Matt's latest project, a serialized graphic novel/webcomic drenched in reds and pinks, alienation, sex and LA culture--is the wildest, mixing nonfiction, fiction, "action comics, romance comics, art comics, sex comics," Ditko and noise into one scrolldown read that's cooler than anything else I am (and, maybe, you are) reading. This is a hot comic--looks great, totally loud, abrasive, sad, VIOLENT--and it's just starting.

AFFECTED was initially intended to be released as a zine, and Matt just finished what would have been the first "issue" last week. I'll be looking at AFFECTED's progress after each beat and talking to Matt about what's happening with the comic--the content, the creative process, whatever he wants readers to know. I'm also hoping that this helps me to think through comics better, smarter, differently, whatever.

This comic is very raw. AFFECTED starts with Matt Scyzoryk high and bleeding in an LA bar--vulnerable, at the base level of physical and mental health. Flashback to September, and Scyzoryk is on the Red Line to North Hollywood, listening to--what? Well, this:

Raw, expressed through abstract lines, breaks, shapes--all color, going into a colorless head. Totally different from the sound of the doorbell that rings two pages later. Not that different from the band Matt sees six pages after that. The reds are sudden--his reaction to his new Baghdadian roommate, the sex, the keyboard clicks in the police station, the gunshots!--and create this negative relationship with the color. Red is unwelcoming, jarring, and each splash of red puts Matt's anxieties and depressions on the reader. When Matt buys that gun in the final pages of the chapter, he is assuming control over that red, the RIGHT TO KILL! sparked by Ditko's MR. A--and that should make readers feel totally uncomfortable. Those are the best pages so far, abstractions that boil down to the buying of a gun, literal, physical, forceful.

Why do his arms hurt on the first page? Because that gun is heavy.

Adam: I'm just assuming that this whole thing is about you, and that you're shaping a story around it. Is that fair?

Matt: That's fair. It's not 100 percent confessional narrative, but everything in it at least has a basis in something I've experienced, mostly within the past nine months or so. Most of the book is pretty straight nonfiction, up to and including some characters' names, dialogue sequences...but it's kind of a "fictional nonfiction" where I'm not hesitating to mix in fiction bits to heighten the drama. Everything in the comic that's real is stuff I've already been through, and I don't need to re-experience these things by making art out of them. I want to tell a story, and if that means sharpening the focus of a scene at the expense of getting it exactly true to life, enhancing the impact of something with a little extra pathos, or just inserting something completely fictional, then that's what I'll do. It's about me, yeah, but it's my thoughts that are on every page. The reality of my life takes up slightly less of its space than that.

A: This whole thing is violent looking- the red, that helicopter light, both sex scenes, the Ditko bullet- but there's no real physical violence yet. Is that something you're leading to?

M: Yes, there's going to be physical violence in it, but mostly not of the fight-scene variety. When people start hurting each other it's going to be done in a pretty different way than I see it happen in most comics.

Actually, that's why I'm drawing a bunch of sex in it. I mean, I also have big points to make about Los Angeles's sexual culture, which I find totally horrifying, and sex is kind of the linchpin of the narrative. But the action, the human forms doing dynamic movement and interaction in space -- the stuff that comics usually use violence to depict -- is mostly going to be sexual. It's a much purer and more beautiful way of showing that kind of drawings for me. The violence isn't really going to be that kinetic. It also goes along quite well with some of the book's larger themes that I'm subbing in sex scenes for fight scenes, I think. Sex as physical confrontation, as conflict...it's interesting to explore that in comics form, and there are a lot of neat possibilities.

A: Is red your favorite color? "Flash Roughs," "Plastic Man Variations," BATHED in it.

M: Green is actually my favorite color, but that's because it's so serene and quiet to me...almost a holy feeling. When I draw comics I usually want them to jump out and grab you by the throat, and red is far and away the best color for that. There's also some study I saw a while back that said red initiates the early neural stages of human sexual response, which is definitely something I want to play to with this comic. The Flash and Plastic Man strips had a lot of red just cause that's those characters' color, and I don't usually like doing full-color comics. Affected is red because that's how it came to me. I never saw any of these scenes in any other color, you know? Sex is red, and so are fear and hatred. Los Angeles, especially North Hollywood where most of the comic is set, is gray. So is sadness and loneliness and boredom. When I think about this story those are just the colors I see.

A: You're doing something here that you did in "Flash Roughs," this impression of yourself on panels or pages you like (the Infantino in "Flash," Ditko here), and I really think it's working- like when a band covers a good song and the cover is really good too. You know? Do you want to say anything about that?

