Peter Rostovsky Damnation Diaries Interview 3/18/24
Interviewee: Peter Rostovsky
Interviewer: Anthony Andujar Jr
Q1 What were your first comics and how did that inspire your journey into the arts?
PR: I first discovered comics when I was ten years old. I grew up in the former Soviet Union, where we didn’t have comics. When my mother and I moved to the Bronx in 1980, I somehow found my way to Jimmy’s Comics—a local comic shop. I didn’t speak much English but started hanging out there and essentially learning the language and all things America through comic books.
The early 80s were an especially good moment for comics, too: Daredevil, X-Men, Teen Titans, Warlord, Wolverine, Warp, Dreadstar. Marvel and DC titles and offshoots like First, PC, and Epic really captivated me with dazzling art and frequently adult storylines. I geeked out on Frank Miller, George Perez, P. Craig Russell, Bernie Wrightson, Howard Chaykin, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Michael Golden—all of them working in top form. As for my journey, I initially wanted to be a comics artist and illustrator but found my way into fine art and painting in college. Comics is something I always followed and missed; I would often kill time in Forbidden Planet even though I stopped collecting for many years.
That love of drawing, storytelling, and often elaborate realism that first drew me to comics is something I developed as a painter and later in my return to comics with this book. In many ways, Damnation Diaries tries to fuse my artistic sensibility as a painter with my love of comics of that early 80s moment. Unlike some fine artists, many comics artists don’t try to play it cool; they throw it all in—total maximalism—and that’s something I tried to do here as well.
Q2 As an artist, you’ve dabbled in different mediums of art, and traversed the artworld. How did those experiences lead you to creating comics?
PR: Yes, I’ve been around the proverbial block. I’ve worked in painting, drawing, sculpture, digital art, installation as well as public art, and I’ve also written art criticism for a range of publications. So, I consider myself an interdisciplinary artist and writer. But I always saw comics as a big item on my bucket list. What draws me to comics is the medium’s orchestral nature. Suddenly it allowed me to merge different passions that had been separate before; I could draw, write, paint, imply sound, and ultimately make something cinematic. Since film is my other great love, this was a huge revelation. I remember hearing Cliff Chiang say that he initially wanted to make films but decided to make comics instead. I had a similar epiphany: comics allowed me to make film on the page. But I also see comics as a form of public art, extending my work in that sphere. My experiences making public art pieces at New York’s Metrotech Center, City Hall Park, and Spring Creek High School eventually led me to making books. Except with comics, you don’t make a pilgrimage to a site, but the work comes to you. And, unlike painting, which is frequently expensive and exclusive, the work comes to your bookstore, computer or phone in a pretty affordable form. If that’s not public art I don’t know what is. I find that democratic aspect of comics deeply compelling.
Q3 Damnation Diaries is your debut graphic novel. What inspired this project?
PR: Like many projects, it started as something small—a satirical short story I wrote one weekend about a sinner in hell who, after 300 years, decides to get treatment for his “ennui” with hell’s only therapist. The original was titled Fred Greenberg: Hell’s Therapist and was published with two illustrations in the Third Rail Quarterly in 2015. From there, it lay fallow for a while until I went to MacDowell residency as a painter in the summer of 2016. I was mostly painting back then; however, during the open studio, I noticed many people hovering around the Fred Greenberg printed pages and really responding to them. The resident director of the program, David Macy, also nudged me: “Well, why not just make a graphic novel?” I took the note and then later, upon leaving, mentioned the thought to a friend—the filmmaker Kimi Takesue. She had an idea: “I know a comics person!” That person was Dean Haspiel, whom I met for lunch, and who is simply the biggest advocate for comics and for fellow creators—I lovingly call Dean the pied piper of the field. From there, Dean encouraged me to draw some more pages and develop it. Fast-forward a year, and I moved into the comics studio he shared with many other New York cartoonists—Jon Allen, Owen Brozman, Mike Cavallaro, Marguerite Dabaie, N. Steven Harris, Jason Little, Whitney Matheson, George O’Connor, Morgan Pielli, Khary Randolph, Frank Reynoso, Chris Sinderson, James Otis Smith, and Sara Gómez Woolley—and I just started working on the project feverishly until the studio broke up in the midst of the pandemic.
In terms of artistic and literary inspirations, the book is a kind of chthonic memoir. They say write what you know, and I feel like the book is very much a reflection of life in New York and other big cities. It’s a political satire of our hellscape in the US but also a serious treatment of the difficulties facing many artists and writers. In that way, it served as a form of therapy as well. Everything made it into the book: adjunct teaching (I teach at three colleges), my girlfriend, my mother, my father. My old therapist’s name was Freddie Greenberg—she became the stoic and troubled character of Fred. All of us are in hell; I mean, New York ain’t heaven. The landscape is chaotic, exponentially gentrifying, subject to violence, terrorist attacks as well as all kinds of authoritarian control. The book was crafted in the heart of the Trump years and also absorbs that pressure. So, the inspiration came from my everyday life. I simply used the prism of hell as a way to amplify life’s details and highlight how surreal, absurd and punishing our lives often are—and how important it is to maintain our relationships and find closure, even in this dystopia.
