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.
If i’m completely honest, though. The true northstar? Photos of Glen Danzig from the beginning of The Misfits. We wanted to make something with the energy, aura, and overall gothic ambiance of everyone’s favorite Once and Future Wolverine. (That’s a Wizard Magazine’s Casting Call joke for those not in the know. Thank you.)
I’ve met Danzig a few times over the years at comic book conventions and around L.A. I can’t say that I’m a fan of him interpersonally, but I love the dude’s commitment to The Bit. And I, somewhat ironically, love his failed comics publishing endeavor from the 90’s and his less than Auteurial cinematic efforts. But those aren’t the reasons why Danzig, in all his spooky glory, served as such an inspiration for this book.
Danzig and the Misfits are a totemic and foundational influence for an entire swath of horror punks, rockabillies, and Hot Topic Mall Goths, myself included. Their band emblem, the Crimson Ghost, taken from the 1946 serial of the same name, has been sold in Hot Topics and Targets across the globe. When we set up a colony on the moon? There’s inevitably going to be a strip mall in it and housed within those air-tight walls will be a kiosk selling Misfits gear.
Now, obviously, commercial success doesn’t necessitate artistic viability. But it’s a shorthand for the level of impact the band has had with millions of disgruntled, horror movie obsessed, teens and outsiders. Again, myself included.
And, shocking to everyone at the time, the band proved to be something that had a completely untapped audience prior to their existence. Like what did Monster Kids ™ have before Danzig and Jerry Only came on the scene? Monster Mash? No fucking thank you.
Look, later Misfits might not be my thing. Michael Graves is no Danzig, but there’s something about that first cycle of albums, the refined aesthetic, and the confrontational earnestness that the band displayed that’s just instantly magnetic to a person of a certain age.
And that’s exactly what we were trying to do with our book.
Well, y’know, in the way that a pair of cartoonists working in an antiquated medium that largely went out of cultural relevance over 70 years ago can.
In some ways we probably took the My Chemical Romance approach to being influenced by the Misfits more than anything else. Gerard Way, noted frontman and Eisner Award winning comics writer in his own right, has often talked about MCR being “What if The Smiths and The Misfits had a baby?” And you can see that pretty directly in their aesthetic, musical themes, and narrative ideals of mental health, heartbreak, and an attempt to soldier on in the face of existential struggle.
Punk’n Heads is that exact equation… translated to the printed page. The book follows Hanna Lipsky, an art school drop out, who, through a series of unfortunate events, finds herself fronting a band that plays horror punk music dressed up like pumpkin themed characters. To add insult to injury, Hannah starts dating the bassist in the Punk’n Heads, forming an ever more complicated network of relationships with the band members.
Our book took the core elements of MCR and tried to transpose those into a movie… but on paper? Does that make any sense? In some ways our book is about the romance and heartbreak of dating people you shouldn’t. But it’s also about the hopefulness of discovering solace in the things that go bump in the night and the shared trauma of the fact that we all love and we all lose.
The fact that Gerard Way has been so open about his own struggles with mental health and depression is something that’s endlessly inspiring to me, both as a person and as a writer. It takes a lot to be vulnerable and tell the truth of your horrific day-to-day life.
That’s something that we worked to build into our book. The fact that the music and the act of creation was going to be something that was going to be depicted as not an easy path, but a struggle. Something to overcome and embrace, simultaneously. Survival isn’t enough. You have to work for more than that. You have to strive for more. And as a young person both the Misfits and MCR gave me visions of what could be, even if I didn’t really comprehend what that literally meant while I was initially being exposed to their works.
Which ties into another theme of our book. Life doesn’t always take you where you think. You make the best plans you can, and you do your best, but sometimes things are out of your control. For Hannah, she thought she was going to art school to become a fine art painter. And, due to a series of events, she ended up being a singer in this band. And the moral is… sometimes you have to embrace the thing right in front of you, over the idealized vision of what you thought you were working towards.
Granted, I don’t think Danzig has ever had that type of emotional awareness, but Gerard definitely does. You can see it all throughout MCRs output. And that’s something that’s fascinating to me. That you as an artist aren’t really in control of how your work is taken in, metabolized and used to create something else. The DNA strand of Misfits to MCR to this book is a pretty straight light, from my vantage point. Sure, not everyone who likes the Misfits wants to read about sad 20-somethings crying and fucking their way across LA, but I’d bet you that the majority of those My Chem Tumblr Girlies sure would.
At the end of the day, I want to be able to look back and see a book shelf of things I’ve made that have made people feel less alone. That’s what MCR and the Misfits have done for me. Do I like the aesthetics of skeleton shirts and devil locks? Yeah, sure. But that’s just the coat of paint. That’s not the real mechanisms under the hood that keep us all coming back over and over and over again. It’s the emotions of these things that spark interest and joy and loneliness in all of us year after year. And, as such, that’s exactly what the goal of our book is. To turn The Black Parade or Walk Among Us or Meat Is Murder into a weird bootleg movie about how hard it is to make a living being an artist in Los Angeles.
I guess I’ll leave you on this note, survival is not enough. Make things with your friends. Love people and art, and hopefully, one day you’ll find a way to pay rent. And if not? You can always work at Target selling Misfit shirts.