Comics’ bestest ‘Punk’n Heads’: Nicole Goux and Dave Baker discuss latest love letter to weird art and each other

Nicole Goux and Dave Baker are very close collaborators. How close, you ask? How about they can self-interview, sucka.

“This is the first time we’re doing this. If this was like a month from now, after we’ve done a bunch of these things together…we wouldn’t even need you, bro,” Baker said. “We could just do it ourselves.”

Baker added, “Nicole and I started making comics together. We’re both very influential on each other, both as people and as artists. And we’re interested in the same things.”

And you can’t deny the results of Team Gouxer/Bakoux. Over the last several years, the pair have crafted a series of indie-adjacent, slice-of-life titles, including Everyone Is Tulip, Forest Hills Bootleg Society, and a personal favorite, Fuck Off Squad. They’re stories about love, life, and growing up — and sometimes they’re the right kind of complicated.

“So there’s a lot of like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this idea, I want to do a whole book where there’s like two narratives at once, and the bottom half of the page is one comic,’” Baker said. “And then there’s also a lot of…we’re both obsessed with just crying in parking lots and wishing you could smooch somebody, you know?”

To an extent, their latest project, Punk’N Heads, is very much in that same established “universe.” Here, we follow Hannah Lipsky as she sleepwalks her way through her 20s. Until one day, of course, when she breaks up with her ex-girlfriend, leaves art school, and moves into a flophouse to join a band (the semi-titular Pumpkinheads).

Even more than the sweet horror punk and fresh opportunities for parking-lot-adjacent sobbing, Punk’n Heads is especially novel in their pair’s shared canon.

“Dave and I have made a lot of books together. I’ve made a lot of books. This one feels really personal,” Goux said. “And I don’t know what it is about it. Maybe it’s the amount of workshopping that we did. Maybe it’s the amount that we’re drawing from our own lives, which we do in every book. But this one, I think, feels special. There’s a lot in it that feels very lived in for me.”

“A Candle in The Dark”

But before we get into the nitty gritty of Punk’n Heads proper, we should look further into the Goux-Baker dynamic. Because after all these years, it really does ring with the intricacies and layers of any long-lasting relationship.

“We spent a lot of time together and we know what the other person cares about and likes and wants to make,” Goux said. “So something we talk about a lot is how we both work with other people. But when we work together, we’re building the stories together.”

That’s not to say they don’t argue; Baker said a lot of that is sorted out in the writing phase. But rather than bicker for an extended period, they know how to communicate what does and doesn’t work on the page.

“It’s mostly Nicole saying to me, ‘That doesn’t work,’ and me going, ‘Yeah, you’re right, it doesn’t work,’” Baker said. “And because there’s not as many opportunities for me to be like, ‘Hey, that doesn’t work,’ there’s just not as much of a history of it. So I think her gut reaction sometimes is like, ‘What are you talking about? No, it works.’”

Still, Punk’n Heads had it fair share of unique trials. For one, Baker said that the book “went through a lot of drafts, maybe the most drafts of anything we’ve made,” adding that “there are whole central characters that were in the band that we ended up taking out and reconfiguring.” Then, of course, there were issues that nothing to do with the creative process.

“The behind-the-scenes drama with the book has been lengthy,” Baker said. “It’s been set up at multiple publishers and the rights have reverted and people have been whatever – it’s been a long road.”

So, what kept them going beyond just their honest back-and-forth? Well, there’s one page in particular that Baker said was “a creative North Star for the two of us,” in which Hannah is “using a dating app. And she’s trying to select that she wants to go on dates with both men and women. But the app is flawed, and it will only let you pick one.” It may seem somewhat inconsequential, but if you’re “with” someone long enough, it’s often the little moments that make all the difference.

“But I think that page to me is like, ‘Oh, that’s the candle in the dark,’” Baker said. “I know that we just have to keep going, regardless of the amount of bullshit and failure and rejection. We just have to keep pushing.”

For Goux, not only was that page more proof that “hey, maybe I don’t suck at this,” it’s largely a reminder that we’re all just sort of figuring it out as we go along.

“I also think like, it’s such a good – and maybe this is not really the word – vibe check for the book and to understand who Hannah is and the emotions of the book,” Goux said. “Like, where these characters are in their lives, where they’re back on dating apps and they don’t want to be doing this and they can’t even figure out how it works.”

The key, then, is to find people you can trust, and give yourself to them as fully as you can.

“This was Nicole’s whole idea,” Baker said. “And I immediately was like, ‘Oh, 100%.’ That’s exactly what we make.”

