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Young Liars #14 hit stands almost a month ago now, but technological catastrophe turned what was intended to be a podcast interview with writer/artist David Lapham into a more standard Q&A. What makes it worse, is that in the beginning stages of this interview, we discuss the future of the title, prospects for cancellation, etc., which ahs already been dealt with here following DC's decision to cancel the book.

More information on all of that to follow, but for now...enjoy.

Comic Related: Is Annie more or less credible than Danny as a narrator? Because we known that both of them are liars...but at least Danny comes right out and admits it.

David Lapham: Right - yeah I don't think anybody's-I think that nothing is credible on the face of it in the book. There's another issue that she had narrated, it was issue like 8. It was the one where Sadie's in sort of a coma and Danny flashes back to when they met and there's a thing where you don't know who the narrator is and you find out it was her. The one that I just finished, issue 16, is narrated by someone else, not Danny and it's pretty straightforward-no lies.

CR: It's funny because when you take your freshman English courses, you're told that barring anything else, you can generally assume that the narrator's point-of-view is credible...with this title, that element of storytelling was dismissed out of hand at the very beginning of the first issue.

DL: Right. Yeah, and it's really taken on a life of its own because I've done it issue-to-issue. You know, it started out in the proposal stages as much more of a straightforward book, and it's just evolving and if you notice even in the first arc compared to the second arc it keeps kind of going out there.

CR: Is the evolution a byproduct of knowing that you can go beyond #12 and not always worrying about cancellation?

DL: You know, now I'm just sort of on a course with it and you've had that situation of-originally we were contracted for 12 and then as we were coming up on 12, they had to decide if we were going to go farther and so we keep eking out a little bit more. The fans are pretty good for me to keep going so far, knock on wood. But you don't know. One of the things of doing it is like, "the next arc could be the last". But yeah, it's just one of those things where I'm on my course and I've got to keep going on it until I get to the end or they pull the plug on me.

CR: On that note--do you have a cancellation plan? I mean, this is very elaborate title. What would you do if the book ended tomorrow?

DL: I do. I thought out like, if they came to me today and said, "What's the minimum you want to do with the book?" I know what I would do, and I'm very comfortable with that. If they said, "You had like one more issue to go," I think the end would be different than the ending I have planned but I know and have always known but it's become clearer and clearer as I've gone through, what's going on in the book, and that makes a lot of what's surreal or mysterious or unreliable work because it's all generated from the same place when I write it.

CR: Alright, well onto the actual issue. The caption box near the front of our tale says "three months ago," but three months as of when? As of when the story is being related or as of the date on the first page?

DL: No, it's three months previous to the date. All the issues in this arc start out with this bomb in various places, and you go back from there into the story and then the last issue of this arc will catch up with that. I just made it three months before as opposed to dating it because I put a lot of dates in the first arc and just from talking to people in comics-a lot of people just having specific dates, you pull back and you have the timeline and it's very helpful. But a lot of people when they're reading long enough for them to say, "Well, when was the last date? Was it May, or...?" I just thought that putting "three months ago" would be less restrictive.

CR: It's always interesting to see how these things work, because the soap-operatic nature of mainstream superhero comics has given a real unique kind of personality to many fans; there always seems to be somebody who knows your timeline better than you do as a creator.

DL: Sure. Even with my book, there's this guy-a fan on my board who did a timeline of the events and snagged a couple of gaffes.

CR: In spite of the fact that you usually have that going on in comics, the nature of Young Liars is that it's hard for people to have anything over you in terms of continuity because between the haphazard reveal of the timeline and the fact that we don't know everything is true, you can't really make a useful timeline from the outside.

DL: Sure, you're right, because it could just all be a lie. No, it's true. In this specific instance there was still an internal logic-you know, where I show an event and if we come back to the same event like in the first arc there was the night that Danny shoots Sadie, it had two different dates-one date right after the other and it was logical to me because there was a scene in the apartment and then there was a scene in the alley where he actually shoots her and it just bridged over midnight. SO that was the explanation although there were a couple of instances where I just put the wrong date. So even though I can say, "Oh, it's all a lie!" there's still an internal logic that you're trying to show, because even though there's a lot of weirdness going on, there's a lot that's straightforward.

