Party Like It’s 999 B.C.: Rachel Pollack & Joe Corallo on “The Never Ending Party” & Exclusive Preview of Issue #2

Did you all know Rachel Pollack’s “Doom Patrol” run is finally getting released as a lovely hardcover? I didn’t until this interview. It’s been a long time coming. But we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here for Rachel’s return to long-form comics and her team up with “She Said Destroy” writer Joe Corallo on “The Never Ending Party.”

Joe & Rachel dig deep into the process of making the ComiXology mini series, what it means to have a party that can’t stop, won’t stop, and why Dionysus is a messy bitch who lives for destruction. OK maybe they’re not as flippant about that last one. Stick around to the end for an exclusive preview of issue #2 as well. Thanks to Rachel & Joe for chatting!

I guess, to get us started, how did you two match up for the book?

Joe Corallo: Oh, geez. I guess it kind of started from as a fan, I had emailed Rachel…God, six, seven years ago or something now?

Rachel Pollack: A long while, yeah.

JC: Yeah. After reading her Doom Patrol run, which I did because I had read Grant’s, and I had read the Silver Age stuff and some of the other stuff, but they’d never collected Rachel’s until finally this year. But I was with Martha Thomas’s. And, you know, we were talking about that, because she was a big fan of Doom Patrol. She has the last page of Grant’s run in her home on display. So I was like, I liked Grant’s run and I want to keep reading more and I don’t know much about Rachel’s run and I was like “is it good?” and she was like “Yeah! You know, you should read it.”

It was one of those things where I was reading and I’m like, “I don’t get why this isn’t collected?” I mean, and in fairness, there are some other things from, you know, Marvel, DC, older comics and stuff that’ve never been collected, and you’re just like, “This is great. Why is it?” So that’s how that started.

And then, you know, just over the years, you know, we worked on a few short things together. I edited a couple of anthologies that Rachel was in. And I know, Rachel, you also worked on anthologies and shorts with Tom Pyre, Justin Hall, a few other people too.

RP: Yeah. Yeah.

JC: And then I had this kernel of an idea and I wrote it out. I was kind of like, “Oh, I think this would be good with Rachel” and I sent it over and it kind of went from there.

RP: Yeah, I love the idea was really interesting. My contribution was bringing in the Greek mythology part because that’s where I love things. I find so much valuable material there that you can translate into all kinds of things, including comics, where they’ve got a very kind of bite to them, you know?

So you’ve kind of been working on specifically this project for about how long? You’ve been working on and off together as editor and writer and now co-writers, but for this specific project, I guess, what was the genesis of it?

JC: It was very much, I had this idea, I sent it to Rachel and then we kind of talked from there. I had a document that kind of laid out some things. What I knew the story was going to be about was, it was definitely going to be about this group of, you know, sort of Club Kids underground queer kind of characters in the 90s and then flashing forward to today, dealing with what had happened in the past and where they are in the present, and that there was, you know, mystical elements to it. There was going to be a character who was from the past and is now in the present and hadn’t aged. That was stuff I had all in the document and then Rachel built on it from there.

RP: I think that last part was one of the parts that attracted me the most, actually. The character who jumps in 1995 or so into the current day and in Joe’s idea, she was a trans woman and, not an activist because she wasn’t political, but she was very radical in her own way of being. And I really enjoyed playing with the way in which someone from that time would come into our time and we’d think that they would be all thrilled at the great advances and visibility and part of the main culture that trans people have been going through and instead she can’t figure it out; she’s feels so alien because it’s so strange to her when her girlfriend – because they’ve been separated for decades, but now they’re together again.

There’s a very strong bond between them – her girlfriend thrillingly tells her, that you know, a trans woman, who was once the greatest male Olympic athlete of all time, the box of Wheaties, is now running for governor as a Republican. And she thinks her friend is going to be thrilled by this, you know, and her friend can’t get her mind around it. It’s just impossible to comprehend. So, I really enjoyed playing with that kind of context and social, you know, what the word was a jarring difference between things. There’s a word for that. I can’t remember.

Maybe culture shock?

RP: Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.

And then the other part I loved was Joe’s idea that, basically, these people just want to have a party that would never stop, and all the great times where they were in the club and everything with never have to end. When he told me this, I just thought of the Greek god, Dionysus, the god of parties. The god of breaking down all barriers and how, yes, it would be great to invoke him, but absolute destruction, because he’s also a god of, you know, no norms, no control. And where would that lead to? But in the context of the party. It’s still always a party. Everyone is just partying, even while they’re destroying things. There’s no like political aggression, hostility. They’re just partying and smashing everything.

As it slowly spirals out of, or quickly spirals, out of control?