M: Yeah I do! Thanks for asking. I always kind of think most comics don't really explore their influences enough, or when they do it's all really coded, subtle, something readers won't understand unless they know their comics history. If I want to talk about Ditko or whoever, I'd rather just draw a fucking Ditko panel than like, a character doing weird hand gestures. Then there's also this thing of making comics criticism with comics, which just seems like the obvious thing to do... I mean, literary criticism comes in written form, and on a certain level it always feels false to me to try to talk about comics in another medium. It feels a lot more real to me this way. Less explaining, more evocation, maybe more understanding. Then there's also this thing where people who've read the comics I'm referencing will have associations and feelings that come with those works, and they'll bring them into their experience of my comics. So Ditko's Mr. A, which is going to be seen again before the end, is a crazy paranoid comic about a superhero who's basically a fascist -- the moment where it really became clear that the Spider-Man guy was totally nuts. Anyone who knows that or has read the comics is going to recall the same weird feelings those comics engender when they see that in Affected. It's just another way of trying to control the reader's experience.

Also, real fast, Blaise Larmee wrote a super intelligent piece on the problems with comics criticism a while back where he basically listed off the same problems I have with criticism -- it's all response based, it relies on the pre-existence of others' creative work... a big reason I went so hard at drawing comics after my career as a critic started blowing up was because it just felt so meaningless to me that I was only making work about other people's creations rather than creating myself. Larmee said "The critic must turn his or her gaze on his or her environment, and view his or her surroundings not as a parade of critical objects which must be reviewed, catalogued, and responded to, but as the setting of a new work yet to be written." That's what I'm trying to do, using the comics I've read as my surroundings and the ones I make as the setting for exploring thoughts and feelings about them.

A: How much of AFFECTED do you have completed? How quickly are you making the comic?

M: I've done about 45 or 50 pages. I started in March. I'm trying to do at least 4 pages a week, more if at all possible -- I did the first 20 in a huge burst of energy and now I'm kind of slowing down, being more careful and meticulous with them, so it's a goal I sometimes hit and sometimes don't. I want to make it as quick as I possibly can... I was thinking I'd try to finish it by September, but with the rate I'm going and the way I keep coming up with new scenes and expanding old ones, it's looking like it might take me until the end of the year.

A: What band did Matt Scyzoryk go see when he met up with the craigslist girl?

M: That's Captain Ahab, a really amazing noise/electro/party music group that's been around LA forever. They had a song in "Snakes on a Plane"! The song they're playing is "Death To False Techno", you can see the lyrics to the chorus scrolling over the panels in that scene. The other two acts you can see on the marquee in that page are Foot Village, an incredible harsh-noise drum circle, and Kyle H. Mabson, who DJs at a lot of clubs using an Ipod and a bunch of circuit-bending equipment, playing shit like Katy Perry and Disturbed and warping it like crazy. Just some cool LA bands that nobody who doesn't live here will have really heard of. I was originally going to draw the band Health in that scene because they're probably the "best" group out of the LA noise scene, but now they've gotten all big and their shit is on Pitchfork and I didn't want it to be some trendster thing. Ahab works better for Affected anyway -- their record After The Rain My Heart Still Dreams is like the truest piece of art ever made about what Los Angeles does to people, a concept album about a sweet young girl turning into one of the sexy club-hopping monsters you can see every night traipsing up and down Cahuenga Boulevard. If anybody wants to understand what LA is really all about they should listen to "Party Baby" and keep in mind that while it's satirical, it's not at all exaggerated.

I wanted to give a shoutout to the LA noise scene mostly just because that's where I hang out, but also because I think it's kind of unjustly overlooked. I moved to LA in 2008, right before the scene at the venue the Smell really crested and gave the world bands like No Age, Wavves, Best Coast. But now that all the media attention and record labels (and the bands who got big) have gone away, I think it's even stronger and more interesting, because the fringe bands who didn't get the offer to "sell out" are now the figureheads, and their influence is what the new bands showing up are feeding on. Bands like Ahab, Foot Village, Health, Tearist, guys like Kyle Mabson... they're never going to get the attention they deserve (well, maybe Health will), but damn if going to see an LA noise show can't make you wonder if the world is just now ending or whether it already ended a long time ago. I wanted to give a little tribute to that, because the music is really the only thing I like about living here.

If people want to listen to music while they're reading the pages that are up so far though, the proper soundtrack isn't anything from LA, but Chopin's Nocturne in C Minor, op. 48.

