A Bad Egg: Joseph Patrick Larkin

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JOSEPH PATRICK LARKIN may or may not be a rotten human being; what you think isn't important. (Except that it is, desperately so.)

The author and artist behind "The Arcade of Cruelty," an autobiographical comic-with-writing in a big, plush package, dances nimbly across the line between the persona on the page and the charmer on the phone, one disavowing the other in rapid succession.

Despite the fact that Larkin has basically opened his brain — and his past — and dumped them between covers, figuring out which is Pinocchio and which the real boy is a mug's game. What you see — collages of sexy pictures, random and fecund sketchbook excerpts, beautiful monotypes of his "real" art, pages-long attacks on fellow indie comic writers, a good chunk of annotated school yearbook and, mostly, scabrous rehashing of a truly woeful romantic history — is the worst impulses of a too-smart, cripplingly self-conscious human being retched into art and writing, and it's as funny as it is painful to read.

We spoke with Larkin from his home in Slidell, La., about the book, a conversation that devolved into rhapsodies on the alcopop Sparks, unprintable subjects and personal confession. Weird? Only if you're still reading superhero comics. You won't find anything like "Arcade of Cruelty" at a Border's near you, but you can find it at Larkin's Web site, also-ran.com.

» EXPRESS: So, the book is a persona, right?
» LARKIN: The book's a big act. I'm a doll. That's actually a lie -- the book is the truth but this, right now, is an act, just so you know.

» EXPRESS: So, your book is out ...
» LARKIN: Let's say it's "out." You can buy it in, like, one store in America. It's not even in New Orleans, to give you some idea of how much this town likes me.

» EXPRESS: Then how did you find Express?
» LARKIN: Oh, God. I don't know. There's this endless labyrinth of Web sites I look at every day. And if someone seems receptive, if they review another type of graphic novel ... every so often, you get lucky and find certain publications that will actually support this faltering genre. It's such a difficult book and I didn't realize how difficult it was until I started sending it out to people and I got really nasty reviews and e-mails.

» EXPRESS: You do realize it's basically an announcement that you never want to get laid again?
» LARKIN: Oh! Here's the bitter irony of that! The last girl I dated, I actually gave her a copy of the book and that kind of sealed the deal for me. Now that, I think, speaks volumes about the kind of girl I date. You don't want to read this book and not be horrified by the way I'm presented in it. I hope that people see that it's ironic and just the way I present myself.

» EXPRESS: Maybe it's your taste in women.
» LARKIN: I've gone through a whole string of train wrecks of women who were far more damaged than I was, so maybe I need like a mother figure. … There's no marriage and kids in my future at all. I couldn't even conceive of dating a girl for longer than a month, but that's because of the kind of women I date. About a month ago, I was juggling like two blackout drunk girls at a time, which isn't hard to do in New Orleans. It kinda makes you rethink your desire or needs or whatever.

» EXPRESS: I like the monotypes in the book.
» LARKIN: It's interesting, because most people hate those. I noticed that every bad review has singled out those as unnecessary. But I don't think they understand that it's a parody of an art book. It's like a parody of this Henry Darger book I was reading - I thought it was really obvious. It seems essential to include art in there, too, to complete the illusion. People always say things like, "You could take out half the book, and it would be better."

» EXPRESS: It proves you're not just damaged art-scum.
» LARKIN: No, I'm very versatile; I'm complicated, you know what I mean? Wait -- this is the stuff I should be saying to girls.

» EXPRESS: Is there any money to be had in self-publishing?
» LARKIN: Oh, I'll never break even. That's never gonna happen. From what I understand of the publishing game, you never break even. There are so many incidental costs that you have to go through that first time. I had to register the fonts we used, that was, like, $800 I never saw coming.

» EXPRESS: Your style is naive, but you're obviously trained.
» LARKIN: I went to art school. I went to "art school" in quotes. I went to Louisiana Tech University, which is a real school, I just wanna make that clear. But I didn't learn anything. You don't learn how to draw or anything. If you have any ability, you learn yourself. You learn from books you read or looking at other stuff.

» EXPRESS: What did you read?
» LARKIN: I certainly read comics as a kid and I still read them from time to time, but I hate comics. Ivan Brunetti, Joe Max, a guy named Seth is good. [ Larkin later amended this in an e-mail: "I completely spaced and forgot to mention Chester Brown, Mark Newgarden, pre-Tales Designed to Thrizzle Michael Kupperman, Julie Doucet and pre-David Boring issues of Eightball, which pretty much changed my life — as a teen, I couldn't believe there was someone else out there as misanthropic as me! I don't like any of the gods: Jeff Brown ...

» EXPRESS: Ooh, let's talk about Jeff Brown.
» LARKIN: He's pretty much my enemy, I hate that guy so much. No one else badmouths him. It's baffling. The thing I find most fascinating about him is they're supposed to be autobiographical comics but they're clearly not. Also, these relationship comics are a lie. In a relationship, it's not always the girl's fault. ... I think a lot of dudes will read it and think, "Oh, man, a girl dumped me, too. I can totally relate to this."

» EXPRESS: You think you're employing more honesty in showing yourself as a jerk?
» LARKIN: Actually, I would argue that the person in the comic is the real me, the one I hide from people.

» EXPRESS: Is it cathartic in some way to show your worst sides?
» LARKIN: I certainly feel better after writing about something painful or horrible that I did. It's better than carrying it around all the time. But nothing really beats the catharsis of drawing something of writing something, because you feel like, "I created something out of this."

Some of the reviews I've gotten have said that I'm sexist or misogynist, which I am. I don't think women should vote. Or have the right to choose. They should just be forced to have babies. Just not my babies. But if you look at pretty much any comic nowadays, they're so sexist. Not just superhero comics, but if you look at, like, Jeff Brown, those women are just shrews who control him and manipulate him. I just find it very interesting; why is that OK? When me talking about women is not? Am I alone in thinking that the girls in "Ghost World" are, like, horrible people? I thought it was a parody, but a lot of women I meet are like, "Oh I can so relate to that book."

» EXPRESS: What do you do for fun?
» LARKIN: I don't really like fun, I don't know. I determined that things that I think are fun are really boring for normal people. I like to watch really tedious foreign films, I like to masturbate.

» EXPRESS: Most people think that's fun.
» LARKIN: I don't think most people at the park think that.

» EXPRESS: What are these movies you watch?
» LARKIN: It's stuff that you never wanna watch with another person and they would probably hate you for making them sit through it. I like stuff that mirrors real life and doesn't have a happy ending and it's really brutal.

» EXPRESS: What else would you like our readers to know about your book?
» LARKIN: Just know that it will change your life, it will attract the opposite sex. I swear, if you were reading the book in public, people would go, "Oh, that guy or girl is so cool."