And that means not only do you sometimes disagree with one another, but you embrace those differences as a kind of texture of a well-lived life.

“Dave does cyberpunk and horror comics and all of these different things that…some of which I care about and would want to make, but a lot of which is not for me,” Goux said. “I don’t want to spend two years making that. And so he knows intimately what I care about and what I want to make.”

Goux added, “And so he builds, or we build together, these stories that we know that we both care about deeply. And it ranges from him coming to me with ideas being like, ‘I know you think you don’t care about this, but I’m going to convince you…’ and us taking a seed and building it into something bigger, which is kind of what happened with Punk’n Heads.”

“You Are Terrible. I Love You.”

But the magic of Punk’n Heads isn’t just that it represents the relationship and creative goals of Goux and Baker. It’s also a celebration of their own coming-of-age adventures in Los Angeles.

“We tried to make the book feel like it’s like a snapshot into a scene that will quickly not be here anymore,” Baker said. “I’ve been a part of so many even just here in Los Angeles – Meltdown Comics had such an amazing scene of people, it was such a community, and then it just died. All those people are still my friends, but we don’t see each other.”

The punk rock “angle,” for instance, is another representation of that very approach. When you’re of a certain age, some interests, people, and places tend to bleed together into something you deem more important than life itself.

“The same thing with punk shows and punk communities that I’ve been a part of in the past, where, once a venue dies or it’s a person, it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, this whole thing is just dead now,’” Baker said. “So there’s all these supporting characters who come in and out of the book, or bounce off of various cast members in hopefully interesting ways that make the whole experience more lived in.”

In fact, there was even a “flophouse” of sorts in their own version of Punk’n Heads.

“We used to have some of those Meltdown kids all live together at a place here in Hollywood, over on Winona Street, and we called it Winona House,” Baker said. “They would throw parties, and there was four or five of our friends, and they all lived together. And I’m not going to say that was thing we were mimicking when we were making the book, but it definitely occurred to me of the experience of going to that house for these parties or these art meetups or whatever. This clique of people that all really cared about the same thing. They were all cartoonists or comics fans in some way. And so many things came out of that.”

(At this moment, you’re perhaps wondering if Punk’n Heads actually takes places in the same universe as their other three books. The answer is heck yes. In fact, Goux said that “there are actually Easter eggs” to be found across the entire book. )

The comics and other “stuff” that came from that place/time are, like Punk’n Heads, a wonderful fix of high and low class.

“We did a project many moons ago called Shitty Watchmen, where we redrew Watchmen page-for-page, panel-for-panel with a bunch of people,” Baker said. “And that came about because we were at a New Year’s Eve party at that house. And Nicole made a joke of like, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be funny if I redrew Watchmen and these shitty thumbnails?’ And then I went to everybody at that party on New Year’s Eve and was like, ‘Yo, we’re doing this.’”

Sure, the Punk’n Heads crew has a slightly different dynamic. They may “throw backyard zine fests and go to shitty punk shows,” as Baker said, but they also “secretly harbor grudges against each other and maybe people are f**king each other when they shouldn’t be and working dead-end jobs going, ‘How the f**k am I going to survive this?’”

But even if there’s no sex being had, Baker and Goux can readily recognize some of these complicated interpersonal relationships. Take, for example, the character of Old Bill, a gross, bearded weirdo who hangs out with the band. He’s very much based on a mutual friend.

“He has a terrible beard, just like Tim,” Baker said. “He’s drawn to look just like Tim. And he makes horrible, annoying jokes, just like our friend Tim. Every time we did a drawing of him, they would take a picture and send it to him.”

Baker added, “In the same way this book functions as a love letter to Nicole and like, ‘Hey, look how great this artist is, everyone should pay attention.’ It’s the same thing with Tim, where I’m just like, ‘You are terrible. But I fucking love you, man. But god, you’re awful.’”

“The Intimacy of The Quotidian”

Even amid the many layers of humanity that Goux and Baker discover within Punk’n Heads, the book equally represents all that they love as comics creators.

“We’re both interested in certain formalist aspects of comics,” Goux said. “There’s kind of an arc of us playing with those things and developing them.”

One aspect, according to Baker, is that they’re “always trying to make a story about a character going through some sort of self-realization, and that realization pulls them through the narrative.” In Hannah’s case, it’s being lost in life and suddenly finding this thing you didn’t know you needed. (Or, that may be the thing you wanted all along? Who knows?)

