The Conversation on the Solue

Avathoir and Wallflower Discuss American Vampire.

Installment 1: A Ribbon of Dreams

(Volume 1, Pearl’s story arc).

(Warning: Like all Conversations on the Solute, this Conversation contains spoilers. Read at your own risk).

 

Avathoir:  For those of you who haven’t been following the rumblings on the Dissolve, welcome to our conversation of American Vampire on The Solute, where wallflower and I will be talking about the first “Cycle” (6 volumes) of American Vampire, Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque’s Vertigo comics series, volume by volume. We’re starting with Volume 1, and this is a unique volume, bisected down the middle, so we’re going to have an instalment on each of the two stories within, one Conversation on each. We begin with the first protagonist of volume 1, Pearl Jones, and Installment 2 will cover the other one, Skinner Sweet.

 

When I first read American Vampire, I had recently gotten back into comics, having abandoned them and most art in general in my childhood for a couple of years after I had a traumatic move to the Midwest. I had primarily been attracted during my return to the cerebral, trippy works of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison, and I picked up American Vampire at first thinking it would be, like I had read of once read about a grind-house movie, “Glorious Trash”, so you can imagine my surprise when I essentially got the equivalent of an epic historical romance, with all that entails, combined with a pulpy vampire tale. While I would hold American Vampire as a whole up to literature, it’s still got a very distinct sense of play and trash about it, which is not a bad thing.

 

But enough biographical introduction. Let’s start with Pearl, who will be, along with Skinner and the protagonist of Volume 4, the one we’re going to spend the most time with during this Cycle. Pearl’s story, I find, is both a love story (love lost, gained, and discovered) and a coming of age tale, both of these elements beginning when she becomes a vampire and the meets  Skinner Sweet, the man who made her this way and saved her life.

 

wallflower, since you came into American Vampire blind, what sort of reactions did you have towards Volume 1 with Pearl’s story? Did you pick up on the same aspects I did, or did you come to different conclusions? How integral do you find the location of Hollywood to Pearl’s story? What also, might I ask, do you think of the horror aspects of this comic?

 

wallflower:  Looking at Pearl’s story (and Skinner’s as well, but more on that later), what impressed me was how this simple horror story gets so much resonance from its setting.  As a vampire story, it’s as straightforward as you can get:  young woman gets initiated into the vampire life.  Rafael Albuquerque’s drawings emphasize the non-humanity of the vampires.    People don’t get more handsome or sparkly by getting vamped; when they attack, their jaws and fingers elongate in a way that’s simple, evocative, and deeply scary.  (As an artist, Albuquerque knows how to make the Uncanny Valley work for him.)  There’s an emphasis on the lines in the drawings that’s like the comic equivalent of the grain of 16mm film.  It’s horror in the Texas Chain Saw Massacre mode–there’s no attempt to pretty it up or make it appeal to those who look down on horror as a genre.

 

What makes it so compelling, though, is the setting.  Los Angeles 1925 is the beginning, not of film, but of the film industry–the studios, the lots, the working culture of the large-scale, factory-like production of film.  It’s the sort of world that Carey McWilliams wrote about so well in Southern California:  an Island on the Land and Nathanael West fictionalized in The Day of the Locust.  There’s some iconography (like the model elephants) that come from stories of the period; there’s a wonderful moment where Pearl has a conversation with a man on set while the technicians get light readings (“brighten, brighten. . .she still looks that same sickly pale!”) and it’s drawn with the two of them as giant, panel-filling shadows, a quick, iconic image of both movie glamour and the everyday work that goes into it.

 

More than that, though, there’s Pearl and Hattie, two aspiring actresses, who live together, go to the occasional party, work additional jobs, discuss men and flirt with them, try and pay rent, and so on.  It’s clear how much they’re considered disposable resources by the actors, directors, and producers around them.  They’re raw material and nothing more to them, and in the best tradition of horror, that metaphor gets made real where a group of vampires feed on Pearl at a party.

