One thing that I happen to like about Queen though is that they hit upon an emotional resonance. But I also just like the music. That’s what I liked about them at first. And I kind of tried to do that in the book too. It’s supposed to be funny; it is supposed to have poignant moments, but it is also supposed to be a bit over-the-top. It is a 300-page book about how I like a band, which is, I think, kind of an over-the-top thing to write about. Because it sounds like a silly premise. “It’s about how I like Queen A WHOLE LOT.” Who wants to read that?
I really like the way that the story develops in the book—it begins at a tribute concert for the band a couple of years back and then leaps into your childhood. Did you consciously plan that?
I knew the general concept. The way that I work is that I write a page, I draw it, I ink it and I move on to the next one. Which is sort of bad when it comes to editing. I even think you may notice drawing styles changing a little as the book progresses, hopefully getting better. [laughs] I know a lot of cartoonists who work that way and I know a lot of cartoonists who will thumbnail the entire book first. For example, Craig Thompson who wrote Blankets, from what I understand he does the entire book first as a thumbnail. He writes the story first and then he goes back and draws all of the actual pages. It just wasn’t the way that I was able to work with that particular story, and I’m glad that I didn’t because one of my favorite parts of the book, I hadn’t thought of at the time. The whole thing of being in high school and liking my friend’s girlfriend—that sort of came to me as I was working on the book.
I did kind of figure out early on that I wanted the book to mirror “Bohemian Rhapsody.” So it is structured the same way. There’s an intro; there’s a ballad—the “Mama” part about me and my parents. Then there’s the guitar solo, which is that little mini-essay. Then there’s the second part of the opera, which is when I’m in high school, which I think is kind of funny because it is operatic teenage drama. And then there’s the last part, which would be the hard-rock segment of the song, and then there’s like an epilogue “outtro.” I tried to do it so each section has a different voice.
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