A: Are we going to see Matt playing music at all? Like under the names Blair/Cloud/Anorexia? (you know, it's really weird to refer to the story's character by name when I'm talking to you, especially with how autobiographical this comic is- because I really AM talking to you, about you, even though I'm talking about a character. It's kind of cool. It also seems like I'm constantly referring to you by name, which is really weird.)

M: Nah, no music playing in this comic -- I'd have to bend the narrative toward that to explain this guy getting up onstage with a guitar, and I think it'd be too big a digression.

A: How old is Matt Scyzoryk?

M: Hmm, good question! I hadn't even thought about the actual number of years old he is... we'll say he's no longer a teenager. He was a kid in school when 9/11 happened, when the Iraq War started. He grew up and became the person he is during the George W. Bush presidency.

A: How old is Matt Seneca?

M: He just turned 21 last week.

AFFECTED is updated every Monday and Thursday.

AFFECTED

MATT SENECA COMIX

DEATH TO THE UNIVERSE

MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MATT SENECA

"Plastic Man Variations" is the best Plastic Man comic

2011-04-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

WATCH OUT BITCH! HE COULD EVEN MAYBE BE THIS COMIX PAGE!

I read the first issue of Kyle Baker's Plastic Man series, and Plastic Man was a fire hydrant in that one issue of All-Star Batman, but I think those are the only two comics I've read with Plastic Man in them (I have a few other issues from Baker's series, but I don't think they're all self-contained so I've only read the first one). But Matt Seneca's "Plastic Man Variations" is probably cooler than both of those. Plastic Man as an add for himself, super phallic shades, that hatching, and if you're wondering why his tongue isn't bleeding in the tape panel, it's because the thought bubble is doing it instead.

Later (today, next week, months from now) I'm going to write about that "Flash Roughs" piece. Which is probably the opposite of this, right?

MATT SENECA COMIX

DEATH TO THE UNIVERSE

I INTERVIEWED MATT SENECA

DOUBLE SHOT: Real Housewives of Miami thoughts (2.22.11 and 3.1.11)

2011-03-02T06:23:00.000-08:00

I'm looking to make your mind melt and keep record of the entire first season of Real Housewives of Miami. I didn't think to do this after last week's episode, so I'll be posting my twitter feed from the first two episodes together. ~~Adrianna~~ Elsa is the obvious favorite, right?

Episode 1 (2.22.11)

Key
RHOM: Real Housewives of Miami, duh
RHOA: Real Housewives of Atlanta, which had just ended when the first Miami episode aired

Ramona's crazy eyes

EW THAT CHILD/ANIMAL
i'm married to scottie pippen too
what's with these animal children spawns?
are we about to see a #rhoa #rhom crossover? #no
i looooooooooooove seeing the mind behind fashion
look at the cool art books, mom
well peter's dumb
elsa died in 2007
trap him in her tomb
trap him in her womb
nice cameo from ramona's crazy eyes
they're eating elsa

Episode 2 (3.1.11)

Last night, Cristy Rice came off as a completely normal person (no), Larsa flirted with her son (strangely not uncommon with this batch), someone else had a weird mom, and Adrianna said the word "jealous" really cool.

Key
Handsome Man Pepin: Chef Pepin, slave to the witches
Julee Cruise: Twin Peaks singer, famous supermodel
Rick Ross: Lea's girlfriend, has been in both episodes, tweets at @rickross305
@cubanrice: Cristy's twitter account, which I didn't actually believe until I saw Andy Cohen tweet at her (look at that profile picture!)
Pit Boss: Award-winning Animal Planet crime drama

adrianna loves double dog daring
wait more rick ross?! haaaaaaaaaaaa
julee cruise got old
at least alexia isn't condescending
shoutout handsome man pepin
pepin is making strange women soup
this is a weekday?!
oh she's a good singer @cubanrice should record an album maybe later this season?
whoooaaaaaa really good "vibration" sound
oh larsa
i kind of like the name larsa though
lots of strong mother-son relationships this season
oh lots of cool moms too
horrifying details
there he is! just a regular cast member! @rickross305
lots of people watching adrianna not get into the club
he is great! what was his name? ROY?
oh so he's riiiiiiiiiiiiiiich
grey goose 7 and a lime @cubanrice
wait there's boxing too? and that guy wanted people dancing on tables? very wild
i'd rather be watching pit boss
a protocol, a code of how to operate
see you weirdo women next week

Thanks. I'll see you weirdo women next Monday for Bethenny Ever After. Maybe I'll try and get Andy Cohen to do an interview between then?

