Originally published in 1996, Horror Hospital Unplugged by Dennis Cooper and Keith Mayerson, is a pioneering graphic work brought back into print by Harper Perennial this summer. First published by Juno Books, Horror Hospital Unplugged is a groundbreaking experimental and gay graphic novel which focuses on “young people lost in a mashed-up culture,” Mayerson said.
This theme of the mash-up, a visual world of hybrid combinations of styles and influences, is emphasized throughout the book which offers a mix of styles in flux and used to convey shifts in emotion, said the new edition’s editor, Michael Signorelli, “One reason we brought [this book] back; there is nothing else like it or since then.”
Based on a short story by Cooper about a mediocre, yet up and coming, punk band called Horror Hospital, the book chronicles the struggles of the tragic front-man of the band, Trevor Machine. “At graduate school in California, I was finding myself as an artist and young gay person,” explained Mayerson, “I grew up listening to alternative, punk rock, and didn’t feel an affinity to gay culture.” Mayerson had read Cooper’s work, and a mutual friend suggested Cooper see Mayerson’s thesis show, “Pinocchio the Big Fag.” After initiating a friendship, Cooper suggested they collaborate, turning the short story into a graphic novel, just when, as Mayerson noted, “the graphic novel was starting to come into focus.”
This friendship “began the long process,” of collaborating on the book. “[Cooper] wrote the script, basic descriptions, dialogue, and let me be the director. We worked on it chapter to chapter,” Mayerson said. Cooper allowed Mayerson to take the script in any direction he wanted. “When I started drawing stuff, it was pretty changed from the original script,” he said. The comic became an “illuminated manuscript around the text,” Mayerson said, and he made such additions as the death of River Phoenix early in the story. According to Mayerson, Cooper has said this project “was one of his best collaborations; how the text and drawings dance [together].”
When they began looking for a publisher, they were attracted to Juno Books, at the time a highly regarded nontraditional indie publisher of books on fringe and pop culture, founded by Andrea Juno. Mayerson liked the “culty niche that [Juno Books] had,” and that the book would find its way to used book piles as “a hidden treasure in cool record stores at that time.” But now thanks to Harper Perennial, the book is receiving a new publishing life and Mayerson is hopeful “it will find a larger audience.” But it’s an unusual graphic work. “[The book] is too arty for comics, too comics for art, and too gay for everyone,” joked Mayerson, “16 years later, the world has caught up to it.”
“We want to tap into the younger generation of graphic novel readers,” Signorelli said. “[the book is] about finding yourself in corporate commodity culture; I hope that sentiment hasn’t gone away,” said Mayerson. Yet, Mayerson emphasized that the transition from is original cult publisher to a bigger, trade book publisher, doesn’t, “take away from the integrity of the book’s message” of staying true to art and also “breaking into the mainstream.” In pursuit of a larger audience, Signorelli said they have reached out to “various academic avenues, museum book stores,” and other specialty markets. Signorelli said the book had a 6,000 copy initial print run and has received a “positive critical response.” “We shipped a modest number to see how it goes,” explained Signorelli.
The new edition of the book has also received a bit of a face-lift. Mayerson painted a new cover that features Trevor on the floor, arms spread out, split across the spine of the book, and painted in a style Mayerson said is meant to evoke Velázquez and Caravaggio. “Open it up and he could be an angel, suggesting he doesn’t have long to live.” Also split across the spine is the Arthur Rambo quote, “I is someone else,” which Mayerson explained is a reference to “the play with styles and that different aspects of the story and characters change based on emotion.” He said it alludes to the central character’s struggle not to be defined by others’ expectations of him in regards to his sexuality and art. Signorelli said they re-shot all the original art work, since “there were no original files from the 1996 publishing.”
“People respond to the range of styles,” in the book Mayerson said. In search of his own style at the time, Mayerson was emulating comics’ history, citing such influences on the book as the great superhero cartoonist Jack Kirby, Heavy Metal magazine, and shonen-ai, Japanese boys-love comics, works that usually depict boys obsessed with one another. Mayerson’s stylistic experiments in Horror Hospital Unplugged have influenced younger cartoonists such as Dash Shaw, creator of such acclaimed experimental works as Bottomless Belly Button and Body World.
Manga is one of the most powerful infuences in Horror Hospital Unplugged. In addition to the influence of shonen-ai manga, the books also utilizes the style of shoujo (Japanese girls’ comics) to convey the intimacy and romance between Trevor and his boyfriend. “In L.A. Japanese bookstores, Denis found [un-translated] Shonen-ai,” Mayerson said. This was at the time when manga was just beginning to find a readership in the U.S., and Horror Hospital Unplugged is one of the first American comics to directly emulate aspects of manga’s style.
Mayerson cited the way Japanese “woman [manga-ka] captured the romance couples have together,” noting that they were highly influential on his work at the time. “Shoujo artists such as the 49ers [an important movement in Japanese manga for women] portrayed emotion and the inner going-ons of characters, and I was happy to embrace Japan and learn from those artists,” Mayerson said. He also embraced the way gay romance is depicted by the female manga-ka (or artists) of shonen-ai. “Super-sexually based shonen-ai still captures the feeling and intimacy and deep friendship same-sex couples can have,” Mayerson explained. “This gets closest to what it’s like to be in a gay relationship; sex or campy fun, shonen-ai is truly romantic, about love between people, intimacy, and the realness of being close to each other.”
While Horror Hospital Unplugged deals with gay characters, Mayerson emaphsized that “the driving force behind this story [transcends] the idea of gay politics.” He said the book is a story of young people in love and “lost in the sea change of culture [searching] for freedom and self-expression.” Art, Mayerson said, is always a search for “freedom, realness, and truth,” and this is what the characters are searching for in Horror Hospital Unplugged. “The culture [of today] has caught up more, and young people are OK not being straight,” said Mayerson, who said he hopes the book can “help the culture along.”
“I have heard from people and the book’s nuances are one reason people like and relate to these characters,” he said.
