Scott “Babydaddy” Hoffman is perhaps best known for co-founding the Scissor Sisters. He’s also collaborated with and/or written for Bryan Ferry, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, and Kylie Minogue, and even composed music for CBS’ The Great Indoors and Netflix’s Hoops. But since every true rock star clearly also dreams of being a comics writer, Hoffman recently teamed up with artist Danijel Žeželj (Luna Park, Starve) for an all-new series entitled Nostalgia.
A weekly, five-issue run (released via ComiXology), Nostalgia is a “noir adventure about a futuristic rock star that takes cues from Hoffman’s own life as a musician.” More specifically, we follow Craig Mancini (the titular, super beloved Nostalgia) as he receives a mysterious package — at which point he “begins to reminisce about his past, ditches his tech, and goes to meet the mysterious stranger behind the parcel.” The resulting story isn’t just about exploring Mancini/Nostalgia but a bleak world not unlike our own and even the very ideas of memory and interpersonal connection that accompany these bleak techno-noirs. Like many of Hoffman’s own tunes, it’s a vibrant, deeply personal exploration of the human condition.
Nostalgia #1 is officially out today (June 13), with issues #2-5 due across consecutive weeks through July 11. To get a better understanding of this dynamic, multi-faceted comics event, we got a chance to chat with Hoffman. We touch on the comparisons between comics and music, how he explored the idea of nostalgia, and his favorite moment(s), among other tidbits.
Courtesy of ComiXology.
AIPT: What’s your elevator pitch for Nostalgia?
Scott Hoffman: I would say it’s a dystopian science fiction book about the connection between music, memory and technology.
AIPT: How much of this draws from your own life with Scissor Sisters/as a touring musician? And how do you balance being open with some secrecy or fictionalizing things.
SH: I think my time with Scissor Sisters informed the background of the book. What I’m pulling from is less anecdotal and more the locations, the kinds of conversations that can occur, my best attempts at understanding of the mechanizations of the industry, and, more generally, the kinds of emotions that having experiences like this unearth.
I don’t feel a huge need to shroud my time in the band in secrecy; I think we’ve been very open about ourselves, and maybe that was one of the reasons people have connected to us. I did want to make sure I was writing fiction, though: something that alluded more thematically to my past than literally. That was less for secrecy, and more for my own exploration of music itself as a type of technology.
That said, if certain relationships seem more literal, I don’t mind. That’s the fun with any kind of writing.
Courtesy of ComiXology.
AIPT: Sure, making comics and making music are seemingly different. But how are they also the same/similar?
SH: It’s a lot more similar than I imagined it would be. Worldbuilding, especially after looking back, has been a huge part of Scissor Sisters: the stories, that are mostly Jake’s creations, but also the artwork, the community, the immersive experience we wanted people to have. Creating something is also similar to me across media: the moments of fleeting mania, the feeling of being lost at times, finding yourself again, the same frustrations and discovery, etc.
AIPT: Tell me about working with Danijel Žeželj — what did his truly gorgeous art bring to the proceedings and help shape your own writing?
SH: I’m so thrilled that you love the art. I’m obsessed with it. Danijel was brought on after a draft of the book was already complete, so I got to experience not only watching the ideas in my head take shape right before my eyes in a really mind-blowing way (and in ways that exceeded my vision), but to also learn a new skill which was seeing his work and reworking a lettering script around it. A lot changed, a lot was made clearer by his art, and I realized that he was taking on a huge part of the narrative workload.
AIPT: Based on your own comments, you seem to draw plenty from ’90s Vertigo titles. What about that era and aesthetic is so compelling to you? And any specific faves?
SH: I dabbled in reading more mainstream superhero comics when I was younger, but I always had a side of me that was excited by dark, heady work. I’m a huge reader of prose as well, and the same instinct that drew me to authors like Clive Barker and Stephen King led me to Vertigo books like Sandman, Swamp Thing, Preacher, Transmetropolitan etc. and of course work that I’d consider culturally adjacent like Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, or Charles Burns to name just a few.
Courtesy of ComiXology.
A great part of this experience was having people in my life like my mentor Phil Jimenez and co-editor Greg Lockard, who themselves have such a rich history in comics, recommending books that I had missed along the way like Enigma and Shade, The Changing Man, two in particular that I hit myself for not knowing sooner. At the same time, finding these later in life was such a thrill.
AIPT: Press says this series is about “[redefining] our own stories” and “how art is a way to transfer our lives and memories to other people.” Can you delve into that more — is it about how we make up our own stories through the art we make and consume over any “actual” experience or memory?
