ALEX DE CAMPI
In 2020, two of comics’ boldest creators—writer Alex de Campi (Valentine, Mayday, and the Eisner-nominated No Mercy) and star artist Erica Henderson (an Eisner winner for the reimagined Jughead and Marvel’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl)—unleashed the irresistibly titled Dracula, Motherf**ker!, an original graphic novel that pits the epochal vampire against a coterie of his brides amid the sleazy glamour of 1974 Los Angeles. That bestseller is a critically celebrated pulp horror beauty, all sharp stakes and sharper dialogue, showcasing De Campi’s savvy interrogation and celebration of genre and Henderson’s electric art and best-in-class character design— you’ve never seen a Dracula as terrifyingly fluid as Henderson’s, a beast of eyes, fangs, and the dizzying patterns of a head-shop black-light poster.
Now that duo has turned its attention to a different kind of bloodsucking horror: fandom. Their new graphic novel Parasocial (Image, Oct.) centers on an actor famous for a long-running TV show who hits the convention circuit after his series is canceled and gets lured to the home of an obsessive fan. There, he’ll have to perform for his life.
Inspiration for de Campi came from her time at conventions, observing the gulf between what fans perceived and celebrities’ actual selves. “I became fascinated by the way fandom would essentially rewrite actors’ personalities and lives on the fly into something much more benign than reality,” she says, “and how the actors would encourage it by the
masks they wear online and at conventions, their reward both hard money and the ineffable currency of attention.”
De Campi’s work always cuts deep, and a potent empathy pulses through this bloody story of fandom gone too far. “A big part of it is also about being midcareer in the arts, and wondering—like St. Brendan, sailing away from Paradise—if your best years are in the rearview, never to be regained,” she says. As the second entry in an inspired collaboration that brings out the best of both creators, Parasocial suggests that neither De Campi nor Henderson have any reason to be looking back.
De Campi will be in conversation with Joan Hilty, a veteran editor of comics and graphic novels and editorial director for Avatar Studios at Nickelodeon Animation, on Tuesday, May 23, 3:50–4:10 p.m.