by Alan David Doane

I've been reading and enjoying and reviewing and recommending the comics of James Kochalka for years now. I was introduced to his unique brand of cartooning with Monkey vs. Robot, but found a whole new level of appreciation and affection for his autobiographical American Elf daily diary strips. Throughout his career, Kochalka has proven himself capable of a wide range of material, from the all-ages appeal of Peanutbutter and Jeremy to that dirty little critter Fancy Froglin and everywhere in between. He's created a pretty large body of work at this point, but still continues to surprise me -- with his new book Super-F*ckers looking to be quite unlike anything he's done before. I'm intrigued by the differences in style he is using for Super-F*ckers, described below, and extremely excited to see how he does telling a continuing tale about this many new and original characters. So when Newsarama's Matt Brady asked me to get the scoop on Super-F*ckers, I was delighted to do so. It's worth noting, too, that for the next week or so Top Shelf is holding a Three Dollar Sale, offering many of Kochalka's best works way, way below cover price. So if you are interested in looking up some of his work, you ought to click over to the sale and buy up some Kochalka bargains while they remain available.

You've dabbled with superheroes before, with your Hulk Annual story, and pieces in the DC Bizarro collections. While you're probably best known to comics readers for your autobiographical American Elf strips, you seem to keep coming back to the guys in capes. Why is that?

As a kid, superheroes scared the hell out of me. The angry faces and grimacing, the displays of terrible power...it was all just totally overwhelming. I didn't like it, but it made a big impression. This was when I was pretty little. Now that I realize that the world itself is
full of angry faces and grimacing and terrible displays of power, it seems like a good metaphorical vehicle.

For a couple of years I've been thinking over what I call my Evil Universe Theory. We live in a universe at war. Here on earth various factions are all fighting each other, jockeying for position. And at the same time our bodies are at war with viruses and bacteria. And without retracing the whole thought process, I followed this to an odd conclusion that all matter and energy is evil. Every chemical reaction is a battle, every movement is an attack, every act is an act of war. Then I took this concept, sublimated it entirely and wrote a really goofy, wild superhero story on top of it. I also removed the judgment of calling it "evil." I'm sure I'm confusing the hell out of you now. None of this is necessary information to understand the comic book, I swear.

Tell us about the Super-F*ckers: Who are they, what do they do, and do
their parents approve of their team name?

Well, SuperF*ckers is not the name of the superhero team. It's actually just the name of the comic book. The superhero team remains unnamed in the book itself.

Basically, it's a bunch of 19-year-old superheroes living in a big clubhouse together, playing video games, trying to think up new ways to get high, holding tryouts to recruit new members, teasing each other, trying to spy on each other naked, worrying about who's gay and who's not, and converting to Christianity. SuperDan, their leader, and Percy, his sidekick are trapped in Dimension Zero, and I guess things have started to deteriorate while he was away. Every character has a complicated back story, but I don't really reveal any of that. The story starts on issue #271.

As of this date, I'm just about to finish drawing the second issue (it skips ahead to #274). I have one page to go.

As to the name Super-F*ckers: In full-colour, it seems to me like a superhero team book from James Kochalka is just off-beat and fun enough of an idea to get you a pretty wide audience. The name Super F*ckers, though, seems to pretty severely limit the potential audience. So, I have to ask, why did you pick Super F*ckers for a title?

I really tried to make this book "all ages" but the characters absolutely would not comply. For one thing, all the characters started to swear like crazy, really foul and funny swears.

When I first started working on the book, I thought the title was going to be "Infinite Lives," because I thought that would encompass some of my thoughts about video game reality, and the interconnectedness of all things in this great Universal War in which we live. Anyhow, the book started to change when the characters started swearing. When I first suggested the title SuperF*ckers, Top Shelf said absolutely not. And then they actually read the first issue, and were like Yeah! SuperF*ckers!!! Damn! That's got to be title.

Other than Fancy Froglin and your daily online strips, you haven't worked much in full-color before; I notice the cover of the first Super-F*ckers seems to be a blend of art and photography, and I remember you told me some time ago that you were using a 16-panel grid for this one. What can you tell me about the artistic approach are you taking to the series?

There are little back-up stories in the book which combine drawing and photography, and I use that on the covers, but the main story is colored line work, with flat areas of color, like the way I did Fancy Froglin. Also, since I'm using a 16-panel grid instead of my normal 4-panel grid it's really the equivalent of a graphic novel. The book is packed tight...the 16-panel grid was really necessary to accommodate what I was going for with the large cast of characters with intertwining storylines.

Another project of yours coming out soon is The Cute Manifesto, which contains a lot of your essays-in-comics form on a number of topics. What do you hope readers get out of The Cute Manifesto?

I hope it helps them to become more powerful cartoonists. I hope it helps them to become mentally healthy and strong, creative, happy people.

Super F*ckers ships in May from Top Shelf

Alan David Doane is the editor of Comic Book Galaxy and a contributor to The Comics Journal and other comics-related publications and websites.