CR: When you're doing superhero stuff or whatever, do you feel like having a recognizable name means you can escape the bonds of continuity a little more in a miniseries or something?

DL: Yeah I guess so. Probably; I mean a lot of the editors know that or assume that with me because the work that I do has been so intense and so when somebody will call me up and just say, "Hey do you want to do..." whatever, I just assume that they want me to do a cool story and not worry about that. They don't want to get you wrapped up in all that where you have to coordinate with six editors who are all writing books about the same guy. It's also part of the mentality that a lot of collectors see that as part of the fun is locking all of that together, even though it makes no sense in a lot of ways.

CR: Were they actually beating on Lorelei to make their excuses work?

DL: You mean like her with all the injuries and everything? Yeah, there's a couple different things going on there. There is, and I guess I'll make a comparison-there's the Vertigo element to the story, you know the Hitchcock movie where in the second half of the movie he finds a girl that kind of looks like his goddess and just kind of sets about recreating her? So even though there's this game of cat and mouse, you're also seeing Danny and Lorelei's relationship and this hint that he's not right yet. Just because he had this revelation that he's trapped in the town and he had a different life, it doesn't mean that he's back to normal. He's trying to turn her into Sadie-whether she is hopefully or isn't, that's for another issue. And because of the narrative perspective on this one, you'll see hints of that but he's trying to get her to perform a trick that Sadie would probably do.

CR: Hadn't considered the Vertigo element. I was hung up on the idea of whether she actually IS Sadie.

DL: That'll be revealed eventually. There is a truthfulness in the narration and in the immediate theme and the immediate issue so a lot of the parts where things are turning out to be false or lies comes from the fact that there's another issue but when I'm writing a certain scene like when Danny has the circus cannon and he's trying to make her get into the cannon and wants to shoot her and everything, there's definitely a truth in that. You know, he's trying to make her into Sadie without taking that step where he puts the bullet in her head. He's kind of a desperate guy.

CR: Annie is obviously a tormented soul; do you actually think she really entertains the notion of not "working out?" Or is she just saying that?

DL: Well, I think that in the moment, she says it that she feels that. I think that part of why she feels that is that she starts to feel close to these people-Danny and Lorelei-and that she's got these friends and so maybe she should start to do something different with her life, and then she has the gun turned on her and that's likely to sort of push her back the other way. Isn't that everybody's life, in terms of beating your vices? I mean, even something similar-you decide you're going to start working out at the gym. And sometimes that happens but more often than not there's a hundred false starts or half-assed efforts before it ever starts, or doesn't.

CR: Annie keeps referring to Danny as Danny, not Johnny, but she always refers to Lorelei as Lorelei. Does that give a sense of bearing for the relationship between Lorelei and Sadie?

DL: Right, sure, yeah, that's a good point that I guess I'll just leave without elaborating for now. It's a good observation though.

CR: At the end of the story, my first thought was to wonder whether it was actually Danny or whether it was her own people who dosed her in the end. She certainly kind of has made herself a liability to her bosses...!

DL: Right, yeah I think that from my perspective, there's two ways; it's legitimate what anybody reads into anything, but I will say that wasn't my intent-my intent was that this was between Danny and Annie and they're the ones that knocked her out and that whatever happens to her is by their doing. There will be a point where the spider element comes back as it relates to her in a later issue.

Russell Burlingame / Comic Related Columnist
Russell Burlingame is a journalist and columnist living and working in New York City. In high school, Russell interviewed Elliot S. Maggin for a review of the Kingdom Come novelization, and since then has worked consistently in and around the comics industry. He interned for Wizard magazine, and has freelanced for Wizard and Newsarama, in addition to a number of non-comics publications, Russell is currently working on a graphic novel based on Cap'n Internet, the comic strip that ran in his college newspaper; and a graphic biography of folk singer Phil Ochs with artist Marion Vitus.