“So we’re always figuring out ways of doing that that are unique…we’re all the protagonists of our own story and most humans’ lives are pretty small, but they feel big,” Baker said. “That kind of juxtaposition of the intimacy of the quotidian with the maximalism of the self-aggrandizement that we all labor under, that’s something that I’m very interested in, and I think you can see pretty clearly in all of our books.”

Meanwhile, Goux mentioned another such aspect: a “caption mechanic that we started in Fuck Off Squad.” It’s not in every book, mind you, but the ebb and flow and constant “tweaking” of said device is something that’s hugely important to the pair’s overarching artistic output.

“It’s kind of absent in Tulip, actually, but we have tried different versions of it and tried to adjust it and perfect it as the books go on,” Goux said. “And there’s other things we add. Like in Tulip, we have this phone panel diamond thing, which actually does exist in Fuck Off Squad, too. And so there’s kind of these ideas that we keep coming back to and trying to make better and better and work better and work differently in each book. And I think that Punk’n Heads is the pinnacle of us figuring that stuff out. But it will always adjust and change and grow.”

Another aspect touches on something that’s unique-ish to Punk’n Heads: romance. Yes, young (and deeply complicated) love is important in their other books, but Baker and Goux really played it up in this latest offering. While they were originally just going to do “Fuck Off Squad but with a band,” the use of the flophouse and the band’s lineup became a way to wring the most drama out of this project.

“Everything we make is a romance comic, whether it’s front and center,” Baker said. “It’s just that those are the things I care about. And those interpersonal conflicts are what are interesting to me as a writer.”

Baker added, “And it’s like, ‘Oh, well, if you have the bassist, Jerry, and the new lead singer, who’s the person freshly in the group, Hannah, in a romantic entanglement that they may not be emotionally equipped to handle, that gives you a really nice bouquet of potential traumas to unpack.’ And that led us to, ‘OK, if it’s a romance comic, then what has been done in the medium previously that was really steeped in that?’ And that brought us to young romance and the stuff from the ‘50s, and that brought me specifically to Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen and Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane.”

The challenge, according to Baker, was to then 1) use those “formalist conceits for the book that are cribbed almost directly from those comics” and 2) “reposition it all in a way that if you’re a young person now, you don’t know that’s what that is.” It’s a tricky balance that, when done right, has some sturdy results.

“I do think it’s about figuring out the story that is interesting and that could exist at any time because this is just about people,” Goux said. “There could be people who are in a band who hook up and shouldn’t and blah, blah, blah at any point in history. And then the period stuff at all is set dressing. It’s a side dish.”

It was also about leaning away from people’s understandings and personal relationships with this specific kind of genre-centric storytelling.

“I think people have a certain expectation of romance comics or romance movies or whatever to be solely focused on the romance or to have a happy ending,” Goux said. “And that’s just not what we care about. So we’re taking the structure of romance and the subject matter of romance and trying to say more with it or do more with it.”

So, how does all of this actually “live” in the confines of Punk’n Heads proper? Just think of your old favorite TV shows, dummy.

“It’s just a formalist thing that happens every issue, and it’s kind of a rhythm that’s almost like an opening to a sitcom or a cold open for a TV show or something,” Baker said. “Each chapter opens with a splash page that’s like a trailer moment that summarizes the issue, and then there’s this three-panel ‘that was then, this is now’ wraparound mechanic, where you like give a little bit of a character’s backstory, and then set them up, and then go off into the story of the issue.”

“More Lady Bird Small Stories”

When trying to speak to all generations (but especially youngsters), Goux and Baker leaned into the one aspect we all truly share: pop culture obsessions.

Sometimes that meant tapping into those things they genuinely love and admire.

“Mystic Pizza was the movie that we were talking about constantly while making this book,” Baker said. “It’s this coming-of-age, set in a small town, people trying to get out of your own shitty circumstances. The movie is actually really dark. Also, it’s the worst score ever.”

Or, the films of both Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. (Said Baker, “Frances Ha is in my top five movies.”)

“Please make more Lady Bird small stories about people struggling with everyday issues,” Baker said, seemingly directly to Gerwig. “That’s what I care about. That’s what I want. And those types of stories that are these mumblecore, Pen15-ish comedies that are funny, but also a little surreal and also have have heart. I think is the place that we’re driving at.”

And not only does he want more of those kinds of stories, but Baker is curious as to why this “genre” hasn’t carried over more into comics.