"Swate"

2011-02-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

A new Das Racist song is up on Stereogum (here) and I took notes. These are the best.

swaaaaaaaaaaaate.

everything lakutis says sounds mean, even though not everything is. a lot of it is, though.

himanshu says he'd rather smoke sess and watch ernest than rap in earnest, but i think he's actually rapping in earnest. i'm not sure what it's about, though, so maybe he's not.

i liked the "snapple caps/apple jacks" part in that freestyle thing last week and i'm glad it's a real thing. "bump ratatat" is cool sounding. "dumplings and cheese."

this chorus is like das racist if they smoked weed.

i hate the phrase "bitch hair," and both victor and lakutis say it.

these vocals sound really, really good.

i can't tell if victor is being funny in that last part about the plastic or if he's being serious, and which one would be less funny. not really a good thing?

Was I wrong?

I Asked Matt Seneca Eight Questions

2010-12-16T06:42:00.000-08:00

Matt Seneca is a writer and artist, and blogs at Death to the Universe. He has also written for Newsarama, Comic Book Resources and most recently for Comics Alliance. Matt's writing makes it obvious that he knows a great deal about comics, and loves writing in and about the medium. His blog is cool, and it's smart; when I asked him a few questions, his answers were also cool and smart.

Adam McIlwee: Not that it is suggestive of your writing, but I'm under the impression that you're pretty young. Am I correct? (I'm 21 and consider that kind of young, you know?)

Matt Seneca: Yep, I'm 20. I guess that's kind of young, though I hope I won't be the youngest guy in comics blogging much longer. I've never even met anybody younger than me who reads comics. It seems like I came into the medium right before a lot of interesting stuff happened -- right before Scott Pilgrim, right before the manga boom -- and I'd be interested in seeing how people who had their real formative experiences in those things approached the medium. Guess I'll wait a few more years and then find out.

AM: Did you start writing about comics for websites other than your own, or did Death to the Universe attract other sites to approach you for contributions? Or has it been a bit of both?

MS: It started as just my blog, then I started getting approached by other people once DTU started taking off a little. I've never gone out and looked for work, which is probably a good thing because when people come to you they tend to come with better deals. Though maybe I'd be further along if I was more driven to get my writings on comics out tere to the widest audience possible. My mentality with this stuff is more geared toward creating a body of work, a good solid block of critical literature on comics, and if people are interested enough they'll find it.

AM: You identify yourself as a musician on your blog. Are you in a band?

MS: I've been in a few different bands in my life, but right now not really. I play small noise gigs around Los Angeles, voice and guitar and effects. Sometimes with a drummer, sometimes not. As soon as I can decide on a name for my solo show I guess it'll be a band, but as it is I keep performing under different names. Last show it was Cloud, time before that it was Anorexia, time before that it was Blair. I'm probably not focused enough on my career in music to really justify putting "musician" up there on my bio with writing and comics, but music is a big enough facet of my creativity that I feel like it's kind of necessary. Like people wouldn't be getting the full picture of who I am if I didn't mention it. Writing and comics are both sort of this frenzied isolation, flailing around in your room for weeks or months before you have anything you can show anybody, but music is so communal and immediate, it fulfills a side of me that I can't do without. It's art the second I move my hands, you know? Just gimme an amp!

AM: You have praised Neal Adams' Batman: Odyssey (on Newsarama) and Rob Liefeld's generosity in his pencilling technique (on DTTU). Assuming that views dissent from those of mainstream comic fans, are there any other books that you think are undeserving of such cynical criticism?

MS: I'm not sure anyone else whose work I admire has such a culture of haters built around them as Liefeld does, but let's see. I love Milo Manara's work, I think a lot of people have a tendency to dismiss it out of hand because of how porn-y and unselfconsciously "low" it is. I think the latter-day works of Frank Miller, DK2 and Sin City and All Star Batman, are head and shoulders above his older Marvel/DC work, with the possible exception of Ronin. A lot of people hate on the new "pencil garde" of comics artists (or whatever you wanna call 'em), people like Aidan Koch and Blaise Larmee, but I'm incredibly excited to see where they take the medium.

Then there's just the fact that a lot of older alt-comix fans are dismissive of genre books, and a lot of superhero fans are equally dismissive of indie comics. That seems to be disappearing among younger readers, thank god -- but it's still something that's there in the medium, and it pushes a lot of creators toward defining themselves in opposition to something rather than according to what's inside themselves. That can still produce great work, but I always find it kind of depressing. It's not like comics doesn't have the room for both things. I think comics can contain anything.

