Steven Seagle writer of American Virgin

The title is N*W*C. It is sort of the life stories of the three guys who are in it, told for comedy and trying to get at this idea of why there’s still the idea of race in America. The basic tenet of the show is that race is a social construct, not a genetic construct and the guys use comedy to defuse that idea. It’s really funny.

My wife is a teacher and these were all her former students. We got to know them when they were on her competitive speech and debate team. Then they all transferred to UCLA and majored in acting but they didn’t like what their opportunities were so they came back to us and we all worked on the show.

I used to do the speech thing myself, which is almost the same thing as acting. They’re very closely related. If you ask anybody from one camp how much like the other one is, they would say that they’re mortal enemies, but they’re really almost the exact same thing. So I’ve done that for years and really this play borrows more from those traditions than it does from theater, but the show is in a really entertaining format and we present it as theater.

The run is done for the year and then we go back in the spring. So it is a long, ongoing thing.

Yeah, the guys did it at UCLA as a student show. It was hugely popular so they got money from the school to do it for the whole university. Then that was hugely popular, so we got signed up to do a run in downtown LA for six weeks and from there we were spotted by a management company that signed us up for this two year tour.

That all happened in six weeks. It’s real cool.

We have held off on New York because, as you know, we have to do New York right. So we decided we’d get this year of touring under our belts, make sure we have everything the way we want it and then we would go to New York. But lately we have thought maybe we will park it in LA instead of New York since we all live in LA. One of the things we’re doing over this break is finalizing whether we’re going to do both or do one or the other. I’ll let you know. It will definitely find its way to New York eventually. We’re doing a four month extended run next year but we just don’t know where.

Who can blame you?

I can never keep track of them. I’m delighted by the whole turn to books. I like them because I can’t remember week to week, month to month. So I would just save up a year’s worth of something and then read them. So this is essentially the same thing but it looks nicer.

One thing that is happening that I love is that everybody I talk to is like, “I have no idea where this book is going.” Some people say that like it’s a bad thing but I think that’s the most beautiful thing there can be. When I look back over the books I’ve done I think they all have one thing in common, but I’m not going to tell you what that is. But, by and large, I think when you look at the books I wrote and you didn’t know I wrote them I don’t think you’d know who wrote them. I like to always be walking over different ground with each book doing very different things, laying down a different structure with a different storytelling. You can’t tell that my best books are Seagle books because there’s no such thing and as for my worst books I think you can tell that they’re Seagle books because they’re just bad.

He is 20 but he has a birthday in the story arc that’s out now.

It comes and goes. What’s interesting about it for me and the reason why I picked that for the character is that I like how institutionalized it’s become. Abstinence used to be a personal choice. Now it’s a wear a t-shirt, buy a book, do a TV show choice. It’s a market niche as much as a personal consideration and that’s very much the operational status of Adam as a character. He’s the figurehead of that market niche which carries its own dangers. He’s this super public figure who’s made this claim that God told him there’s only one woman for him and then she’s murdered. Now after you’ve been in the press telling everybody there’s only one girl you can ever be with and she’s dead and you’re horny. I think that’s an interesting dilemma for somebody.

He believes it. Comic books are nothing if not people who like to prejudge stuff. That’s what we do, we read the catalog and go, “I know what that is.” I just let people say what they wanted. They assumed it was going to be a “bash the Christians” comic but Adam as a character is stronger than that. Somebody who honestly believes what they believe is a force to be reckoned with. When we talk about fundamentalism and terrorism and whatever, the part people keep missing is that these people aren’t out to do bad. These are people who believe in what they believe in with the core of their being and that’s both enlightening and terrifying depending on what the circumstances are.