Q4 What was the process like developing a book such as this that weaves in and out of the semi-autobiographical, satirical, psychological and in some ways the spiritual?
PR: Honestly, because it was so close to the heart, it was not too challenging to write. I certainly revised things and worked through drafts, but the material really poured out of me. That’s why I liken it to a fever—I worked on the book compulsively. I also have to say that it was a lot of fun. In many ways, the book is a love letter to my favorite books, films, and TV: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Buffy, Angel, An American Werewolf in London, What We Do in the Shadows, The Boys, and other gems. It was certainly very laborious to make—five and a half years between all my day jobs—and I learned a lot about the craft of making comics and storytelling. But it was a deeply immersive experience to write, visualize and render the story. I I also drew as much as I could from my own experience. I used references from my life and from the people around me. I didn’t want it to be a memoir per se, but I know that writing from life really charged the material. So in this regard, the book is a satire and perhaps self-satire. I take serious issues—relationships, family estrangement, emotional and financial debt, terrorism, labor struggles and inequality—and work through them in an absurdist and farcical way. Satire is an especially powerful ingredient in this process, offering just enough of a buffer so you examine life from a distance. I teach a class on humor at Parsons, and there’s a quote from the philosopher Henri Bergson that calls humor “the momentary anesthesia of the heart.” That’s how I use it in Damnation Diaries: as a vehicle for social critique that makes our respective hell ultimately easier to understand and process; I hope the reader feels that too.
Q5 For Damnation Diaries, you play multiple roles as the writer, the illustrator, color artist and letterer. What were some of the benefits and challenges that came with fluctuating between roles throughout the duration of this project?
PR: The benefit of doing everything at once is that you can exercise total control over the work—something I feel very attached to as a painter. In painting, I make a piece from the ground up: from preparing the surface, to drawing, to painting and final varnish. I had the same attitude with the book, tweaking the different elements and layers almost to the very end, and I very much liked the flexibility of the process. The disadvantage was that since this is my first book, I was essentially learning on the job and perfecting my workflow. So, it was a steep learning curve in some ways, and I learned the depth of each aspect of comics craft. I’m still learning, of course, but this was a kind of baptism of fire, where I just dove in and eventually got better at navigating all these roles, coordinating them, and working with greater efficiency.
Q6 The protagonist of this book provides a lens into hell, as well as the art world, and real life at large. What made hell a great template for your critique of the world that the protagonist inhabits, in addition to the world that we metaphorically live in?
PR: Even though the book is quite surrealist in attitude, it still relies on an amplified realism to achieve its vision. Exaggerate some concrete aspect of our world enough and you get something quite bizarre and hellish. The context of hell offered me a vast and permissive canvas on which to exercise my imagination—it’s very Boschian in this sense. But it also allowed me to highlight the unbelievably absurd realities that surround us in our everyday existence: the city’s gentrification with many buildings left empty even during a housing crisis, the absurd inequality that informs the academy and the art world, the brewing authoritarianism we see in MAGA, as well as the neoliberal forces that constantly sell us more work in the guise of leisure. You can’t make this stuff up—in fact, you don’t have to. Just look out the window or turn on the news. My take is that we already live in a version of hell or the underworld; the metaphorical context with demons and brimstone just offers me a way to address our political reality and time in a visually imaginative and exuberant way.
Q7 Was there a particular soundtrack that you compiled together while working on Damnation Diaries? If so, how did that help create the kind of tone and atmosphere that you wanted to convey within the story?
PR: I always work to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. Since I made much of this book in a shared comics studio, the soundtrack was more collectively DJed and included everything from R&B and disco to yacht rock, indie rock, and jazz. We’d take turns DJing. When left to my own devices—and for other parts of Damnation Diaries—I listened to metal. If I remember correctly,I was into goth metal at the time—the lowliest form of metal, if you ask some aficionados—also prog metal and folk metal. So it was bands like Tristania, Theater of Tragedy, Elis, Draconian, Myrath, Amaseffer, and some Amon Amarth. For podcasts, I often listen to Imaginary Worlds—a geeky podcast about all things sci-fi and fantasy. Perhaps all of these informed the look of the book. But when I started it, I wanted a heavy metal vibe for it—not just in terms of the 80s look of the legendary magazine but also the musical genre.
Q8 In Damnation Diaries you’ve taken some liberties dabbling with different art styles and color palettes within the book. How did you know when to choose what style was appropriate for each of the moments? Were there preliminary drafts, and if so, how many did you sort through until settling on what fit the scene and tone of the pages drawn?