 

Avathoir:  You’re absolutely right about how essential Albuquerque is as an artist to this series, especially the opening the series like this. When we hit volume 3, the first artist that has a very different style than he does appears in the form of Sean Murphy (who I must admit I’m rather ambivalent about in all aspects), and as much as I attribute American Vampire’s vision to Snyder, it’s not possible to have begun this tale without someone who can draw like Albuquerque. The way he draws the European Vampires emphasizes how much they are predators, and specifically an embodiment of European horror, dark and subtle, and then contrast them with the rattlesnake like mouths and giant claws of the American Vampires, which is distinctly American in its appearance: it is MORE. More fangs, more claws, more carnage, more everything, and that’s what makes them both awesome to behold and terrifying to look at. They don’t look like Vampires, but something more…primal.

 

You’re also right about how setting is a huge part of this story. Like how Dracula works so much because it embodies Anglo-Saxon fears of Eastern Europe, American Vampire chooses very much to be about the horrors of American capitalism, and what better setting than Hollywood? It’s still very much in its infancy during the story (the joke about talkies is excellently bitter), and Snyder points how perfect it is as a carnivore’s paradise, which makes me excited for when we get to Volume 5, where we hit the 50’s and get into James Ellroy’s territory, of the Eisenhower administration and the Red Scare.

And poor Pearl and Hattie. I’ve already made the point that I feel American Vampire’s first cycle is a love story, of love in all its forms, and Pearl and Hattie are for me about lost love. Notice how different the reasons Pearl and Hattie come to Hollywood for: Pearl comes because she’s fascinated by the art form after seeing the Lumiere Brothers trip to the moon short, while Hattie lusts after fame after seeing a movie star. It’s a great credit to Snyder how he shows Pearl and Hattie, while inseparable at first, would eventually, gradually, drift apart in time, even if there were no vampires. Pearl likely would have fallen in love with Henry anyway, because they both want things that matter more than money, fame, and instant gratification, while Hattie probably would have risen to the top because she’s a naturally venomous person. The addition of vampires not only accelerates this process but turns it into something resembling a Greek tragedy. As I’ve said before to you, I got flashes of Mullholland Dr. re-reading this, with red color motifs instead of blue, and Pearl being both Betty and Rita while Hattie is Diane and Camilla. And just like that story, it ends in tragedy, though at least one of them can move on while the other…does not, as we see in later volumes.

 

wallflower:  Another aspect of Albuquerque’s style that illuminates the themes (and the sort of thing that can only work in comics or animation):  the Eurovamps are blobbly, circular and the Americans, especially when they attack, are elongated and curved.  (A neat touch:  their reflections are visible but distorted.)  It visually conveys a key theme of the dynamism of America in this period as opposed to the stasis of Europe.

 

As so many people from James Fenimore Cooper to Lester Bangs have noted, the defining goal of Americans isn’t power, it’s motion; that ability to throw off the past and set out for something new.  That’s the defining characteristic of these vampires, too; Skinner makes a lot of comparisons between the Americans and the Eurovamps, but my favorite is “we’re like shiny new 1926 Fords,” explicitly linking the new blood with the new freedom of motion, and the new style.

 

Mulholland Dr. is a good point of reference here, with its tricky notions of identity; for me, the strongest reference is to the long tradition of novels about the encounters of Europeans and Americans at the beginning of the modern era, when America began to assert itself as dominant.  More than anything, I kept thinking of The Portrait of a Lady, with Pearl as Isabel Archer, negotiating her way through now literally vampiric Europeans, except this time, Isabel’s gonna bring some serious ownage to the table.

 

As you noted, what makes this work is the balance Snyder finds between violence and tenderness, between the straightforward nature of the story and the subtleties of the characters.  Hattie, Pearl, and Henry are all characters; they want things, and they want different things, so we have the necessary condition for a drama.  I find that genre fiction has the ability to be intensely moving, because it takes recognizable characters and heightens them.  Pearl isn’t a sexy table lamp in this story; she’s recognizably a young woman coping with a world with different rules.  That dislocation is a characteristic of the entire modern era, Pearl’s just experiencing it to a literally inhuman degree.

