“I usually start by picking a celebrity, and location – for example, Britney Spears in a TK Maxx. Then I pick a strong emotional POV for the celebrity to have. Maybe Britney loves Oreos…” says Luke. “The more mundane and specific the better. Then it’s just a matter of asking how Britney’s love of Oreos makes her behave oddly at a TK Maxx. Maybe she’s thrilled because finds a patterned blouse that will hide Oreo crumbs.” Luke pencils out the comics on his iPad, then prints the pencils and ink with a Rotring Isograph pen on standard printer paper, drawing everything quickly – he likes the scrappy look.
The comedian is a big fan of Ulli Lust and her book Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life, as well as the mini comic Apartment 3 by Pascal Girard, a foundational text for Luke’s style. But it’s clear that his true muse is the act of playing with the celebrity image. It may not even particularly be about celebrities per se, but simply their infinitely expendable and remixable image. “Usually, I’ll just choose whichever celebrity is top of mind. I write new celebrity comics every day, so most of them go undrawn, and I run through celebrities very quickly,” says Luke. “I get comments on lots of the comics like ‘oh my gosh, this is so Florence Pugh’ which is funny, because two minutes before I started drawing, it was going to be about Mel C.”
Luke Healy’s newest graphic novel Dogs On Dates is available now, published by Faber (UK) and Drawn & Quarterly (North America).