AM: Are your tastes in music as unapologetic?

MS: Oh, probably. My two favorite pieces of music are Fryderyk Chopin's "Nocturne in C Minor, op. 48" and Scott Walker's "Farmer in the City", neither of which are so great to play to a crowded room of people. But give me something that makes me feel like I've never felt this much before! Music for me is never about a background or a groove or a pleasant tidbit, it's about intensity of experience. Whether that comes through something jarring in the lyrics or an unexpected instrumental or vocal performance or the sheer power the entire piece puts off, if it transports me somewhere else I don't much care where. I listen to a lot of noise -- Mars, Wolf Eyes, pre-Velvets John Cale -- but I also listen to softer, prettier music like Insides or Slowdive or Pink Floyd -- even fuckin' Debbie Reynolds! -- and get the same things out of it. There's an actual physical sensation music can put to me, this seizing tremoring shiver -- and my vision blurs and I can't breathe -- and it doesn't matter if its roaring distortion of the clearest voice in the world. If it cuts through all the traffic noise and weather patterns and petty garbage floating around in my head and makes me pay attention to one thing alone, I'm into it regardless.

AM: You liveblogged Deadpool Max #2 drunk, and it was funny, but it was also pretty spot-on and made me think about perceptions of reading comics "altered." I've heard people attempt to devalue a book by saying "the only way to enjoy it is stoned," or "you'd need to be on drugs to understand that," and it's so base-level and thoughtless. It's also strange because there are a lot of books that are obviously influenced by drug use on the part of the artist (including the writing), but that seems to be acceptable as long as the story is coherent and the art looks nice. I guess what I'm saying is that substances, drugs, play a really bizarre role in the reader/writer dynamic, and I was wondering if you had anything to say about that.

MS: Well, there's no way in hell I'd appreciate comics aesthetically as much as I do now if I hadn't read a bunch of them high. Saying you "have to be high" to read a comic and appreciate it is ridiculous, but drugs just put you in a different head, make you see everything a different way, and that's a really valuable thing no matter what kind of art you're approaching. I think they work really well with comics though, because it's a medium that's basically powered by acts of symbolism, and drugs can often help you grasp the deeper meanings in them, or find your own meanings. Also, whereas with listening to music the time it takes to experience the piece is always the same, with comics I think a lot of people rush through way too fast when they're sober. A good 22-page comic isn't a fifteen-minute read, it's an hour or two at least. Drugs can slow you down, really put you inside the pictures or make you consider something that might fly over your head a little more deeply. Plus beautiful art can be greatly enhanced by certain substances. I've never liked a comic high I didn't straight, but reading comics high has really helped me with the way I look at the medium. Like, did you notice it took me an hour to read that Deadpool comic? (And I guess I may as well state for the record: I wasn't just drunk while I was doing that.)

AM: I had assumed that typing it took a while, but I also would have felt cheated if that "altered state" was only a result of drinking. Do you plan to extend the your blogging from comics to other media outlets?

MS: Probably not, though you never know. I may write a few movie reviews here and there over the next year, but comics is the one medium I feel I can really approach as a scholar rather than a fan. I'm not really comfortable enough with the breadth of my knowledge on other media to go at them as a critic. Literature is an exception, but I have no interest whatsoever in literary criticism. Unlike in comics, with prose everything just gets put on the page. I don't need anything beyond it. I will be serializing a novel, fittingly titled "Death to the Universe" on DTU next year, though.

AM: Are you attempting to make a career out of writing (about) comics? Do you have any other plans for the future? Are you in college?

MS: Ha! If such a thing were possible, then hell yeah -- but unfortunately I can't even pay for my comics purchases with the money I make from doing this stuff. Nah, I'm in it for the love of the medium, and any cash it brings my way is just a nice bonus. If I could make a living just writing, that would be great. Doesn't matter what, though I would like my novels to get published just so people can read them. I don't much care if I make a dime. Speaking of future plans, though, I'm going to be teaching a course on comics at UCLA this spring, so that might dovetail comics out into something that pays the bills. I think I'll probably be like so many recreational writers and end up with a career in academia that allows me to write on the side. I won't ask anything of what I'm doing, but I'll never give it up, either. Come what may and all, you know?

Check out Death to the Universe and Matt's comics, Matt Seneca Comix.