He’s not based on anybody from my life. He’s based on a lot of research. This book was going to be a very different book when I pitched it. It was actually a werewolf book but [Vertigo Executive Editor] Karen Berger didn’t go for that at all. I still liked the themes a lot so I tried to figure out “Well what other character could populate this?” Adam came out of stuff that I was reading about these movements. It’s hard to ignore fundamentalism in the US right now because it’s so politically active. I started getting interested in this youth virginity movement. I started reading about it and I was immediately taken about the fact that there were two sorts of figures, people who seemed to be just full of bullshit and using it as a badge of honor and people who genuinely bought into it. So I wanted a character who was put between those two points of view.

Yeah it’s definitely a book that people meet from where they’re coming from, which I appreciate. I think there are two kinds of readers of this book, people who absolutely love it and people who just revile it. Personal tastes aside, I understand that if I don’t like a comic it’s just that I don’t like it. But the stuff I’ve read about this book is just interesting. It becomes a Rorschach test because people take a lot of personal baggage into the series, which I think is cool because that’s still getting to them.

Well there’s some sex in the future, don’t worry. We said that in Penthouse a couple months ago so now I’ve got to live up to it. I think there are some people who think there’s not enough sex in the book but I’m trying to be true to the character. It’s not like Adam is going to have one incident that completely changes his value structure and he becomes a practitioner of all deviant sexual acts that there are. I think some people expected that or wanted that. The other side of this whole mediated Christian values America is that there’s so many downfalls for people who as soon as their dark secret is out it’s darker and more secretive than you ever imagined. I think some people who are implying that the book is unfair or whatever, secretly want it to be much nastier than it is.

There was a funny day at the San Diego Comicon this year. They had family day and I was at the Vertigo booth. The Orange County Christian families would come up and would see the Frank Quietly cover to number one, which is troubling but then they would see the word virgin and react both positively and negatively to the juxtaposition of those two images. They would ask, “What’s the book about?” I would tell them, “It’s about a Christian youth minister who’s trying to keep a pledge of virginity but his girlfriend is murdered and he finds it difficult.” You could see that they were engaged by that. They’re like “Oh that speaks to our value system.” But you could tell by looking at the image they knew there was something else going on there and I didn’t tell them anymore because I want people like that to find the book. Adam does stay true but he’s in a world that’s tempting on every conceivable level and that’s the world we live in. I think it’s dumb to turn a blind eye to that and I hope people are uncomfortable reading the book. That’s part of the reason I’m doing it.

I haven’t been able to. That’s what I find interesting. Since he is a created character I certainly have things in mind but I find that as I write him he is stronger than I think and he is able to get out of things I don’t think he should be able to get out of because of his belief system. That’s not just high falluting writer talk because when you make these characters you have to make them believable. The things I try to put in front of him as obstacles have not beaten him yet. So it’s becoming a, me versus him book. I keep trying to up the stakes and see where he will crack and he keeps finding ways around that. I find that interesting because his point of view is not my point of view but it seems to be working for him.

It was.

Becky was literally the first person I thought of. There were two things I wanted, somebody young and somebody female because if a guy is going to do a book about sex for Vertigo that immediately sets yourself up for attack. People might say, “Oh this is misogynistic, this is all male point of view.” I didn’t want that. I wanted half the creative team to be female. So I was trying to think of who I could get and I thought of Becky right away. Shelly had found Becky probably through her book Demo and she thought of her. It was the first name we both came up with and Shelly said, “I think she’s busy.” I said, “Oh yeah, I read a bunch of stuff online for what she’s doing. Forget it. Let’s move along.” We didn’t even call her, which was dumb for two supposedly semi-smart people. Then we went through a bunch of samples from a lot of other people, some of whom I liked and Vertigo didn’t and vice versa. At some point it just dawned on me, “We never actually called Becky to ask her how busy she was.” Shelly called her and she came on board so that was kismet.

I think they did a huge push for the launch. We did a lot of media and there’s been a lot of media just drawn to it, like the Penthouse story was a two page, color spread. That’s weird for comics to begin with and it wasn’t the least bit salacious. Monthlies, as we know, decline as they go and hopefully the trade paperbacks will bolster it up. I think that’s how most Vertigo fans read it these days.