RP: Yeah, exactly.

Rachel, what is it like coming back to comics in a more major way after so long? Is it kind of like the character has been gone for 20 years?

RP: Ahaha! Well I don’t think as such. I’ve been aware of comics and the changes but I haven’t been reading quite as much as I used to. Vertigo was a great high point for me and my way of doing things. I’ve kept in touch with stuff going on, so I know what’s going on, but it was just very thrilling for me to come back to writing comics.

I tell Joe, he’s my hero for having done this, having brought me back, because I just love the form. I love thinking that way, thinking visually like that, seeing and pulling things together. And I love doing things you can do in comics that you can’t do in any other medium. Alan Moore used to say he hated having his comics adapted into movies because they’re not movies, they’re comics. He felt that comics could do things movies couldn’t do and he’s absolutely right.

With “The Never-ending Party,” what are some of the things that you think this comic is able to capture that a movie, a TV show, a book wouldn’t be able to do to channel that party energy?

JC: As the story progresses, it might not be as obvious than maybe the first issue, but I think readers will see that we are really not conscious of what a budget would be like for something like this. We have quite a lot of things happen and I also have to give a lot of credit to Eva Cabrera, the penciller/inker, because we wrote a script that has, you know, it’s a party, so there’s a lot of riots. There’s a lot of crowd scenes. She doesn’t hold back. She draws a lot of people and a lot of panels.

RP: Yeah, it’s amazing.

JC: You don’t see it too much and I get why. It’s a lot for artists to work on but yeah, we kind of go all out in terms of making sure there’s a lot of people involved, there’s a lot of damage, there’s a lot of going back and forth. Later on in the series there’s flashbacks beyond just the 90s. There’re a lot of elements to it where you’d probably have to do quite a bit to to make it work in budget friendly terms for a company.

RP: Even if you have a great budget. I think that in comics, people will keep up with you in a way viewers will not for a TV show or movie. You can just jump to something and that’d be OK, whereas in TV, they’d go “Huh? What? Where’d they come from? What? Now we’re back to the other people? What’s that?” I just feel like comics are more fluid. They’re more just open to change and to wild storylines.

But that Eva. I’m used to comics where the script has more or less six panels to a page. Sometimes if you have some small things, you can have maybe seven or eight. If you have some big things, you only have like three. But then right from the start, there was Joe’s Script, and there’s, like nine panels, and she was doing it. So I got into that too. I saw there were more ways to include action in a scene without having to have extra pages. That was that was really great to work with someone who can do that. Kind of amazing, actually.

Did your scripts change as they were going issue to issue? Or was it pretty immediate that you had noticed a change in the way that you were scripting together? Did you both modify your writing style to each other as you as you came together? How did that shift over the course of writing it?

JC: I don’t think we necessarily changed how we wrote to match with it or anything. I had Noah Sharma editing so that way, it was a lot of stuff to just kind of keep things in line, to make sure this kind of stuff matches. I think it’s pretty seamless because the way we wrote it was we basically split an issue in half. Not like: you do the first ten pages, I do the last 10 pages; it was more like we would skip around different scenes, focus on different areas and things like that. If memory serves correctly, I think Rachel wrote most of the endings for most of the issues, things like that.

RP: It’s true.

JC: But no, I don’t think we modified. One thing I definitely will say, in terms of the writing, is I was reading more Jack Kirby after I wrote the first issue. I think you’ll see in the second issue and forward, I think you’ll start seeing more… I always liked when Jack Kirby would do the four big panels, the two by two.

RP: Yeah. Yeah yeah.

JC: So I believe you start seeing those in like issue two, when I am writing like that, because I was going back to a lot of “New Gods,” “Fantastic Four” while I was writing this. I’m actually going through a bunch of the the Stan and Jack “Thor” comics right now so I was reading the Colonizer stuff when he has to fight Ego, the Living Planet. They introduced that and he’s fighting all the antibodies that he created. It’s all crazy stuff. That was sort of helping me in terms of page layouts, because I always thought that Jack had this way of doing pretty simple layouts that you could get a lot done in. So I think there’s a bit of that in the story.

RP: It strikes that that probably right now, if I was to take the whole thing and read through the published version, I can’t actually be sure I can say, “Oh, I did this page. And Joe did that page.” I think it moves really well that way and we pick up on each other’s ways of doing the action and stuff like that. It’s not that kind of thing where we can tell who did what, which I think is a great mark for collaboration.

For sure. How many issues is this planned to be? Is it limited series? Is it limited with the possibility of more? Is it planed to be longer?

