I’m taken aback by the Beatnik era of the 1950s. It was a time when post-WWII realities reshaped society, ushering in an age of free thought and avant-garde expressionism, at least behind the scenes in the underground countercultural and intellectual movements of the era. The secret groups rebelling against McCarthyism.
HOWL #1 thus explores all of this but from a science fiction lens. It is a comic story drawn by the phenomenally talented Mauricet and is loosely based on comic industry veteran writer Alisa Kwitney’s parents; particularly her mother’s life living in the Village in NYC with her father, the science fiction author Robert Sheckley. We spoke with Kwitney about this new comic released by AHOY along with her own writing career in this neat little interview you can read below.
This interview was edited for conciseness and clarity
CHRISTIAN ANGELES: This is going to sound strange but I read “A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold” years ago and had absolutely loved your take on Destiny. Thank you for being a creator. My first question is this: as someone who played around with the concept of time in her career already, how did it feel creating a period piece that’s a take on the lives of the story of your own parents?
ALISA KWITNEY: Thank you so much…I still have my Destiny T-shirt and statue from DC Comics, and they are prized possessions!
I loved writing about the plague, and god knows my penchant for body horror has not dimmed with the passing of the years and low-rise jeans, but I had a very different approach to writing period fiction in my twenties and thirties than I do now.
When I was younger, I was influenced by the historical fiction I read, big, fat novels of medieval times by Frank Yerby and wartime sagas by Herman Wouk and pre-history sagas by Jean Auel. Now that I myself have lived through periods that now seem positively historical, it feels easier to tell stories in my natural voice — with more humor and less pomp and circumstance.
As far as writing my parents, I knew my mother better than I will probably know any other human being. She raised me on her own, and we were very similar in taste and temperament. She permitted herself to be known, warts and all, and I still hear her voice inside me, wry and warm and self-reflective, commenting on everything and everyone.
ANGELES: Looking back, do you think a writing career was always meant to be a part of your… Destiny?
KWITNEY: Oh, absolutely. I was raised by my mother, an avid reader and wonderful writer (although she struggled with writer’s block her whole life), and by the bookcases of my father’s books, both his own stories and novels and those of his mentors and rivals and friends. My mother fed me books and poetry and talked me through the editing process. Because of her, I was writing poetry (free and blank verse) in third grade and wound up having a book published by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative when I was 8. After that, I developed writer’s block—there’s nothing like early success to screw you up.
When I was a teenager my father moved back to New York and we formed a relationship based on books and writing. I remember showing him something I had written and longing for him to anoint me and say, “You have it! You are a writer!” Instead, he shrugged and said, “Well, you have talent, for whatever that’s worth.” I was stung, and asked: “So, what’s important, if not talent?” He told me that sitting down and writing was the truly important thing — approaching storytelling the way a plumber approaches fixing a leaking pipe. As a teenager, I felt disappointed in this response. Now, I think it is brilliant and true.
ANGELES: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a hell of a pitch. What other 1950s-era influences did you research in writing this?
KWITNEY: Ooh, let’s see. Books…The Fifties by David Halberstam. Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel. Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson (that one was a reread.) I watched Bucket of Blood by Roger Corman and rewatched lots of fifties films…and most of all, I interviewed my mother before Alzheimer’s took her memory, and read my mother’s journals — those were actually early sixties, but close enough in time to give me a feel.
ANGELES: What about science fiction?
KWITNEY: My father was the SF writer Robert Sheckley, and I grew up loving his short stories because they were absurdist and sly and just this side of horror. I also loved Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Frederic Brown, Zenna Henderson, A.E.Van Vogt…all those clever, sociological writers writing fast and clean and sharp, all those deliciously unsettling tales. I think a lot of people who love Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone don’t realize how much more material there is, yellowing and crumbling away in second-hand bookstores.
ANGELES: I had no idea. Now what was it like working with the artist, Mauricet?
KWITNEY: Mauricet and I just talked…he finished the last page of issue five just as issue one hits the stands, and we are plotting out what comes next. (I said, “horror!” And he said, “romance!” We’ll probably find a way to combine the two.) I love working with him because we feed off each other’s interests and enthusiasms.
ANGELES: Okay, now for specific questions about HOWL. I love how aliens see Beatniks as an existential threat, especially for New Yorkers of that era and time. Why make this creative choice? Why look at non-conformists in a conforming post-WWII Boomer society?
KWITNEY: It all started with the character of Myrtle Morel, who was partially inspired by real-life celebrity psychotherapist Mildred Newman. Mildred was my mother’s therapist, and led groups that included my mother, her best friend Peggy, Peggy’s husband Saul, and an abstract expressionist painter and his wife (I met their daughter while researching the book). Mildred also saw the directors Mike Nichols and Paul Simon, and actors Anthony Perkins, Richard Benjamin and his wife Paula Prentiss. She went on to co-write a bestseller, How to Be Your Own Best Friend. I thought: Why was this woman so voracious about acquiring patients who were prominent in the arts? Was it their fame? Was it their creativity? It felt a little unhealthy, and that led me to the idea of twisting it into a sci fi horror direction — what if an alien general decided that controlling the creative non-conformists was the key to taking over the U.S., and taking over the U.S. was the key to conquering all humankind?
ANGELES: The Science Fiction Writers Association was a smart device. A look at sci-fi creatives in a situation that required creative sci-fi thought. Was this meta commentary more about your own family or was there something you were looking at regarding the writers and train of thought of that era?
KWITNEY: Well, my mother wrote letters about going to the Hydra Club (the real name of the group) and getting hugged overly enthusiastically by “Ike” or Isaac Asimov. In the late fifties, people did socialize in person, and I so wish I could be a fly on the wall of a gathering of my father, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon and the others.
But it was also a way of getting at the idea that these futurists could posit a world in which aliens were people — but could not quite wrap their minds around the idea that women are as fully human as men. When I was growing up, there were no words I heard to describe the experience of being a girl reading about the experience of boys and men. It seemed to me that the experiences of white boys and men were presented as being the basic default state of being human. Being female was a strange offshoot of that default human experience. I know there is language for it now — I think it’s called “the unmarked state” or “unmarked category” in sociology and lit crit. But when I was younger, I felt as if I were the only person who even noticed this…we were all fish, swimming in the water of casual sexism. and so we didn’t notice the water.
ANGELES: Sexuality out of wedlock is a good theme to explore in the dawn of what’s going to be the second-wave feminism movement. Was there any more of this your use of characterization is going to explore in Howl?
KWITNEY: Ah, you want to know if there’s more sex? Well, there’s a pivotal love scene later in the series, which I gave a fair amount of real estate to, because it serves a number of important story functions. But sexuality and creativity and individuality are all recurring themes. Also, and you didn’t ask this, but I give it to you as a freebie — there’s a motorcycle gang later on, because how can you write about the fifties without a motorcycle or two?
ANGELES: Finally, is there anything else you want to say about the remaining upcoming issues of the series or what it was like working with AHOY?
KWITNEY: I love working with Tom Peyer. Sometimes we spoke about old films and comics, sometimes we played around with plot points. I went to visit him during the eclipse, and wound up giving him my British Film Institute book about John Carpenter’s The Thing. Rob Bottin, the practical effects whiz kid who created the shape-shifting alien in that movie, was a big influence on the fungal aliens in HOWL, both for me and for Mauricet. But you’ll have to stick around till the final issue to see the full body horror showdown!
I just signed up for HOWL at my LCS. Looking forward to it!
Comments are closed.