Dave Baker and Nicole Goux’s latest graphic novel, Punk’n Heads, arrived last week from Top Shelf. It’s a punk rock coming-of-age story about a young woman whose art school dreams get derailed when she ends up fronting a horror-punk band called the Punk’n Heads.
I spoke with Baker and Goux about the book before its release, but he had a lot more to say — specifically about the unlikely through line from the Misfits to My Chemical Romance to a graphic novel about sad 20-somethings in Los Angeles. We’re happy to share this thoughtful essay from him; my thanks to the author for sharing this with us.
by Dave Baker
When you set about creating any fictional world, you have to ask yourself an inevitably lengthening set of questions. “Who are these characters?” “What does their journey reflect about my interior world?” “What is it that I’m trying to communicate about my life through these characters?” And “does anyone else like sad young adults smooching half as much as me?”
These questions can go on and on and on, if you’re not careful. At a certain point you have to stop thinking about the story you’re writing and just get to the brick by brick workman-like task of actually making the book.
While you’re doing this it’s important to have a creative North Star. Something that you’re continually striving for. A totemic vision of what the book could be, if you play your cards right. Each book that my creative partner Nicole Goux and I make tends to have a different set of these objectives. Sometimes it’s to capture an energy or an emotional feeling. Sometimes it’s to make something that feels like a set of movies, or a novel, or a band. We typically have a short hand list of these guiding lights that serve as a sigil for all of our creative effort to build towards.
For our most recent effort Punk’n Heads, a coming of age romance graphic novel about a group of kids who live in a flop house and play in a band together, that creative north star was … well, honestly, it was a few things. We’ve both come up in the DIY zine and self-publishing scene here in Los Angeles. As such, we wanted to make a book that captured the experience of trying to be creative in the face of romantic friction, existential nihilism, and the struggles of existing in the City of Angels.
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