Maria Bamford and Scott Marvel Cassidy talk to us about their new graphic novel, Hogbook And Lazer Eyes

Comedian Maria Bamford has never been shy about allowing her personal life to become an element in her work—whether it’s her numerous stand-up albums where she talks candidly, and hilariously, about struggles with mental illness, or her recent memoir, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult. Now, Bamford has teamed up with her husband, artist Scott Marvel Cassidy, for a new graphic novel, Hogbook And Lazer Eyes, which tells the story of their relationship through the eyes of the many dogs (mostly elderly, mostly very good boys and girls) that the couple has shared together. Drawn by Cassidy, and published this week by FantaGraphics, the book is a lovely, digression-filled expression of the couple’s relationship, and their shared, hilarious love of candor.

Last month, we sat down for a conversation with Bamford and Cassidy about the book, the issues that crop up when half of a couple has already exposed the vast majority of her dirty laundry on albums and YouTube, and the inspirational power of an extremely chill senior dog.

Maria Bamford: Well, the dogs come first, in our lives, don’t you think?

Scott Marvel Cassidy: You come first!

MB: Awwwwwwww. But, you know, they’re very important members of our family.

SMC: It was deliberate, the presentation. That title page is a little corny, and a little funny, as a way to present what you’re about to read.

AVC: Was the idea of presenting the story from the dog’s point of view always the core of the book?

SMC: Oh, yeah, it was always the dogs, because we have ongoing narratives that all the dogs are saying to us at any given time, and we have all the different voices, and some of it got pretty intense and funny.

MB: You give voices to your animals, and ours—

SMC: Ours are very critical about things.

MB: [Now holding Muffin the dog] They’re usually saying things like [adopts voice] “We gotta gooo… We’re going out. We’re taking the Dash Bus to downtown Los Angeles, to see if there’s any good tacos.”

SMC: [Now holding Max the dog] This is Max, he’s in the last page of the book. He was a longshoreman. [Bamford laughs]

MB: The thing where you talk through your animals to communicate things in your relationship. [Muffin voice] “Why’s mama so cranky? Mama’s cranky.”

And our first dog, Bert, really did bring us together for our first kiss.

SMC: He really did jump across that Scrabble board, and we did make out right afterwards. It felt like Bert was saying, “I need a father.” Because he didn’t have long to live at that point, a year and a half or so.

MB: And when Scott first came over to my place, Blueberry took him over—

SMC: Over to the water bowl, to look at the empty bowl of water. She kept pointing her noise in it.

MB: “Do you see?”

SMC: “We need someone to help us.” I’d never had a dog before, so it was interesting that these dogs looked at me as someone to help.

MB: He’s an incredible dog-father. As soon as he wakes up in the morning, he’ll have long conversations with them, and be singing to them. It’s wonderful.

AVC: The lives of the pets impose a structure on the book, which is very true to life. What is it about pets that help define those eras of our lives?

MB: At least for me, it reminds me of my own life cycle. I’m in this part of my life, but I will die, you know? Seeing an animal’s life cycle being much shorter, I mean, shorter than my own, at least as far as I know. It helps you have compassion for yourself, and also other human beings. “You’re getting older. We need to slow down. Don’t pull my leash. Don’t bump into me, because I’m blind. I can’t see where I’m going.” It reminds me of, you know, just, life.

SMC: It’s an easy way to have the narrative go, every chapter—they’re not chapters, but, it ends with them running through a field, or over the Rainbow Bridge. I didn’t really know how else to end it. I don’t believe in god, or anything, but it’s really just the corny version of the Rainbow Bridge.

MB: There is something weird about dying. I don’t believe in God, but… We’ve been there when our dogs have passed.

SMC: It never gets any easier, with each passing. And we tend to adopt elderly dogs. So, we’ve been together 10 years, and we’ve had five pass away on us. And that never gets any easier, you never develop a skill to deal with it. It gets harder, if anything.

MB: We got a younger dog, a younger Chihuahua mix this time. “Let’s see if we can have somebody who’s around for a longer streak.”