No, the book was always a male character because I think if you’re going to do a book about virginity then I think it’s a much more interesting dramatic starting point for it to be a guy because there’s such an expectation that guys give it away and girls hold onto it. So I wanted to just flip that.

Well, technically I’m not really married. I just say that because I feel married. I don’t even believe in marriage. I think when our country allows everyone who wants to get married to get married then I’ll be in favor of it but until then I’m not so cool on it. So no I’m not Alan Chamberlain.

That’s been misinterpreted. What I said was that I want to do for Global Sexual Ritual what Preacher did for gross out humor. So I don’t think American Virgin is going to be a haha, look at the snot coming out of my nose book ever, which Preacher did very well. I loved the toilet humor in that book. I just meant that in the way that [Preacher co-creator] Garth [Ennis] was constantly able to go back to the well and find something grosser than the last thing you read, we’re going to do that with the sex elements of the story. We’re not going to leave the real world; we’re just going to find out about things you’ve never heard of.

I think Shelly asked him and he was right on board. But unfortunately his schedule on All-Star Superman keeps him busy so we lost him very quickly after three issues. But Shelly and I were thinking alike again and we both came up with Josh Middleton and his covers have been beautiful.

We were raised that way but we had three ultra-corrupt ministers in a row, which was enough to even knock my mom out of that church. As a kid we had one minister who rented us a house he didn’t own and then skipped town with our money. We had one whose wife was completing his master’s in theology for him and we had another one who was having an affair and had the church secretary covering it up but the whole church found out. My mom was like, “If these are the people telling us what’s wrong with us, I don’t think I need to go.”

My mom reads all of them and she always gasps at them. She’s like, “You weren’t raised with this.” When I did Sandman Mystery Theater, my mom said, “Where did you come up with this stuff?” American Virgin she likes but she thinks the same thing. She can’t imagine where it’s coming from but I’m a research guy. I read a lot, I listen to a lot. I watch TV all the time, listen to the radio all the time and the stuff that interests me for stories is sometimes about me and sometimes it’s about the world and American Virgin is one book that came from the world.

Oh yeah, my first comic ever.

We were nominated for an Eisner for best limited series but we lost to a little something called Watchman. Even I voted for Watchman the year we were nominated.

It was goofy especially for that book. It seemed to be flying under the radar. There were a lot of books out at the time and I was new and looking around and going, “God, everything is better than mine.” I’m never a guy who calls up his friends and says, “Find out who’s on the committee and get me nominated.” Because what’s the point of that. But getting the nomination was awesome.

I couldn’t help myself with a little George Lucas magic but I did not add a scene where Han Solo did not fire first so I hope everybody’s ok with it.

Renegade Press. It was right after Deni Loubert and Dave Sim broke up and Deni formed Renegade Press. She actually was supposed to do a Ted McKeever book called Transit that Vortex eventually put out. I guess that deal fell apart and she had a printing hole she had to fill because she had a group discount for a certain number of books. She needed it quick, so we did that book very fast.

I’ve known [Active Images founder] Richard [Starkings] for a long time and I think he’s a great guy. He said he was getting into publishing and I told him last year I had a book called Solstice that we never released the final issue of. I said, “Why don’t we finish this and you can put it out?” Because it needed to be relettered and he’s obviously got a lettering company and he agreed to do it and that book came out so well. Then I was like, “Richard, why don’t we just go find everything I’ve got and put it out?” So we’re trying to do one book a year, remastered, finished or whatever it needs. They don’t make any money so it’s obviously a labor of love.

Oh that? That was a long time ago.

Yes, it is pretty much the exact same concept ten years later.

No, mine was Mission Impossible set as a traveling carnival and theirs is a comedy. It’s like our play is it’s a comedy about race. How many of those are there? Thousands? But it’s always the execution. I feel like if I could go back to Carnival it would look nothing like Freak Show. It was nothing like Freak Show. So I don’t really get too bent out of shape about that stuff.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck