Terry Blas and Claudia Aguirre are the creative team behind Lifetime Passes. This is a graphic novel that I reviewed recently and I encourage you to check it out for yourself as well as give as a great holiday gift. In this interview, you can see that Blas and Aguirre are totally in sync for the sake of a good story. And this is quite a tale revolving around a group of teenagers wrapped up in the theme park lifestyle. They hatch a plan to snag lifetime passes to their local theme park, Kingdom Adventure. The kids discover that if someone in their party dies in the theme park that, in order to avoid any legal entanglements, the theme park issues out lifetime passes to everyone in the group. Our main character, Jackie Chavez, works at a senior living facility. Jackie charms her way into putting together a new theme park activity program at Valley Care Living retirement home. With that in place, it’s just a matter of time, Jackie and her friends think, before one of the seniors in their care ends up dead at the theme park–and so the group gets lifetime passes! So, you’ve got at least three genres working here: coming-of-age, humor, and horror!
Growing up is always hard to do.
Growing up is never easy. This wonderful graphic novel weaves a tale we can all relate to. The main character of Jackie Chavez proves to be an engaging character with a lot to learn. Helping her along the way to seeing what really matters in life is Phyllis, one of the seniors that Jackie and her friends have ensnared in their diabolical little plot. Will Jackie gain a lifetime’s worth of wisdom before too much more time passes and it’s all too late?
Just click the link above to see the video interview. LIFETIME PASSES is available as of November 23, 2021. For more details, just go to Abrams Books.
This is a perfect time to post my interview with artist Henry Hate. There have been a number of delays along the way but, perhaps some experiences need to stew and process. It was near October of last year that I visited the Prick! tattoo shop, a home base for Henry Hate in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London. Autumn was creeping in on the streets that Jack the Ripper once lurked; now made up of boutiques and fine eateries co-existing with taverns and other mysterious structures dating back centuries. Prick! tattoo parlor fit right in.
Amy Winehouse by Henry Hate
Just as Henry Hate was rising in prominence as a tattoo artist, Amy Winehouse, early in her career, walked into Henry’s tattoo parlor and became a regular client. Well, that’s the stuff of legend. It was that sort of serendipity that can lift an artist’s life and launch them on a path to a bright future.
Trouble by Henry Hate
Henry Hate, without question, has developed into an excellent artist. That’s not the issue. I love how we both get to the heart of the matter in the video segment of our conversation. For me, I’ve always aspired to great creative heights and that’s usually some mix of journalism and art. When the opportunity arises, I want to go deep with an interview. There is absolutely an art to a good interview. It is sort of like a dance or a courtship. You need to engage the subject. A dynamic emerges. Everything going on behind the scenes culminates. In this case, I was pairing us as both artists and human beings on a journey. The result was Henry Hate speaking to a lifetime commitment to art. It’s as if being an artist is not enough. You can accept yourself but will others follow? That will remain in the background but, first and foremost, you need to give yourself over to your art.
A Work Created Under Extreme Duress by Henry Hate
Into each life, a little death must enter and a lot of self-discovery. As a youth, Henry Hate discovered, despite his family’s resistance, that he was gay and he had no one to apologize to about it.
Prick tattoo parlor.
Henry Martinez evolved into Henry Hate. Sure, the name is part illusion, facade, and brand. It is part of what you do, even if you never really change your name. You need to build up some armor when you go from art to business. “It’s a machine. Success. You’ve achieved a goal. Okay, now what? Sometimes, I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to just paint pretty clouds.”
Prick! tattoo shop, East London.
“In Los Angeles, when you say you’re a writer, you’re probably a waiter. But, here in London, someone says they’re a painter or a screenwriter, they are actually doing that,” said Hate, at one point, as we chatted about the realities of fame and fortune. Our talk turned to Amy Winehouse and how she dealt with stardom. “Amy was this London girl who suddenly had to deal with fame. It’s a machine. Success is a goal. Now, you have to keep the wheels moving. It’s a lot of pressure to put on someone when art becomes a business. It’s work now, not a love or a passion.”
