Interview Lulu Eightball’s Emily Flake 

Fans of alt-weeklies are probably familiar with Emily Flake’s Lulu Eightball, a nationally syndicated cartoon strip that satirizes the fabric of 21st-century American culture, with targets ranging from current events to technology to religion. In addition to her regular strip, now seven years and two books into its publication history, Flake’s writing and illustrations have found their ways into national publications around the country, including Time, Forbes, and regular appearances in The New Yorker.

The professional illustratrix will be at Logan Square’s new record store/art space, Saki, Saturday for a gallery opening featuring her work. Aside from displays of her drawings and paintings, Flake will also present a monologue with the aid of PowerPoint, making her illustrations come alive as never before. In anticipation of her showcase, The A.V. Club caught up with Flake via e-mail to discuss the life of an alt-weekly cartoonist, the inspiration for her illustrations, and how she modifies her work for the stuffy folks over at The New Yorker.

A.V. Club: Can you bring us up to speed on Lulu Eightball?

EF: Lulu’s still fighting the fight, in there with the sloth and the drinking and the belly fat. Except now she appears to be married, which I hope to God is not some kind of terrible Cathy parallel. 

AVC: How do think the content for Lulu Eightball has changed since you started writing it?

EF: I don’t think it’s changed much—only insofar as I’ve changed, since I was 25 when the strip started and now I am a stooped, wizened 33. So perhaps Lulu is just a little more tuckered out these days. Or wants a baby. Or both?

AVC: Alt-weeklies are a notoriously difficult medium to break into for a cartoonist. How did you get syndicated?

EF: They are hard, and getting harder, because alt-weeklies have been badly hurt by the shifting print industry and the economy as a whole. I’ve actually been cut from a few papers as they’ve had to trim space and budget—so I’m extra, extra grateful for the papers I’m still in. As far as getting in in the first place, I had a relationship with the Baltimore City Paper as an illustrator, and they were where Lulu was born. From there, I was able to spread it to a couple more, and a couple more.

AVC: What did you do before Lulu, and how did cartooning become your full-time job?

EF: I worked at music distributors—Carrot Top in Chicago and Caroline in New York, though I did the cartoon while working at those places. Before that, I waitressed. And before that, I was a terrible, terrible secretary at a copy shop. I got fired from that job because I was just that bad. What enabled me to freelance full-time was more the illustration than the strip—I love Lulu, but that silly goose doesn’t actually pull in much for money! That said, I wake up every day grateful that I can do what I do for a living, knock wood. It’s not that the idea of going back to a day job bothers me so much, but there’s not so much music industry left to work in these days. I think I’d have better luck waitressing (if any one would have me. See above re: stooped, wizened). Also, I have gotten very used to not having to wear pants.

AVC: You artwork has an interesting sort of tone to it. The first time I saw it, it reminded me a lot of Margaret Kilgallen’s graffiti work, which was a mix of folk art and public murals. Where do your artistic influences come from?

EF: Ah! I love her work. Illustation-wise my three favorite people working right now are Graham Roumieu, Fernanda Cohen, and Edel Rodriguez, three totally different styles, all tremendous. My early cartoon influences—and I mean early, like age 5—were Edward Gorey and Gahan Wilson, but more importantly, Shary Flenniken. She wrote Trots And Bonnie, which ran in National Lampoon (a publication I had no business reading when I was 5, but there you are). She seeped so deep into my brain so early that I didn’t even realize ’til much later that I’ve ripped her off wholesale, in some ways. She also wrote the intro to the second Lulu collection—that was one of the highlights of my working life thus far.

AVC: With all of your artistic ventures, is there one of your projects that you consider your “main” gig?

EF: My main gig is staring at my hands in despair. But when I’m not doing that, I have a stable of regular clients who keep me busy with illustration, and I work on my weekly batch for The New Yorker.

AVC: What’s the difference between writing a cartoon for an alt-weekly versus writing a comic for The New Yorker?

EF: I try not to use the word “fuck” so much with The New Yorker.