by Russell Burlingame
Young Liars #10
Russell Burlingame Talks with David Lapham
David Lapham's Stray Bullets made him one of the most respected of the "indie comics" creators during the '90s comic boom. Standing shoulder to shoulder with works like Jeff Smith's Bone and Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise, Stray Bullets established Lapham as a comics talent non-pareil. His current series for DC's Vertigo Comics-Young Liars-is one of the great mature readers books on the market today, with bizarre, compelling characters who you hate to love and love to hate and a disjointed, nonlinear narrative. Lapham describes the recent #10 as "the point where [the characters] all started to nosedive."
Comic Related: Ceecee is one of those characters who I think has been hardest to sympathize with the whole series. While this issue makes her a little more human, she's not a ton more sympathetic. How hard is it to write a character like that, who's not exactly BAD, but who's never someone the reader can really relate to?
David Lapham: Wow. You picked a helluva one to start out with. Assuming the first part about Big C being the hardest to sympathize with is true--and I'm not sure it is--I would say she's not at all hard to write, because she is who she is (she yam what she yam). I think what's hard to write is to try and forcibly make a character sympathetic by having them do things completely out of character in order to gain sympathy. Like in this episode I didn't show the part where CeeCee, while on her weekly Meals-On-Wheels run, saved an elderly woman's life by performing CPR for ninety minutes until the paramedics arrived. I could have shown that! Could have! Or the time she busted up that dog-fighting ring. Could have! But I didn't, and do you want to know why?
Well, I'll tell you anyway.
Because a girl like CeeCee Horlick is not asking for your sympathy. She doesn't want your pity. She's bigger than that. Way bigger.
And also because she thinks that Danny or Runco are the most unsympathetic...or Annie...or Donnie...well, not Donnie, but she's definitely got more sympathy factor than Sadie. I mean, come on, the girl's a vegetable.
CR: Was this always thought of as a one-and-done issue? It seems like the whole thing could have played itself out over a much longer time in a serial medium like this.
DL: I like self-contained episodes. They aren't all like this, but from Stray Bullets to now, I like to tell a complete story that then fits into a larger whole. It has more impact and meaning that way. Also, you never know what issue is going to be somebody's first.
CR: So what was Danny's motivation in destroying the arm? It seems to me that it could have been an invaluable asset in terms of proving to her parents/whoever that Ceecee really did need help, and besides that I could have just as easily seen her beating on him to the best of her ability as collapsing like that.
DL: Danny was acting completely altruistically. He was doing the best he could in the moment to save Big C's life. Whether this was really to help her, or he was seeing a reflection of himself that he was trying to save is another question, and I doubt even Danny knows the answer to that one.
CR: Have you had any experience with miscarriages? It's not as typical a dramatic theme anymore as abortion, and you really seemed to nail (based on my limited experience) the just absolute misery that the mother endures right after.
DL: I have three kids and thank God, no miscarriages, but it was a struggle, I am acutely aware of all that can go wrong with trying to bring a child into the world.
CR: Danny's another example of a character who I think would be a blast to write. On an issue-to-issue basis, it's almost hard to sympathize with him at least once a month. How hard is it not to fall into the trap of making the main character someone the readers want to love?
DL: There you go again. Bagging on my poor characters. Just because they would sell each other out for a twenty and pack of smokes....No. Look, yes it's a LOT of fun to write an obsessed character, which Danny basically is. He'll do anything for and about Sadie. So I can write to extremes. A lot of fun. There's no temptation to make him more likable. Not even a thought because basically I like Danny a lot. I like all my characters. If I didn't like them I would definitely change them or probably kill them off--though that's not to say that just because I kill a character means I don't like them....
CR: The sequence where he wants to peel people away from someone who's sobbing uncontrollably, even if she is a bitch, to give them good news about the band makes everything he does afterwards seem a little suspect. Was that intentional?
DL: Could be, but I think he was just being self-absorbed. After all, he had some GREAT news, AND he's been camped out all night, so he had been through a lot. CeeCee's not the only one with problems y'know....
CR: The subplot with Dr. Macutchen was particularly interesting in this issue because, to me, it gave a lot of flavor to the issue without adding anything to the primary narrative--it wasn't really part of the larger, miscarriage story any more than the one random night of coke was. How do you go about trying to craft something that feels real and important like that, in only a couple of pages?
DL: Well, when a person becomes self destructive, they tend to dive down rabbit holes. They entwine themselves in destructive situations. I'm sure CeeCee went down a lot of these holes, these incidents just stood out. I think in just a few frames, you we can all see how horrible and perverse a place she's gotten into--even for CeeCee. Plus, if you remove the sad part, I though it was kinda funny.
CR: The discovery of the arm, and Sadie's trusting nature, really work to Danny's advantage in this issue. What's it say for him, though, that at the low point of her life, Ceecee can still manipulate him to do more or less exactly what she wants?
DL: It says hormones are a bitch? All's fair in love and war? It says Danny's a screw up and had plenty more trials and tribulations coming his way? Or maybe it says, Danny has more than a passing hate for Big C. Stay tuned...
CR: This feels very much like a stand-alone issue, especially with the mention of Ceecee being more or less back to usual when she returned to the group. Will we see fallout from some of the ancillary threads, such as her affair with the professor or Donnie's disappearance, in future issues?
DL: As I said I like stories to work all by themselves, which I think this does. However, yes, these events will come back into play in the future, but also, if you place this past event into a larger context, it's the point where this group of friends ceased to be a positive force in each others lives. This is the point where they all started to nose dive.
CR: I can't help but ask, with the "you never know with us liars" ending--are we trusting in a narrator throughout this series who may not be trustworthy? How much of this book is suspect simply because Danny is telling the story?
DL: It's all suspect. Wait till the next few issues...I will say though, that there's a clear and underlying truth, unknown to even Danny, which drives the series, which is why it stays cohesive even as some of the specifics are...um...debunked.
Want to talk to David?
Visit him at
STANDARD ATTRITION
jasonaaron.org/index.php
blog comments powered by Disqus