SH: I think I was looking less at how art creates our stories and more at how we do that in every facet of our life. What interests me about art, and in this case music, is that it’s a way of very primally transferring that story to others, and I explored this idea specifically through technology. But in a sense, as I mentioned earlier, music to me is a technology in and of itself, and the thing it’s best at is evoking emotion in an almost magical, instant, inexplicable way.
My real focus here is memory, and this idea of redefining our own stories is interesting to me because I’m not sure any of us really understand our own stories. Some of us float through life being ok with this idea, but others are tortured by it; how do we define ourselves if we can’t even trust our own memories or come to some sort of conclusive assessment of our past? I believe that creating art is a way to solidify this story of ourselves, true or not, for ourselves.
Courtesy of ComiXology.
AIPT: Are there albums/songs that inspired and/or directly fueled your writing?
SH: I think because Nostalgia makes such (nearly) indescribable, or perhaps unimaginable, music, I was thinking more about tone and mood than particular sounds. I focused more on personalities, auras, characters in music that I loved for different reasons. To name a few, I could say David Bowie, Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, The 1975, Bjork, and FKA Twigs, while my background music was futuristic projects like vaporwave and the entire history of ambient music.
AIPT: Why did you/ComiXology opt for a weekly schedule as opposed to the standard monthly schedule for comics?
SH: Bryce Gold, who was running Comixology Originals at the time, wanted to do something interesting with the release and presented the idea to me. I think he liked the immediacy of these digital releases, the way they can become a bit of an event, and of course the timing with SDCC allowed me to have a finished miniseries to talk about when I show up in July!
AIPT: Do you have a favorite moment or page-panel (be they spoiler-y or not) that encapsulates this title?
SH: I’m partial to the song scenes. I had known that Danijel was a very gritty, realistic and sort of grounded artist who played with dreaminess but not so much the look of magic or the supernatural, so it was fun to see where he would go with those scenes, and he delivered. I also enjoyed the challenge of one of my first script-readers (and co-editor) Greg Lockard telling me that music is very hard to pull off in comics, it being a silent medium.
Courtesy of ComiXology.
What I do know about comics, though, is that they can be extraordinarily emotional and evocative, and I wanted the song scenes to feel almost otherworldly, less like music and more like some kind of magic made possible through a nearly indescribable technology, written in code. That, with Steve Wand’s amazing lettering, hopefully succeeds. I love how those sequences turned out.
AIPT: The book touches on a weird and anxiety-inducing future. What’s the value of exploring some of our current issues through this lens — does it help ground things or bring more attention and clarity to big issues?
SH: I’m not sure about the value for everyone, but to me, I was writing this series through a really fraught time, namely the pandemic and Trump era, so I was already feeling a sense of dread and dystopia. I didn’t push anything too far, just amplified what was happening, and that definitely provided me with a bit of relief and perspective. Oddly, at the time, Russia hadn’t invaded the Ukraine and those became two important forces in the book that I decided not to adjust. As you mentioned, fiction at its best is only a lens to filter our issues, not a crystal ball, and I have no interest in trying to nail down an accurate prediction of the future.
I wish I knew why it’s a human instinct to reflect already difficult times, but I actually do feel this is a hopeful book in some ways, and I do hope it reflects certain issues in a way people haven’t considered.
Courtesy of ComiXology.
AIPT: I’m especially keen on even the very idea of nostalgia, and I think a lot about this one quote from Karl Ove Knausgård:
“And maybe that is why the nostalgia I feel is so powerful, because the utopia has vanished from our time, so that longing can no longer be directed forward, but only backwards, where all its force accumulates.”
Does that connect with anything in this book, or make you consider some of the larger themes and ideas here?
SH: I love this quote, and I would say that Nostalgia, both the book and the character, take on the cynical rhetort to this idea: utopia never existed, therefore nostalgia itself is not to be trusted. The idea of nostalgia, in the book, almost becomes a form of schlock, a promise of something that was never there, or never should have been promised in the first place. From that perspective, though, nostalgia can be seen as a fantasy in the negative sense but also in the more figurative sense, in that our memories provide us with escape, hope and comfort whether they are trustworthy or not. I think that in a world where utopia never existed, nostalgia becomes even more powerful and, perhaps, even more dangerously intoxicating.
AIPT: There’s been plenty of comic titles about rock stars. But what about this “trope” seems so compelling; why are we still interested in these figures in 2023?
SH: There are lots of stories about rock stars, but few I can think of that ask the question you’re asking: why are we so profoundly interested in them? That’s the question I wanted to ask with this book, and the theory I focus on is humanity’s desire for a hero. It’s an almost religious affliction, looking for someone to guide us through a disordered existence, and that requires a person to take on the role of an almost god-like leader. I wonder whether that’s a burden for those people, and I wonder how many of them are able to take on the role with true conviction. I’d love to know.
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