The Fabler

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming

Joey Comeau sees more than most people.

At least, this an easy impression to receive after reading any of his work. Whether it’s three lines of text he’s penned for the popular webcomic A Softer World, or six paragraphs he wrote as part of a bogus job application for Overqualified, it becomes apparent pretty quickly that Joey has a gift for reading between the lines.

For those unfamiliar with Comeau’s work, he first gained widespread attention as co-creator and writer of A Softer World – a webcomic in which Joey’s captions provide fictional context to the photographs of Emily Horne.  Joey’s captions vary from subtle insights into the quirks of human relationships to darkly witty cracks about obsession, depravity, and shamelessly egocentric behaviour in general. It’s awesome, and you should read it (if you don’t already).

From A Softer World, the Ontario-based Comeau launched into the realm of short fiction, producing stories and essays for a number of magazines (some of those are here, while others can be found collected in his book, It’s Too Late To Say I’m Sorry). He also wrote a book called Lockpick Pornography, which he has referred to as “a gender-queer adventure story”, that was originally published online and later serialized through Loose Teeth Press.

Comeau has recently been touring select cities along the West Coast of Canada and the US to promote his latest book, Overqualified.

Overqualified, which was released last April through ECW Press,  presents a collection of cover letters sent as job applications by a particularly candid individual who happens to be named ‘Joey Comeau’.

Said character (and he is a character, at least as far as we know – Joey is tight-lipped about the exact amount of fiction present in his letters) is in the midst of experiencing some life-altering events, and consequently, any conscious filter that would usually prevent him from, say, disclosing his sexual fantasies in a cover letter, is notably absent.

As the cover letters pour out to corporation after corporation, a narrative weaves itself through the subtext which is alternatingly heart-wrenching and hilarious, obscene yet familiar.

Where Overqualified succeeds most is in Comeau’s ability to isolate and express those commonalities of the human experience which often go uncommented upon  – to read what’s between the lines, and then take that message and put it into the mouth of a character who is no longer capable of keeping it from spilling out everywhere.

I  caught up with Joey just a few days after he returned from his recent tour, and he was friendly enough to answer a few questions I had about Overqualified. He even had the patience to field several questions about A Softer World, which was just plain decent of him.

The transcript is below:

KD: For starters, tell me about the tour. How was it, and how long were you gone for?

JC: It was three and a half weeks,  and it was good! It was pretty successful, and we sold a lot of books. The turn outs were good even in some of the smaller venues.

KD: That’s great to hear.

Let’s get into a few questions about A Softer World, and then go from there to Overqualified.

You and Emily have been working on A Softer World for over six years now. How do you go about keeping the content fresh, not just for your fans, but also for yourself?

JC: Well, by not limited myself in terms of subject. It’s a matter of writing about things that are of interest to us at the time – so, hopefully, we never run out of things that interest us in our lives. Then we’ve got more troubles than just writing the comic.

KD: When you’re coming up with captions for A Softer World, do you try to consciously maintain a balance between your more introspective, thoughtful comics and the more straight-up humorous ones?

JC: Sometimes we’ll hold off a comic. Like if we come up with a really good, serious one but the last few have been kind of downers, we’ll say, let’s save this one and use it later and instead use one that’s a bit more upbeat.

KD: You recently referred to a collaboration you had in the works with Chris Hemsworth in a post on your blog. Is that something you can talk about at all?

JC: Yeah, we worked on it for a bit but then he just recently was moving, so we had to put it on hold. I hope to get back to it, though.

It’s sort of a more traditional comic, with nine panels  on a page and about seven pages per story. We’ve got a couple of stories already written, it’s just a matter of illustrating them and refining the script.

KD: Is doing a second regular webcomic something that you’ve ever seriously considered?

JC: I haven’t considered really doing a second continuing webcomic. And with Chris it was more a matter of finding a project to work on, and the web just being a good way to display it before making books.

KD: Let’s talk about Overqualified.

As I understand it, Overqualified started as a few job cover letters that you actually sent out to employers, which then became the inspiration for the letters that appeared in the book.

Where do the Overqualified Letters that you have archived on the Softer World website fit into this?

JC: The ones on the Softer World website are the ones that I actually sent. It was sort of an ongoing project. It started off being once a week, and then it became whenever I came up with one. The idea was originally to make a collection of those, but then I had the idea of making a novel that sort of collected them but also told a story through them.

So that involved modifying some of them, and writing whole new ones, and sort of putting it together like that.

KD: I’ve seen a few different things posted about the fact versus fiction content in your letters. Can you comment on how much of the book is purely fictional, and how much is taken directly from your own experiences?

JC: Not too specifically, without ruining the fun of it.

There’s a fair amount of fiction, and a fair amount of fact in it. Some of the events are ones that actually happened, some are ones that match the truth of the book in terms of tone – they’re sort of true in spirit, even though they didn’t actually happen – and some of them are just are funnier, and are there for the joke and not there because they’re true.

KD: To what degree do you feel your internet fame from A Softer World carries over into your success as a novelist-slash-writer of short stories?

JC: Well, it’s good to have people who are interested in reading the things that you do. So you have a book come out, and you already have people who are interested to see it.

They won’t necessarily like it just because they like the webcomic, but it’s definitely nice to have that audience willing to give it a chance.

KD: Can you shed any light on what we can expect from you next?

JC: Well I’ve got a novel coming out in the spring that’s based on a horror project I did with Emily called One Bloody Thing After Another. Originally it was a zine released in chapters, with Emily taking a photo to illustrate each chapter.

It’s part horror, and part weird/sad/funny lesbian story.

Thanks go to Mr. Comeau for chatting with me! If you’re interested in seeing more from Joey, you can check out his Livejournal, Twitter feed, and of course, his stuff over on A Softer World.