“It’s interesting to me that there just aren’t a lot of people making comics like that,” Baker said. “Like, there’s lots of novels like that. There’s lots of film like that. But for whatever reason, there’s not a lot of comics. And we’re doing our best to rectify that.”

Added Baker, “Some artists, they want to draw buildings exploding or draw guys with swords and fighting ninjas. And Nicole wants to draw sad girls staring out over the skyline as hair blows through their wind. If she wants to draw this, I can write that.”

For her part, Goux recognizes that such offerings (“a quiet story that’s just people standing around in a room”) aren’t readily made for comics. Yet she’s right there with Baker, and Goux specifically mentioned the films between “Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke…those movies are just so beautiful” as things to see even more of in the world.

So, then, how do you overcome those aforementioned challenges? Just do better, yo.

“But because there’s movement integrated, and because you can focus on people’s emotions, it is much harder to tell this type of story in comics,” Goux said. “You have to be really strong in your acting and your storytelling and really balance that quiet story with enough there to keep people interested. It’s easier to blow up a building.”

If we can revisit the romance angle oh-so briefly, there may be more we can learn about telling these kind of slow-burn narratives.

“Yes, there is romance in this book, and it is structured around connection and people coming together or falling apart,” Goux said. “But it’s not ‘And then they meet and fall in love’ or ‘enemies to lovers.’ I hope it’s not just like the stock version of that.'”

Goux added, “And that’s not to say that isn’t great; that exists for a reason. I just finished watching the first four episodes of Bridgerton season four, and it is satisfying for a reason. And that should exist because people love and enjoy it. But I think you can do both, right? Say something more while living in that world.”

“What if The Smiths and Misfits Had a Baby?”

Of course, of all the references that exist to one degree or another within Punk’N Heads, there’s one we simply cannot deny: Star Trek. Not only did Baker spend the last several minutes of our interview showing off his own actions figures as we discussed the merits of Deep Space Nine over Voyager, Baker even said that if the pair started their own band, it’d be called “Shinzon and the Scimitars.” (Baker also wrote Voyager comics for IDW, and said that the experience “was the happiest I’ve ever been.”)

For one, Star Trek and Punk’ Heads share more in common than you might initially expect.

“Star Trek is great because it’s an ensemble; it’s a bunch of people going out into the brave unknown and searching for what it means to be a person,” Baker said. “That’s kind of what we’re doing, too, the house that they live in is basically the ship and the band is, kind of, the mechanism of the week where they have to go out and play a gig and then meet people and get into romantic entanglements. Those type of narrative mechanisms, I think, graft pretty easily between the two of them.”

And while Goux admits that the pair are “obsessed with Star Trek” and discuss it on the regular, she also raised an interesting idea: “Most of the new Star Trek is really not very good.” Now, before you go and curse Goux out in Klingon, here what she has to say in full.

“And that’s because with Star Trek, and with most TV at this point, everything is so heavily serialized, and you don’t have time to get the B storylines and to develop all these characters,” Goux said. “There is something about a 22- or 24-episode show where, yes, there is an arc, but you’re mostly dealing with these single story episodes, where everybody gets a little bit to do, and that’s something that we were both really missing at the time.”

Goux added, “So we started thinking about episodic storytelling, which led us back to the old romance comics, and being able to have a one-and-done story in each issue. I think we even talked about doing this in issues initially, but it ended up being better for us to do it in a graphic novel format, but we still have the chapters, that each chapter exists as its own entity, its own little story.”

There’s a couple takeaways as it relates to Punk’n Heads. The first is that being a 216-page graphic novel clearly bypasses a lot of those issues with serialized storytelling. Yet being what’s effectively a collection of “standalone” stories packaged together helps with people’s sustained emotional response/immersion.

But there’s something else that’s important regarding Goux’s comments: As much as you love something, that doesn’t mean you can’t talk copious amounts of shit about it.

Case in point: the horror punk elements within Punk’n Heads.

“I love, love, love, love The Misfits,” Baker said. “I love The Koffin Kats. I love Calabrese. All that post-Misfits guys in leather jackets and devilocks. Like, My Chemical Romance is so clearly, ‘What if the Smiths and Misfits had a baby?’”

But all the love in the world doesn’t mean that Goux and Baker can’t use these things as a lens to explore, say, interpersonal relationships and the follies of youth.

“I think the self-seriousness of horror punk is what attracts it,” Baker said. “And punk in general is what would attract younger people to it. Because we all want to be serious people with a capital S and a capital P.”

But if you really think about it, Baker said, the “membrane of existence that separates Christian rock, and horror punk, it’s pretty thin.” Let’s pause for just a second while some of you overcome your burning rage.