“Lee McQueen and Amy both had that genuine quality about them, a shyness, unsure about their work. When you stand up and present your work, you need to wear that mask. Both of them had that vulnerability. Great artists, you don’t really know that much about them. Amy would have been happy just singing in a bar and have that pay her bills.”
Mother’s Tongue, mixed media on canvas, by Henry Hate
Informed as much by Tom of Finland as by Andy Warhol, the work of Henry Hate has charted its own path. It is bold, audacious, sly and thoughtful. It is worldly and fanciful. And, without a doubt, it is genuine.
This is work that proudly stands before you, naked or wearing a mask with sexy panache. It’s about art and it’s about life, living large while also maybe on the margins. Maybe there’s still something to prove. Or maybe it’s just time to face the world without flinching. I love the sense of play, like “Let’s Riot,” a punk young Queen Elizabeth echoing Jamie Reid’s art for the Sex Pistols 1977 single, “God Save the Queen.” Or the life-affirming “Mother’s Tongue,” with the subject defiantly showing off her stud.
As Hate says, his work is about sin and redemption. You see each character reveling and unapologetic. Why can’t a little more life fall into one’s life? Why can’t vice and salvation find a way to co-exist? These are questions that can take a lifetime to confront, let alone answer–and Henry Hate is up to the task.
Dragman by Steven Appleby. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2020. 336 pages, $28.00.
Especially today, as we continue to make huge strides, while still sometimes stumbling one step forward with one step back, it is healthy for everyone to acknowledge gender fluidity as being as natural as breathing. I’ll share this. When I was very young, I fondly recall dressing in drag a handful of times. This was back in the ’80s during my art school days. It was fun, thrilling, and even liberating. My girlfriend at the time thought I looked cuter in lipstick and pumps than she did. Anyway, life moved on and the occasion for indulging in drag became less available but one never knows. I’ve always fancied interviewing Simon Hanselmann with both of us all dolled up. We all need to loosen up, open up, and acknowledge nothing is ever really totally cut and dry. Even a conservative darling like Rudy Giuliani had a good time in drag, and this was as recently as 2000. So, with that in mind, it’s a joy and a privilege to introduce to you a new graphic novel inspired by cartoonist Steven Appleby’s own personal journey, Dragman, a story about a superhero who can fly when he wears women’s clothes.
Dragman on the case!
Now, Steven Appleby is a beloved British cartoonist, right up there with other greats like Posy Simmonds and Quentin Blake. I had quite a nice time, by the way, viewing the work of Simmonds and Blake last year at the House of Illustration in London. I’m an artist-cartoonist myself so that visit, for me, is equal to visiting Big Ben for someone else. I’d love to view Appleby originals sometime too, perhaps on a future visit. I’m not going to scrutinize the work in quite the same way as I would standing before a Rembrandt but it’s not too different either. I’m still gazing and pondering the energy. It’s that distinctive line, with its skittering quality, that is so appealing. In the case of Appleby, a cartoonist auteur, we can marvel over how the words seem to dance right along with the images. If Appleby collaborated with a writer, to be sure, we’d see a similar play too. That said, the auteur has a distinct advantage of owning the whole vision. So, for Appley, for all of us, this graphic novel provides a full-blown vision. The reader gets to enjoy a madcap adventure, all the time savoring the journey for its own sake!
Clark Kent, meet August Crimp.
As Appleby makes clear, this is not an autobiographical work, although it can’t be denied there are some similarities to Appleby and his comics alter ego, August Crimp. Both went on a particular journey in search of themselves, in pursuit of coming to terms with an attraction to dressing up as the opposite sex. What’s clear is that August Crimp, and Steven Appleby, both triumph. It’s a celebration of life. A celebration of boys dressing as girls and girls dressing as boys and anything else in between. We’re all superheroes if we just relax and let ourselves be ourselves. Dragman is a heart-felt exploration of identity while also a riveting crime mystery to boot. What more could you want from a graphic novel?
Dragman is available as of April 7, 2020. For more details, visit the family of books at Macmillan Publishers right here.
