By OLIVIA WRIGHT
Unlike Lenore, the cute little dead girl, her creator, Roman Dirge, is very much alive. She and her friends are back with new adventures in LENORE: THE TIME WAR #1 from Titan Comics. While LENORE has had a seven-year break, Dirge has not. “I wasn’t, like, chilling on the couch, right?” Dirge tells RUE MORGUE. “I was working in the animation field, designing people’s TV shows for the majority of that time.”
Lenore’s latest adventures are a continuation of a story that Dirge started nearly a decade ago. “The new three that I finished this year that are about to come out, starting in January, are a continuation of a time travel story that I started seven years ago, and then just sort of forgot about. [I] started working in animation, and it’s like, I just forgot that I did this thing. [Laughs] You know, I got comfortable in animated stuff, but once I found my way back to it and really thought about it because it took a lot to figure out how to make this story work with these characters who were stuck in time that don’t have magic time powers to be able to get back, eventually it just clicked. I’m really proud of these next three that are about to come out. It’s insane. It’s probably one of the more insane journeys you’ve seen of Lenore.”
LENORE creator Roman Dirge
Fans can anticipate a more refined Lenore. “She’s a lot more literate now. [Laughs] She used to speak in very broken English. She had the blown-out eye. Whenever I do closeups of her, you can still see it’s there, but I kind of dialed that back a bit. The adventures are more thought out now,” Dirge says. “She definitely has longer stories and bigger adventures.”
While Lenore and her adventures have evolved, fans can still look forward to Dirge’s unique humor. Dirge shares what remains consistent with Lenore and his other characters: “The hijinks! [Laughs] The shenanigans, if you will. The funny is still there, it’s just, I’d say, more coherent stories. That’s really the only difference. It’s definitely prettier. Seven years of drawing other people’s shows has enhanced my abilities a little bit, so I’m anxious for people to see it.”
Years of honing his skills in animation have resulted in a more polished aesthetic, but it has come at a cost. Creating these three new issues has been a heavier burden on the artist. “These three were very graphically intensive,” he explains. “Back in the day, when you’re talking about Wedgies or Noogies or one of those, I could do five pages in a day because it was just black and white.” Still, the extra effort has been worth it. “These days, I pride myself on the backgrounds and how they look, and making everything really pretty for what it is. And I’m really happy with that, but, my God, the time it takes! Where a single page now can take five days, you know, I could do five pages in a day!”
Even dread Cthulhu is no match for this cute little dead girl in LENORE: THE TIME WAR #1
Among the classic features of previous issues of Lenore are the occasional glimpses into the artist’s personal life. Dirge shares how true-to-life those vignettes are. For example, did he really set himself on fire? “I did. I did. Not intentionally – I’m not like a psycho that just walks around setting myself on fire. You know, not these days. I was working as a close-up magician in Mission Valley, San Diego. Before I went to do my rounds, I always had a drink to calm my nerves at the bar and I had inadvertently set my sleeve on spilled alcohol that was on the bar. This was when you could still smoke in bars, so I did a lot of cigarette magic for the tables and I was doing this routine with a floating cigarette. It ends with, like, you’re holding [the cigarette], and a flame ball comes out. It was really cool, but it ignited the alcohol on my sleeve, and like a champ, I tried to play that off like it was part of the trick. Just something I do, catching myself on fire! You don’t see a lot of magicians doing it. The jacket was treated so it couldn’t burn, but the alcohol still burned. I still burned up my arm. I tattooed flames over where it all was burned – just a little reminder not to do that again.”
Currently, Dirge has no plans for new Lenore issues following LENORE: THE TIME WAR. “Those three time travel books kicked my ass,” Dirge says. “That was a lot of 18-hour work days, back to back to back, just sleeping like, four hours at a time and everything. It was ridiculous.” However, he does have more exciting projects in the works. “[The first] is about a bee witch. It’s called The Curse of the BeeBee Yaga. Terrible name, but I’m running with it! It’s not going to be lazy in any way, but it’s centered in the woods, so I can draw a lot of trees, and we’re good, you know? So it’s still going to be funny. It’s still going to be awesome.”
Dirge is a master of creating stories reminiscent of children’s books and adding his own wicked, and wickedly funny twists. Another project in the works does just that. “I’m also working on a book called The Pancake Raven, which is going to be about a little raven born with nub arms that can’t fly. He watches his brothers and sisters flying every day and he runs in their shadows to feel like he belongs. Of course, this will all end terribly. It sounds kind of cute but sad, but it’ll get messed up, I promise.”
Roman Dirge’s LENORE: THE TIME WAR #1 is available from Titan Comics on February 12.