“Like, ‘We’re only going to sing about Jesus, God, and angels,’ or ‘we’re only going to sing about demons, the devil, and vampires,’” Baker said. “Like it’s, it’s such a specific rubric of force-fed iconography that you feel the need or compulsion to create artwork about.”

Added Baker, “Especially those first generation post-Misfits guys. It’s one thing when Glenn Danzig is like, ‘You know what I really love? Harlock: Space Pirate. The Creature Walks Among Us. Crimson Ghost. I’m into old shit.’ There’s a novelty to that person expressing their passion so fervently. And then once you get one generation removed, and it’s like, ‘You know what I’m really into? The fact that Glenn Danzig is really into Crimson Ghost and vampires.’”

“Their Own Kobayashi Maru”

And, hey, Baker isn’t just trying to be big, mean bully. He said all of that “as a guy who has a lot of Dracula toys.”

Rather, he’s just trying to be as honest about this dynamic as he can be as a means of tapping into some larger experience we’re all working through.

“I think a charitable interpretation of that is that it’s a common framework of iconography that people can tap into and express a sense of community and express a sense of outsider-ness and a feeling of ‘We are not understood, we are different. And we are bonded through that difference,’” Baker said. “And an uncharitable way is, ‘Man, you got to get some other interests, dude.’”

And that’s something (as much, and maybe even more than, the personal connections and pop culture tidbits) that’s churning at the white-hot core of Punk’n Heads. Some folks might see it as being mean, but if you’re forthright and honest with both your audience and characters, some important things can take root.

“I usually call it ‘ElfQuest syndrome,’ where you don’t want to make a comic where you love the characters more than the reader,” Baker said. “You need to treat them like children. But then you need to let them go off and be their own thing. And you need to learn when the right time is to treat them poorly and when the right time to treat them well is.”

For her part, Goux also delights just a smidgen in poking fun at the horror punk nerds, saying that while there’s a “a sheen of cool to going ‘Look at us talk about demons and yell about demons,’” they’re ultimately “getting up on a stage and dressing up in costumes. And that is so inherently nerdy.”

But, hey, that’s OK: Suffering breeds good people — and even better art.

“Sometimes the thing that you are passionate about and care about, you’re not very good at,” Goux said. “And you have to find another way to be creatively fulfilled and satisfied.”

That last bit is extra important. Again, it’s not just about honesty, but this idea that nobody is perfect whatsoever. And by understanding even the worst among us (or the most nerdy or weird or whatever), we can all learn a vital lesson.

Take, for instance, the aforementioned Jerry, Hannah’s bandmate and high school crush. As the two hook up across Punk’n Heads (as previously mentioned, not a good move), Hannah learns just who Jerry really is, and what that might say about her own place in the world.

“I hope that even in the aspects of Jerry that are flawed and f**ked up and inconsiderate, you understand why he’s flawed and fucked up and inconsiderate,” Baker said. “You don’t even have to have empathy for him as a person hurting other people and be an apologist for him. But hopefully there’s a gray area where it’s like, ‘All of these people are just trying to be OK. And it’s really difficult to be OK.’ So they’re all desperately clawing, trying to get back to zero from various directions.”

Or, to once again reference the beloved Star Trek: “Everybody in the book has their own Kobayashi Maru. It’s how you handle the fact that there is no solution. That’s the lesson.”

Still, it’s not just about another instance of relating to Star Trek as much as humanly possible, and there’ s more “real” connections and ideas afoot. Baker made an important reference about a “character in the book [having] schizophrenia,” and how he referenced events and whatnot from his own personal life.

“It’s an unknowable, sheer wall of terror that is incomprehensible,” Baker said. “And, again, I think that experience can range for different people where they’re at on that spectrum. The versions that I have experienced with my loved ones is very specific. And the version of it that is in the book is as close to that as we could get.”

And that’s not just about meaningful representation, either. It’s also a simple but important lesson: The world doesn’t owe you a darn thing, and we take what we get however we can.

“I think that also goes back to the core theme of the book – you can lay out your best intentions, and you can try and plan things and will yourself into a specific dynamic and you have a vision for your future,” Baker said. “Sometimes that just doesn’t work. Whether that be other people’s conflicting desires, or just the world just doesn’t give you what you want all the time, because that’s the world, bro.”

“Their Average, Everyday Struggle”

Once again, it’s lessons and insights that Goux and Baker have both tried to apply to their own personal lives. Given that they’re both artists, you may or may not be surprised that art has something to do with it.