JC: There’s five issues. There is, I mean, there’s stuff baked into this world that we set up. So there’s always the possibility of going back to it but I think we tell a pretty solid story here with beginning, middle and end that doesn’t, we don’t answer everything. You’re not going to know every detail about these characters, but I think it’s a satisfying story the way it is.

RP: Like there’s one character, for instance, in original party in the club, we don’t see that much of her. And then when we come back later to modern times, she’s abused by her ex boyfriend who was in that original group of people. So we don’t know the entire history of how that happened. We just take it. Okay, this is what we are now from back then. That’s the thing with some other characters too.

Are you going to be playing with time, not necessarily in the same way as the first issue, which was structured more as flashbacks. But do you think you’re going to be jumping in and out of time and consulting different eras within their history? Or is it mostly going to be initial party and then present day?

RP: Oh, no. It goes back, a few times actually. Also, in some of the stuff that I include, it goes back to ancient Greece because I have a Greek god and I can throw in a few other Greek gods just for fun. It’s also very, I would say in comic book terms, you know, kind of not reverent, you know? So, it’s a lot of fun doing that. So yes, it does jump around, sure.

JC: Absolutely. Yeah. Every issue goes back. There’s at least two time periods every issue

One of the ongoing themes it sounds like the comic has is this relationship to temporality, and how people think of themselves in the world in different eras and relate to their societies. Which characters do you think are going to embody this the most?

RP: Hmmm. I would say that, Lulu, when she comes back is certainly the most extreme example because she’s has two completely separate time experiences. She doesn’t move through the other ones. Joe, which ones do you think?

JC: It’s interesting. There’re some characters that haven’t been introduced yet, really, that I love, that I think shows some interesting progressions. But also, I mean, just Dionysus as a character. That God shows up throughout the series, and just where Dionysus is in this party and how time and everything goes through him…I’d say Dionysus, probably, is a character that we see a lot of that with.

Then we see characters who are kind of more steady but we see the Flavia character have a linear sort of character growth. It’s almost like a reverse sort of bell curve for her where she’s doing pretty well with the party, something bad happens, and then it’s her sort of coming back up as the series goes on. Then there’s this character, Kris, we see briefly in the first issue, but you’ll sort of see Kris ends up being more of an anchor who’s kind of been the same but in a more positive way. That’s always been kind of even keel and so we kind of see that as kind of like a reference point as well for the other characters.

RP: One of the really interesting characters like that is Tommy, the abuser, who tries to become a god, who tries to displace Dionysus. I think this was interesting because everybody else, they want to party all the time. That’s the main thing. That’s how they got there. But he’s different. You know, he wants power and he has no hesitation to just try to take power from the god himself. And if you know anything about Greek mythology, that’s the great sin. That’s how people get into so much trouble. They try to take something that belongs to the gods, properly, like just being beautiful, or weaving.

You know, one of the stories of Athena is when a mortal woman said she can weave better than Athena and that was a big mistake. But this time, it’s interesting because as I said, all the others, their main pride at the beginning, certainly, is just to have a great time and be wild, they have no control. No society controlling what they could do in terms of pleasure. And his was always, I think, personal power and excuses to abuse people. I think that was interesting to see what happens to him in the course of the story.

I won’t give you giveaways but I think it’s a good ending, what happens to him. And Orpheus! I got to write Orpheus as really nasty. I mean, Orpheus is one of the characters Greek mythology everybody idealizes, noble, pure suffering, you know, stuff and I made him into this vein, egoistic musician who thinks he’s the best thing in the world. I really had fun doing that, and it’s just great.

I can’t wait to meet him then. I guess, when you’re talking about Dionysus, I was wondering how fun was it to write Dionysus and then potentially other Greek gods and myths and legends, and as you brought up Orpheus, are we going to see others showing up in present day and in ancient Greece?

RP: Well Sappho has a brief appearance, which is kind of fun. It’s funny. Sappho was always seen as a lesbian poet, that’s where the word lesbian comes from. She lived on Lesbos. But she actually wrote more poems of her passions for men, but because she was a woman at all, she was seen as a lesbian poet. So it was fun to have a little brief flurry of her. With Dionysus in each times, there were these creatures named Maenads who just lived in the wild, and they wore animal skins, and they went crazy all the time, so they’re there as well. There’s some other characters, and Apollo, as I said, has a brief appearance.

What was the process like working with Comixology, for both of you, and then working with Comixology versus working for Vertigo for you, Rachel?

JC: I can talk the ComiXology stuff, because I mostly was the point person on that and just arranging everything, and whenever anything needed to be done, I would kind of go back and tell the team “Oh, this needs to happen, that needs to happen, etc.” But it was really easy to work with, you know, Comixology. Chip was great. Everyone was very understanding with, you know, trying to make a book.