AVC: In the book, you talk about how, when you met, Maria’s stories were “all over YouTube.” Scott, did you do research on Maria for that first date?

SMC: Not really, but after that first date, I told my friend that Maria was a comedian, and my friend goes, oh, I sent you a video of her, like, the year prior. And I looked on Facebook and he had, it was her with John C. Reilly on, Tim And Eric, doing a sketch. And I was like, oh, yeah, I do like her work.

After the first date, I went on YouTube, and there’s actually a video of her saying she’s a “red flag factory.” And so I was like, okay. So I delved into it. By the second date, I was like, well, I gotta dump all of my stuff, get it out. I know all her crap. So I need to get all my crap out. And that freaked her out. And we had a four-hour date, and I’m just telling her about my dad, who would, like, freak us out with knives. I just had an awful childhood, you know, all my family are alcoholics. And so then she was just like, yeeeeah, too much.

MB: It was funny, because this was the second guy I’d dated with a “dad story,” of a dad who had done dangerous knife play. So at first, I was like, “Oh no!” But then when we met the third time, after that second date, it was like, “Oh, you’ve already told me everything.” And he was just like a deflated balloon. When you get to say everything—that’s why I like stand-up, because I get to say everything that’s going on in the moment. Which is why it’s hilarious that I’d be, like, “Whaaaat?” And that is a thing I really appreciate about Scott, which is that he really is open, can talk about anything.

AVC: Along those same lines, Maria’s stand-up is often very personal and open. Scott, has it been at all difficult to be in a relationship where your partner is very open about what’s going on in your lives?

SMC: Not really. Because I do tell everyone everything. And in some ways, the comic book was another way of putting it all out there, so I don’t have to repeat or explain. And also, I’m telling people stuff—I’m also a painter, and my paintings aren’t narrative, but I feel they reveal something about me.

MB: One thing that was a relief with Scott was that he’d lived in L.A. almost as long as I had, and he’d worked with famous artists. And been around the weird atmosphere of celebrity, or whatever that is. And that it doesn’t matter. I had dated some people, who were like, “Ugh, it’s all about you,” who interpreted my job as something ethical about me, like I was a bad person. That Scott saw it as an artform, and that it was important to me to do it, and talk about it. But I also run things by him, if a topic involves him, for sure.

AVC: Talking about the art of the book, it feels like you’re playing with a lot of different styles and references. What were some of those influences?

SMC: Well, there’s a page in the Betty story [about another one of the couple’s dogs], where I’m talking about how I have suicidal ideation, and the very first square, that’s actually from a Spacemen 3 album, because I liked how psychedelic and fucked-up looking it was. A lot of it is ADD. One day I just love Frazetta’s ink drawings, or Wally Wood’s ink drawings, so I’ll draw it like that for a few panels. It’s a little schizophrenic, the way I draw, because I get bored with what I’m drawing. Like, the panels of the ex-boyfriends or girlfriends in the books, that’s all from high-school yearbooks.

MB: That’s one of the things I really loved about Scott’s work. On our third date, he brought one of his comics that he had made about his childhood, and it was a mash-up of different styles, too. He had a beautiful list of every band he’s ever seen, and how many times he’d seen them, and I was like, “Augh, this is so gorgeous!” I love a list.

AVC: There’s a very striking page about halfway through the book of your couples therapist, Sheryl Hirsham. What was the genesis of that page?

SMC: I think I was referencing a Wally Wood drawing in space. And then Sheryl Hirsham is actually Carol Grisham. And she is otherworldly. She does have wonderful gray hair, she says wonderful—

MB: She takes insurance.

SMC: She takes insurance.

MB: That’s the really heavenly part. We started going to her three months into dating. Because I had never had a relationship last over a year. His limit was three years. She was just very helpful with de-escalating conflicts. And one thing that we have done to de-escalate conflicts, we have, you know, some argument going, is singing repetitive songs. And so we wrote a song about her, which I put on one album. So she’s been a huge part of our lives. As have the dogs.