“There’s a moment in one of the early chapters where Hannah is in art school, and she is in a critique and somebody has drawn half of a self-portrait,” Baker said. “They say, ‘I only finished half of it because I feel like as an artist, I am still developing.’ That happened to me. I was in a critique where somebody obviously just missed the deadline.”

While Baker initially decided that such a move was “total bullshit,” he opted to sit with what happened for just a little longer.

“I was like, ‘You know, this, there’s a lesson here that the conditions that you think define you don’t, and it’s your spin on things and your perspective and your ability to bullshit – or reframe the dynamic that you are housed within – that dictate things,” Baker said. “And that was a big turning point for me as a person. Like, ‘I need to work smarter and harder and objectively, good things will happen.’ I just need to figure out a way of, like, mitigating the failure. And how do I reframe that failure as I always intended it to be this way?”

Goux has learned a similar lesson, too. Sometimes it’s not about the thing that happens, or when and how and why, but what you actually make of it in your small, singular life.

“I teach students now, and I had a student turn in a project and someone made a comment on it that was like, ‘Oh, that’s really smart because of this and this and this,” Goux said. “And that student was like, ‘Oh, that’s not what I intended.’ When someone makes your thing better than you thought it was, you gotta run with that stuff. You’ve obviously got to be honest in certain situations or whatever, but take what life is giving you and let it help you.”

If it somehow seems a little trite to fill your own book with self-aggrandizing flattery, you’re reading about the wrong book, folks. Because more than pumping this book with their biggest inspirations, personal favorites, and creative goals/objectives, Punk’n Heads is above all a vehicle for Goux and Baker and their ever-evolving relationship.

On one level, there’s a bit of distance to it. The book is very much a way for Goux and Baker to work through ideas like getting older and what it means to make decisions that will forever put you on a new and strange path. But like the characters in Fuck Off Squad, the folks in Punk’n Heads “aren’t nostalgic for it because that’s just their average, everyday struggle.” That comes later, dearies.

“I feel like every other show one of us turns to the other one and goes, ‘Hey, soak this in. These are the good old days,’” Baker said. “Which is hard to experience when you’re in it, especially in comics. It’s so hard to enjoy the highs because the highs are not high.”

And also because the lows can (and will) cut extra deep.

“There’s one [section] where Hannah sees her ex-girlfriend in public for the first time,” Baker said. “And Nicole draws it as a panel that has the ex-girlfriend, and then the same panel, but that [ex] character has been replaced by a random person. And I think about that one a lot, just because I feel like that’s such a unique experience, and yet something that everybody’s had because your brain hates you and plays tricks on you. And it’s constantly looking for those solutions when people leave your immediate circle.”

At the same time, it goes even deeper: Punk’n Heads is very much a direct and deliberate representation of its creators in very important, specific ways.

“Hannah is the closest to me,” Goux said. “You never write a character that’s just you. There are aspects of each of us, I think, in every one of the characters.”

Goux added, “But I will say, I really, really love Morgan. I don’t know what it is about them, but they are just this sweet character who’s trying hard to make everybody happy. I think maybe it’s the people-pleaser in them. They just want everything to work out and everything to be good and everyone to get along and nobody’s getting along.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Baker said that “the one I love the most is Hannah, unfortunately.” Likely because a little self-awareness can sting.

Added Baker, “Also, I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to be like, ‘Oh, if Nicole is Hannah, I wonder who could be Jerry? Who is the piece of shit? Who’s the one that’s constantly making problems?’”

If you take nothing else away, it’s that Punk’n Heads isn’t just about Goux and Baker, but what this pairing really means. It’s two people who love weird sci-fi, don’t mind poking holes in each other’s creative ideas (with ample respect, of course), and have made generally important stories about the small and mighty ways we build lives, break hearts, and try to find meaning through it all. You hear creators talk about certain stories being “love letters” to one another, but here that notion is maddeningly apt. It’s a love that’s weird, silly, and a little ugly, but mostly it’s pretty damn powerful.

“This is a joint project between me and Nicole,” Baker said. “But it’s also just me doing my best of…putting a little ship in a bottle [about] everything that’s great with Nicole as a person. To be able to hand to somebody else and be like, ‘Look how amazing this person is. Like, looking even at their flaws, and that they’re f**ked up and there’s this weird clumsiness, look at look at the brilliance of them.’ I don’t know if I succeeded or not.”

Punk’n Heads arrives on April 7 via Top Shelf Productions.