 

Avathoir: I’m really glad you brought up Henry James, wallflower, because Snyder shares a surprisingly lot in common with him and other writers of his style. Unlike writers who do comics exclusively (Geoff Johns), comics writers who also write other things (Warren Ellis), and writers who always wrote other things besides comics (Neil Gaiman), Scott Snyder started out in prose and then moved into comics exclusively. The only remnant of that period of his career is his excellent short story collection Voodoo Heart (which is how he met Stephen King, but that’s a story for another time). What makes it obvious regarding Snyder’s background in prose, besides the dialogue, which is very character specific, is his use of interior monologue. In fact, he probably uses it more than any comics writer ever (Which has gotten some mixed reception among readers,though he remains a critical darling). I don’t mean like prose narration, like with Gaiman and Moore, but instead of thought bubbles or Watchmenesque journal entries, we get running commentary from a lot of the characters on the events. This is going to become a lot more prominent in the next few volumes.

You’re also right regarding motion, and how much it defines the American psyche, especially in this comic, where Pearl ends up chasing down two of her attackers on a motorcycle (oh, that looked like a beautiful machine), as well as Henry’s driving in to rescue and assist Pearl later in her story. Above all, the characters are moving forward, no matter what.

Which brings me to your last point. Our three (or is it four?) protagonists for Pearl’s story are all trying to move forward in their desires, but not only that, they’re trying to figure out what those desires are in relation to everything else. Pearl and Hattie both want to be successful, but Pearl, the one who works three jobs and gets the big break, ends up discarding it even though she has the chance to take everything once the Eurovamps get scared of her (though it’s also savviness of her part to recognize that anything she gets from them isn’t going to stick), while Hattie, who’s both the most and least ambitious of the pair, is the one who wants to keep moving more, which leads her to betray Pearl in the first place. It’s all too deliciously symbolic that Pearl takes her down by discovering the weakness of American vampires is gold, and using her own plaque star to do it.
It’s also interesting how much the men in this story contrast with the women. Henry is content for the most part to play his guitar, wander where the money takes him, and not have so much responsibility, which makes him not so appealing to Pearl, and yet he ends up being the key to her survival and success against the Eurovamps, because he understands what matters isn’t isn’t victory or revenge, but Pearl being safe and happy, which is why he gives up his comfort to stay with Pearl even though his life is at incredible risk, and we’ll actually get to see a lot more of this responsible selflessness on his part as the story continues.

Lastly, we come to Skinner, who doesn’t really want anything. We’ll talk about him more in his story, but what makes him so fascinating in this arc is how much he’s impossible to know. The Eurovamps make the point that he’s too arrogant to make any more of his kind, and yet he chooses Pearl, and it’s never really explained why. I personally have my own explanation: Skinner embodies an American carefreeness, the kind that explains that it’s not that he has untraditional views on morality, but he just decides to do what is interesting. Pearl interests him, and he thinks “Why not make her like me?”, and that’s what’s going to make him fascinating to talk about.

 

wallflower:  In keeping with the theme of a young country and an old country, the Eurovamps all have established identities, and in fact they’re all established in business.  The Americans are all in the process of discovering who they are, just as America is in the process of discovering what it is.  It’s why, by the way, the period and the setting is so crucial to this story.  This is Los Angeles, and it’s set in the time not long after the closing of the frontier.  There’s a moment late in the story where Pearl and Henry uproot a LOS ANGELES CITY LIMITS sign and some fenceposts to make stakes, and it calls back to the end of Blood Meridian, where Cormac McCarthy shows the setting of fences as closing off the end of America’s first epoch–the Essay Into the Wilderness.  That’s over now, the boundaries of the country have been fixed, but it’s still burning with so much energy and starting to change the world.

 

Skinner does have that carefreeness; you can also give it a negative spin.  Skinner is uprooted, at home nowhere anymore, and therefore dangerous to anyone.  He’s as much of a trickster figure as (to bring McCarthy back into the story) Anton Chigurh, but his nearest fictional relation would be Stephen King’s Randy Flagg, the Walkin Dude.  (I was actually surprised to find that Skinner was Snyder’s invention, not King’s.)  The idea of America as always in motion and nowhere at home has both a light and dark side, and Snyder has the instinct for character to show us both.  Because he doesn’t romanticize them, because the grip on what makes someone interesting is so secure, and because of the precision of the location in America’s history, Snyder creates characters that are as real as people, and as meaningful as symbols, as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Daniel Plainview.

 

Avathoir: This concludes the first installment of The American Vampire conversation. Tune in next time, while we talk about Skinner’s story with Installment 2: Pulp Fiction.