We started on this really around the height of the pandemic. That’s when we really started getting full steam. I think we were really moving around then. Things would come up. And yeah, it was, again, very understanding. Everyone was easy to work with if something needed to be changed. We just got it done. It really was a very positive experience there. And I know, Rachel, like you said, your work with Vertigo and how that was, and I know you had some great editors there.

RP: Definitely. Yeah.

I mean I worked more with Joe so I didn’t have that much contact with Comixology itself. Joe and I have a great connection so that was really easy for me. When I worked for Vertigo, the editor was the interface of the company. The company was very supportive. People sometimes wondered how I got away with certain stuff. Like did the company object? And I’d be like “Oh no, no, no. It wasn’t a problem.” But I would say there was more, particularly with Lou Staff as my second editor after Tom Pyre, Lou would kind of shaped me up a bit. I would do this wild stuff and Lou would say, “You know, this is great stuff, but come on, people have to be able to figure it out,” which following Grant Morrison, I didn’t realize you had to do that.

Grant Morrison could be totally wild. But, you know, they knew what they were doing much more than I did. So some of the early stuff when I was totally wild, I didn’t let give people a chance to catch up quite as much, you know. But Tom and and Lou really shaped it up in me. That was a little bit more interactive with the editor but here like I said, Joe was just so great that I really didn’t have to worry about Comixology; he was dealing with that.

Last question. With the impending story coming out, what are, without spoiling too much, the scenes or maybe even just like character interactions, you enjoyed writing the most?

RP: Wow, interesting question. Joe, want to go first?

JC: Sure. I don’t want to spoil it but of some of the stuff that Rachel already set up, I would say what ends Tommy’s sort of arc, and what happens with that, which mostly occurs end of issue two into issue three, setting all that up was a lot of fun. A lot of this stuff, we had an outline but there would be things that we would then discuss and as you’re writing this, this naturally feels like this is where this thing should happen. Definitely that that bit was a lot of fun.

I had a lot of fun also setting up a lot of the stuff leading up to the penultimate issues and setting everything up so all the craziness is about to happen. I always like that build up and that set up. There’s a panel in issue four that I referenced a Mike Sekowsky Wonder Woman panel because I really like his run quite a bit. There was an issue of that where there was a witch who whipped everyone into a frenzy and there were people going crazy on the streets. I kind of wanted to reference one of those moments as well from that issue. So yeah, probably sort of that stuff.

RP: I think my favorite parts were the scenes where the people are going wild in the streets. They’re rioting, they’re tearing things down, they’re destroying things, and Dionysus is on the side enjoying it.

JC: Mmmm hmm, yeah.

RP: He’s experiencing something totally different because he knows he’s let this loose and it’s gonna go even further. It’s going to go all the way. And they’re there in the moment. They’re just having a great time. And he’s like, “Yes, this is going good.” I enjoyed doing those kind of bits quite a bit. And as I said, I love some of the ancient Greek scenes.

There’s one in which I recreate the beginning of Euripides’ play about Dionysus, the Bacchae, and I do sort of the backstory in a certain sense of how that began. Of how Dionysus was pretending to be somebody servant to get him in trouble and punish people and stuff like that. I really like Lulu, I just thought she was so fascinating, what she was about, who she was, why she did the things that she did. I felt there was all this abuse behind her that she doesn’t want to connect to. She wants to deny.

JC: Now you just you just reminded me there’s a scene, I want to say it’s in issue four, and I won’t give away the characters or whatever but it’s Dionysus walking with one of the characters. Someone gets killed in front of them and the character like reels back, upset and Dionysus is kind of just like, “Oh, stop being dramatic.” And they just keep going. That was that was a fun bit too, for me too.

RP: One of my absolute favorite bits is the Wall Street section.

JC: Yes.

RP: It’s the Wall Street brokers, their version of the Dionysian riots and what happens to them. That was that was so much fun to do! Because one of the things that’s so fascinating is the way things just come together. So Joe had the idea, you know how there’s that golden bull on Wall Street? This gigantic life sized statue of bull, it’s crazy. And so Joe wanted to do something there and I remember that Dionysus’ most primitive aspect was as a bull, so it was interesting to play with that kind of thing and have these Wall Street guys, you know, get into the bull and then be punished. And then they get punished because they just did too much, they went too far.

That’s always the theme of a lot of Greek mythology, going too far and not knowing limits and then you get to Trump and that’s kind of what the comic is about to think about it. It’s that people go too far, they don’t want to have any limits. For the most part, they’re not evil, you know, even the TV guys, the talk show host who shall not go named.

JC: He turned out to be a really interesting character that we got use and to play with more than I thought we would.