There's a Zen-like serenity to John Porcellino's self-published King-Cat Comics—but in 1989, you never would have seen it coming. When Porcellino founded the Xeroxed zine 18 years ago, he was an Illinois college kid bursting with self-doubt, anger, and punk-fueled sarcasm, all of which spilled onto the pages of King-Cat. It's almost funny then that his new book—a richly annotated, 384-page hardcover called King-Cat Classix, published by the high-profile Drawn & Quarterly—compiles the lion's share of the scratchy first seven years of the zine. While there are hints, especially toward the book's end, of Porcellino's emerging maturity, his early autobiographical sketches revel in crude surrealism and wise-ass humor—all while maintaining a profound sweetness that would come to dominate King-Cat.
Porcellino's work has been the subject of previous reprint collections, most recently the acclaimed Diary Of A Mosquito Abatement Man (published by La Mano an imprint owned by former Low bassist Zak Sally) and the high-school memoir Perfect Example (first released by the defunct Highwater before being picked up by D&Q). But Classix is by far his biggest book, and one that might prove a strange point of entry to new fans. Porcellino is also working on several new graphic novels, including Thoreau At Walden for Hyperion—all while photocopying and personally mailing each new issue of King-Cat Comics to his hundreds of subscribers. Now settled down and living the quiet life in Denver, Porcellino spoke with The A.V. Club and shared his thoughts about punk, art, brain chemistry, and his newfound "positive mental attitude."
The A.V. Club: When you sat down to start working on King-Cat Classix, what was your biggest worry?
John Porcellino: I don't know. I had so many. [Laughs.] Basically, I hadn't looked at some of these comics in almost 18 years. In my weird world I think these are good comics, but I was kind of worried: There's a certain amount of people out there who have only seen my recent stuff. I think the Mosquito book helps give people and idea of what to expect, because it shows that transition. But personally, it was weird going back. I'm a very different person now than I was when I was 20 years old. You can't help but wonder what people are going to think about this old stuff. It's like King-Cat in general; if you read one of the early comics, you might be like, "What?" But hopefully people will get a sense of how it progresses and changes if they actually sit down and read through the whole thing.
AVC: When you started doing King-Cat, did you have any sense that it was something worth saving? Did you consider that it would eventually take up so much of your life?
JP: I'm not saying that I ever thought, "These are the greatest comics in the world," but I always liked them. [Laughs.] Plus, I love history. Even back then, I knew that this was going to be the way that I documented my life. But I never imagined that there would ever be a book like [King-Cat Classix]. When I was done with an issue, I just put it in a box and started on the next one.
AVC: What did you leave out of Classix? When you were going through all your old comics, did you run across anything and say, "There's no freaking way this is going in the book?"
JP: There were a few things that I left out. I was pretty rash about my comics back then; I didn't edit or second-guess myself. My current self was like, "If I was this person who got depicted in this comic, would I be pretty bummed out if I saw it?"
AVC: You mean, friends of yours who were depicted in King-Cat?
JP: Yeah, just people I knew or met. There were a few comics where I used people's names or specific stuff like that. Maybe someday those will come out, but at the time I was putting the new book together, it just didn't feel right to me.
AVC: Has anyone ever gotten mad at you for how they were portrayed in King-Cat? Did you ever venture into Joe Matt territory?
JP: Not really. With my friends, it was always essentially true stories. That's how I always felt about doing King-Cat: This is something that really happened, whether it makes me look good or bad, or someone else look good or bad. This is what happened, and it's my job in life to write it down. Nowadays, I'm a lot more conscientious about it. I'm not out to attack somebody in print.
AVC: The whole tenor of King-Cat has changed. Were there any stories you excluded from the book because they were just too dark or bitter compared to what you do now?
JP: Not really, but there are definitely comics in there that I thought twice about.
AVC: Can you think of an example?
JP: This one comic, people got mad at me for. I wrote, "I live in shit, a house of racist, sexist, violent men." Of course, all the people I lived with read King-Cat, so… [Laughs.] I think I write about that in the notes of the book: One of my roommates confronted me over that. All of my psychological garbage was in King-Cat. My dream comics are, like, the epitome of Freudian dream analysis. It was kind of hard putting the book together for other reasons, too. I really pay attention to whether a comic starts on the left page or the right page, the way it might read differently. Some comics have to begin or end on certain pages to be more effective. It's like sequencing an album. Honestly, some stuff got left out for that reason. And when I say that I left a few of them out, I mean, maybe two or three comics. And then there was a ton of stuff I left out just because it was no good. [Laughs.]
AVC: You've put your relatives in a lot of stories over the years. What's the relationship between King-Cat and your family?
JP: For most of that time, my parents never saw an issue of King-Cat. Then I got to a certain point, around 6 or 7 years into it, where I realized I wanted to share this with my family.
AVC: You didn't keep it a secret from them, did you?
JP: No, I just didn't talk about it. They knew that I did King-Cat, but honestly my mom didn't want to see a lot of it. She would tell me, "I don't want to know any of what's really going on." [Laughs.] Nowadays, when I put out a new issue, my mom will say, "Is there anything in there that will make me upset?" So I have to sit down and screen it.
AVC: Did the old stories upset her?
JP: Yeah. Man, there's sex stuff in there, drinking. I was always drunk, and there were all these four-letter words. My mom doesn't want to read that stuff. [Laughs.]
AVC: What about the more emotional stories where you're talking about how unhappy you were as a kid?
JP: I think my parents understood. People go through that kind of stuff. Everyone already knew what happened, and it's probably pretty typical for kids growing up to have points where their parents are yelling at them to get a haircut or whatever.
AVC: Did you ever reach a point where you started to become conscious of the way your readers perceived you?
JP: Yeah, totally. I can tell you exactly when it was: King Cat 44. In '94, me and Zak [Sally] and Mr. Mike [Haeg] went on a road trip up the West Coast, and we went to Seattle. Seattle at the time was where all the cartoonists were. We met all these guys and hung out and talked comics, and it was like, "Wow, these people kind of take this thing seriously."
AVC: Which cartoonists?
JP: Tom Hart, David Lasky, Ed Brubaker, Megan Kelso. I met Julie Doucet there for the first time. A lot of them I had been writing to for a while, but there was a real different vibe there. These people lived comics. The way I grew up, I had a lot of personal issues with art. It's an individual thing, but I also think it's kind of Midwestern: You do your thing, but you don't talk about it. You make sure it's not such a big deal, and keep it very low-key. Not that the people in Seattle were jumping up and down, but they got together every week to draw and critique each other's work. Outside of art school, I never did that. There was a community there. When I came back from that trip and sat down to do King-Cat 44—it was probably the "Chicken Lady" or the "Shovel Lady" story—I had a physical, palpable sense of being self-conscious. It was the first time out of all these pages of comics I'd drawn where I was like, "Holy cow, people are going to read this. They're going to like it, or they might not like it. Maybe I really should make my drawings a little more solid, or really think about what I'm doing. Maybe this shouldn't be so sloppy."
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