An interview with Roman Dirge

Miscreant goth creator of Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl

This week for IF YOU GO AWAY I’m republishing an interview with Roman Dirge, a cult comic-book creator whose art has inspired the strange and unusual since the 1990s, steadfastly refusing to die.

I’m P M Buchan, a former comic-book writer and lover of horror and dark art. I’ve written monthly columns and comic strips for Starburst and SCREAM: The Horror Magazine. I’ve collaborated with award-winning artists including John Pearson, Martin Simmonds and Ben Templesmith, and have been interviewed by Kerrang! and Rue Morgue. My work has been reviewed by Famous Monsters of Filmland, Fortean Times and Times Literary Supplement. I’ve collaborated with bands including Megadeth and Harley Poe, and written for clients including Lionsgate and Heavy Metal Magazine.

Welcome to new readers! IF YOU GO AWAY tends to cycle between interviews with horror and dark artists (and sometimes Satanists and practicing witches), reviews of books about cannibalism and teen dismemberment, and reprints of old comics about alcoholism, death-by-misadventure and necrophilia. This week I’m off reviewing a new overnight prisoner experience and paranormal tour, so the newsletter is shorter than usual.

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Meet Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl

Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl at the centre of Dirge’s work, continues to epitomise that cultural moment when Gen X cynicism and punk’s gleeful nihilism collided headlong with the emotional sincerity of early-2000s emo, creating a generation of readers who found comfort in the macabre and wore their heartbreak firmly on their sleeves.

I was first introduced to Roman Dirge as a teenager by a punk I knew who made sock-cloth masks with buttons for eyes and drew Lenore characters on everything he owned. He once threw me through the ceiling of a nightclub. Later, when I worked in a comic-book shop, the goth contingent knew exactly what they wanted when they deigned to walk in the door: if it wasn’t by Roman Dirge or Jhonen Vasquez, they weren’t interested. Between Lenore and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, those two were responsible for an entire subculture of illustrated nihilism.

Dirge's best-known creation, Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl, is a blackly comic riff on the tragic heroine of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem Lenore, reimagined as an undead toddler with a penchant for chaos. Dirge’s work is steeped in the tradition of dark romanticism, a movement born in opposition to Enlightenment rationalism and obsessed with death, madness, decay, and the uncanny. If Poe is the American master of that movement, then Dirge is its comic-book heir, warped, anarchic, and unnervingly childish.

Stylistically, Dirge sits in a lineage that includes Edward Gorey’s Victorian morbidity, Tim Burton’s gothic pre-Disney whimsy, and the grotesque visual assult of Dr. Seuss on acid. Like Gorey, he revels in misfortune delivered with a delicate hand. Like Burton, he populates his world with misfits whose monstrosity is more humane than the world around them. And like Seuss, he builds nightmare logic into the bones of his visual storytelling.

Dirge's creations blend gallows humour with grotesque tenderness, all Victorian mourning-wear coupled with teen angst and irreverence. His comics draw on gothic and romantic traditions to pick them apart and reassemble them into something funnier, bloodier, and stranger.

In this interview, first published in Starburst Magazine more than a decade ago, Dirge talks about Lenore’s origin story, comic conventions, cats, and time-travelling goats.

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An interview with Roman Dirge

20 years of Lenore. Did you ever imagine that you would spend so much of your life creating comics like this?

Honestly, I'm surprised I've lived this long, let alone still be working on my comics. You wouldn't believe the amount of scars and broken bones I've had. Having stated that, I'm pretty thrilled that I still get to pen my homicidal muse. She's looking good for her age.

In your introduction to the book you suggest that another collection could be due as soon as a year from now. Is that really possible?

It is indeed. I believe it's still on track. I'm an issue away already from having another collected batch. I'm that speedy these days. I'm like a puma and shit but different.

In twenty years what has been your favourite piece of Lenore merchandise and why?

The Dark Horse figure of Lenore being wrapped by a python with what is clearly the figure of Ragamuffin inside the snake. I like toys that tell a story. That story was don't be eaten by a giant snake. It's a lesson to the children, really.

Going forward, does Lenore have a natural ending or would you like to continue working on the loveable dead girl as long as you can?

I know how Lenore ends. I figured it out years ago. The ending is surprisingly tear jerking for a Lenore issue. I've actually thought about drawing it and putting it away somewhere to be released after my demise. I'm also an artist though, and it's so tough not to see the reaction of your efforts. I dunno...

If for some reason you were ever unable to create more comics would you want anybody else to take over Lenore for you, or is she too personal to share?

What? Do you know something I don't? Is there a hit on me? Speak, damn you!!! When I die, I'd like Lenore to join me. I'm sure there are many talented artists and writers that could pick up her torch. It wouldn't be me though, and the light would flicker not the same. When you're the creator, writer, artist, colorist of your invention, it feels impossible to let go. I couldn't imagine it.

Does Lenore have a soundtrack? If not do you do anything special while you're drawing? Wall to wall torture porn DVDs?

Look, the wall to wall torture porn is just a decorative choice. I actually just listen to movie soundtracks when I work or I run through Netflix's library of awful movies that I can sort of listen to, but won't distract me too much.

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Lenore lives (again)

After seven years away, Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl has clawed her way back onto the page in The Time War, a new four-part story from Titan Comics that flings her across time to do battle with goat commanders, ancient curses, and the chaos of her own undead logic.

Roman Dirge has described the new issues as some of his proudest work, shaped by years spent honing his skills in animation, which show in the sharpness to the storytelling and art. It was over ten years ago when I interviewed Roman Dirge and it’s reassuring to know that the misfits of the world still get to publish macabre and melancholic comix.

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– P M Buchan