SMC: And Betty, who passes away in the comic book, she’s still really a part of our lives. A lot of times we’d ask, “What would Betty do in this situation?” Because she was always so relaxed, like falling off the bone kind of thing. You could carry her for hours, and she would just be so happy to be in your arms.

MB: We put her on the couch, and our friend brought over her turtle, a turtle named Cheeseburger. And Cheeseburger would just nestle there under Betty, and they’d sit there for the whole party. We’d joke, “Betty’s always at the party, and she always had one of her Barbie shoes falling off, trying to hook up.”

SMC: I have an absolute terror of flying, and Maria’s like, “Oh, Betty’s on the wing.” It does help. It sounds so corny, but it does help.

AVC: The book has a non-traditional narrative structure, in part because it’s about a functioning relationship. How do you structure a story that’s about people finding their way out of drama?

SMC: I think that’s why it could be told in a dog’s life. Because the dog’s life does have an arc. So it lets you bring things to a finish.

MB: I was so tired of the narrative arc of being in a relationship, and I’d get all excited, and then, “Ooh, I break with thee, I break with thee!” Los Angeles, it’s a thing to go, [Los Angeles voice] “That person’s toxic. Kick that person to the curb.” And it’s like, I’m toxic. I’m a mess. So to find somebody who wants to work it out, even though we’re both—I’ll speak for myself, I definitely have iss-ues—has been delightful.

AVC: It’s a very peaceful book. It starts in a way that seems to mimic the relationship—a lot of drama, that then finds ways to even itself out. And then lots of lovely naps.

SMC: I wanted to show how the dogs are this sort of low-pulse existence, that relaxes us. The serotonin.

MB: We are not perfect at all. I always hate, like, “I know what I’m doing,” hubris around relationships. I don’t know what I’m doing at all. Most recently, Scott had to ask me to go back to therapy because of some of my behaviors—

SMC: Well, I do draw myself as a monster in some of the panels, because I still feel like a monster half the time. That’s why I go to therapy!

MB: He goes to therapy!

SMC: That’s why I’m on Prozac.

MB: We’re both on meds. I think we both have elements of bipolar in terms of moodiness. But that is also the thing that draws me to Scott, too, which is knowing that I totally relate. In some ways, I act out feelings of hopelessness in a very different way. There’s a thing I’ve written about how we both have suicidal ideation in different ways, like, “Oh, no!” But there’s also something very funny in that, because I know, in my family, that was something I could do to get people to acknowledge I wasn’t feeling well. And that was also a thing his mother did.

SMC: Yeah.

MB: And so that doesn’t really fly with him, when I say, “Oh, I’m feeling suicidal.” [Mimicking Scott] “Mmmhm! Mmhm!”

SMC: Because I feel it too, half the time.

MB: Exactly! It’s just interesting, how you’re healed in different ways by each other. I really appreciate—we’ve done a ton, Scott has done, and I have done—a ton of “work,” or whatever you want to call it. Emotional sudoku, let’s call it that.

AVC: One last question: How did the book actually come about?

SMC: When we first did the comic, it was just as merch, the first 20 pages, which we self-published and would sell on Maria’s tours. And I figured no one else would ever see it. And then a friend suggested I send it to Fantagraphics, and they were like, “Who are you? What is this? This is amazing. We love Maria.” So then, they asked us to do a larger volume. That’s when the Betty story came in, so I could expand it to a graphic novel. I’m just so grateful that they even wanted to pick it up, because I’ve been doing comics since I was 18. I’m 60 now. And, you know, I have Xeroxes of comics no one will ever see. I mean, thank God, some of them are awful. But I feel validated in some ways.

MB: Another thing I really admire about Scott’s practice is that he loves to make the work. He’s in his studio, our garage, every single day. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard comedians talk about comedy, but, [adopts yelling voice] “BOOOOOOOO! BOOOOO!” I love people who are doing, making stuff. And his stuff is not only beautiful, he’s always excited, and that inspires me.

SMC: Hey, thanks!