PR: Yes, there were multiple drafts and versions. I knew that I wanted hell to be monochromatic—as if the color was bled out of the afterlife—and for any kind of flashback to earthly existence to be in color. So, the first versions of chapter one and two were just inks. But as I got deeper into the book, I realized that inks weren’t enough. My studio mate Jon Allen brought in a duotone book at one point, and I realized that was the solution. I could still make the underworld monochrome but also more robust and painterly in a style recalling Gustave Doré and old master drawings in black and white chalk on toned paper. I still wanted the ancillary ads and other material to be in color, but the current look of the book—with each chapter in a different color—worked well. I played around quite a bit in terms of which colors went where over probably five drafts, but in the end, they represent the emotional journey of the protagonist, PKRx354, and suggest different levels of intensity and transformation. Since I also saw this book as an experiment and akin to film, I just went with it. When I imagine it as a movie, I picture each chapter as having different color lighting and sets. I was a big fan of Peter Greenaway’s very baroque films when I was young, so maybe I was unconsciously influenced by his use of color. Fun fact—Greenaway also started out as a painter.
Q9 Self-reflection and redemption are a major theme in Damnation Diaries. What is it that you’d hope for readers to digest when reading this book? And what lessons were gained when developing this project?
PR: I ultimately see the story as one of self-transformation. Damnation Diaries is a book about wrestling with your demons—actual demons in the underworld, but also emotional ones: your inner conflicts, unresolved tangles that manifest themselves in your choices and relationships. I imagine hell like a video game where you try to resolve these issues so you can, in a way, level up or graduate to a state of closure and self-acceptance. In this way, the book takes the therapeutic process quite seriously—it’s about unshackling yourself from lived contradictions and self-perpetuating cycles. I hope the reader will also reflect on these in their own life. On another level, the book is a sober critique of the world we live in, which is terrible, chaotic, unpredictable, and traumatic. So, if you feel like you’re going crazy—it’s not you; you are indeed in a version of hell. I feel it’s important to recognize the two in tandem; we do live in a hellscape that is inhuman on many levels, but even here we can find closure with our loved ones, forge and maintain relationships, create art, and help others along the way. So there is a sense of resignation that I hope people will find comforting. Yes, there is no exit; hell is other people. But that’s also a good thing because we can always reconcile and find our kindred spirits and fellow travelers, even in the underworld. These are some of the lessons I learned, and the book wouldn’t be in existence were it not for many helping hands and good will: my former studio mates, my publisher, agent, my partner Mary, many current and former students, colleagues as well as friends from the comics and fine art worlds. I learned a lot about community through making it and about how so many communities overlap.
I should note, that as a comedy horror book rich with torture, Damnation Diaries also had a torturous road to the bookshelves. It was censored in China at the printer just as we had finished proofing and were about to press print. The official reason: “propensity for violence,” which I didn’t understand given how many mainstream titles specializing in violence get printed in China. But we suspect that it was really censored for all my swipes at Trumpism and for other political content. Ironically, the CCP thought my critique of the US was a critique of Chinese totalitarianism and that I was, in some way, encouraging revolution. Chapter one with little of those political overtones was republished in the Finger Cakes anthology, which was also printed in China. So the fact that it didn’t get flagged clarified why mine was. And that wasn’t all. The original printer considered doing the job on the down-low, but then the truck driver was afraid to transport it because of hell on the cover. The whole book became a hot potato, and we had to print it in Lithuania, thus delaying the final release date. So, beyond all the things I learned about making comics, about myself, the people in my orbit, and my goals as an artist-writer, I also learned about the obstacles to artistic freedom and expression that increasingly block our paths.
The truth is, we live in a culture of censorship, book bans, and political control exerted explicitly but also through the market. It’s a great irony that both Tom Kaczynski (the publisher of Uncivilized Books) and I are former Soviets. Both of us are the same generation, grew up reading 80s comics, but found ourselves censored with this book for the first time in our lives. I know it’s probably not the last either and that’s a hard lesson to swallow. More and more, art faces a space of unfreedom—especially since many publishers self-censor to save on printing costs. It’s yet another symptom of the world I’m trying to describe in Damnation Diaries and something that has become an essential lesson and part of its story as my first foray into comics. These experiences also fuel me as a creator. In my opinion, comics is the most challenging and time-consuming medium one can pursue, but it’s also incredibly rewarding in its ability to reach diverse audiences in an immersive, affordable, and experimental way. I’ve certainly processed all these lessons and look forward to applying them in round two.
Q10 What projects are in the pipeline and where can readers find news of your work?
PR: I’m currently working on several things at once. I’m drafting Damnation Diaries Two, continuing the storyline and following the characters in their journey through the afterlife. What happens to PKRx354, to his mother, to Mary? What becomes of UNDR—the revolutionary faction? And of course, what becomes of Fred Greenberg? I really want to continue their narratives and have begun the writing process already. Alternatively, I have a manuscript of other stories—science fiction, horror, weird fiction—that I’m working on developing in comics format. I’m looking forward to working on all of these with an eye to how my painting background can inform these projects, and people can stay tuned for news via social media—https://www.instagram.com/peterrostovsky; https://www.facebook.com/peter.rostovsky.5/; https://twitter.com/rostovskypeter?s=21&t=RSzNdDE0wFUvrukC-XBAfQ as well as via my website: https://www.peterrostovsky.com/. Damnation Diaries was certainly a labor of love, and I’ve learned that this kind of passion for a story, its characters and its world is something I should keep following.
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher