James Kochalka on Super-Fuckers

You've dabbled with superheroes before, with your Hulk Annual story, and pieces in the DC Bizarro collections. While you're probably best known to comics readers for your autobiographical American Elf strips, you seem to keep coming back to the guys in capes. Why is that?

As a kid, superheroes scared the hell out of me. The angry faces and grimacing, the displays of terrible power...it was all just totally overwhelming. I didn't like it, but it made a big impression. This was when I was pretty little. Now that I realize that the world itself is full of angry faces and grimacing and terrible displays of power, it seems like a good metaphorical vehicle.

For a couple of years I've been thinking over what I call my Evil Universe Theory. We live in a universe at war. Here on earth various factions are all fighting each other, jockeying for position. And at the same time our bodies are at war with viruses and bacteria. And without retracing the whole thought process, I followed this to an odd conclusion that all matter and energy is evil. Every chemical reaction is a battle, every movement is an attack, every act is an act of war. Then I took this concept, sublimated it entirely and wrote a really goofy, wild superhero story on top of it. I also removed the judgment of calling it "evil." I'm sure I'm confusing the hell out of you now. None of this is necessary information to understand the comic book, I swear.

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