The writer/artist talks about his new Vertigo series Young Liars
By David Paggi
Posted 03/18/08
David Lapham is back in his element.
After taking an extended break from his creator owned noir series Stray Bullets to tackle big name like Batman, Punisher and Daredevil, Lapham has returned to the gritty fightin’ and scrappin’ kind of comics he loves. Following up his 2007 Hitchcock-esque murder thriller graphic novel Silverfish, Lapham has launched Young Liars at Vertigo. Wizard caught up with Lapham to get the low down on the new series.
WIZARD: Tell me about Young Liars? What’s going on in the first issue?
DAVID LAPHAM: I’m setting up the basic scenario, which is about this girl, [Sadie Dawkins], who gets shot in the head and turns her into a happy-go-lucky adrenaline junkie and the guy [Danny] who’s obsessed with her.
WIZARD: It's going to be about these crazy kids, but how would you describe it to someone who hasn't been exposed to your work before?
LAPHAM: It’s about a boy who’s obsessed with a girl who’s not really into him until a bullet in her head turns her into a thrill seeking adrenaline junkie who follows his every command. It’s a sometimes surreal, funny, and often violent, noir about young people being crushed by the weight of their dreams. It’s got good pictures and some words to read.
WIZARD: What do you want to be able to do with the series? What attracts you to these kinds of stories?
LAPHAM: This is me. When I sit down and let it all loose, this is what comes out. For me, stories are emotional. I’m a pretty repressed character and I get a lot out by torturing my characters. I think that’s why I’m attracted to these types: young people, kids, losers, misfits—because everything is so raw. I like to be able to go to extremes—especially the extremes of normalcy. And these types of characters let me go there.
WIZARD: Is this going to be the kind of Vertigo book where you tell a huge story over a long span of issues, or are you going to focus on smaller stories?
LAPHAM: Telling a bunch of little stories with these characters is my first goal, but there is a larger story. Stray Bullets had a hint at a larger story—[Young Liars] is a little more direct than that. I have my group of losers but there is a larger picture with the people that are after them. The most important thing to me is always what’s going on with the characters. Stray Bullets was mostly all single issue stories that all added up together, probably 60 percent of these issues are dealing with an ongoing story and there will be one-offs where I’ll take a character and tell their story.
WIZARD: I feel like this book is REALLY going to appeal to Stray Bullets fans. Do you think so?
LAPHAM: If it doesn’t, I don’t know what I’ve been doing all these years. Young Liars has some different elements, different characters with different hang-ups, but this is me, straight from the gut. In the movies they always describe things as this meets that. Taxi Driver meets Mary Poppins, things like that. Young Liars is Stray Bullets meets Amy Racecar. Which is essentially saying I’ve integrated the absurdist side of me with the domestic noir side of me.
WIZARD: I also think its great that you have another cool female lead (or a co-lead for Young Liars), like Amy Racecar, Beth or Virginia. Any insight into that?
LAPHAM: I like to wear dainty things—
Strike that.
Female characters often represent strength to me. Not that I don’t have weak female characters and strong male characters, I guess on one level I find strength and conviction a bit of a mystery. These ladies always seem to know what to do, or at least, seem to be able to live with what they do without a lot of whining.
In Young Liars, the character of Danny is a bit of a new one for me, because he’s in many ways like Beth from Stray Bullets. He’s not weak—like my guys often are. He’ll do whatever it takes, make any sacrifice, to get what he wants or to protect the things he loves. Of course, he’s riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing—but he doesn’t let that keep him from shooting people.
WIZARD: Tell me about the title. Any meaning behind it?
LAPHAM: Well, originally the book was going to be called Bullet Girl, but the regular DC universe has a character named The Bulleteer, and DC doesn’t like any conflicts between their PG rated universe and their R rated universe. Which is fine! It’s great that they have the Vertigo line [in the first place]. It allows me to really do my thing. So we came up with Young Liars, which I actually think works better playing into the larger theme. As I started to write it started to become more than just about this one girl. It became more about the whole cast. I’m actually happier with it.
WIZARD: I guess this begs the question: is the book going to be about the kind of shenanigans the lies these kids tell get them into?
LAPHAM: Yes. Ultimately, though the driving force of the book is what lies Danny is telling. We’re viewing this world through his eyes, and his less than truthfulness makes for some interesting viewing.
WIZARD: How long have you had the idea for the book?
LAPHAM: I actually wrote this first issue in June 2006, so not for forever, but over a year and a half.
WIZARD: Did you originally plan to bring it to Vertigo?
LAPHAM: I was working on Silverfish at Vertigo with Shelly Bond, and I was basically done. I was just doing inks of the last third of the book and I wanted to get something else going. We talked and I came up with this.
WIZARD: How’s Spider-Man: With Great Power going over at Marvel?
LAPHAM: That’s going good. That’s another project I wrote a while ago. I don’t keep up with the goings on of all the universes. That’s not my life anymore [laughs]. I try to look for projects where it doesn’t have to be in the flow of the continuity. So I said lets do Spider-Man, but lets set it back when he was younger and in my territory, like Stray Bullets and even Young Liars, where we can do stories about teenagers and young people and people who f—k up a lot. So back in Spider-Man #1 there’s this one panel where they hint that when Spider-Man gets into the wrestling thing he gets very famous. In the comics they go right from that into the whole Uncle Ben dying, but it was very unspecified. It doesn’t say whether it’s over a week or six months. That was where I wanted to set my story. I think it would be even better if it was a MAX book or Vertigo book where I could have really, really messed with this kid, but I get it its Spider-Man and its still a lot of fun.
WIZARD: Any updated on El Capitan stuff or is that still on he back burner?
LAPHAM: It just has to be on the back burner. I mean I’d love to always being doing Stray Bullets. It’s definitely not over, but I have no plans right now. It’s just the way reality is. There’s a lot of Stray Bullets stories left before the end in my mind. Last month I wrote the final issue of the current arc.
