Punk rock and comics have always seemed like a good match. If you have read any of my previous articles, you’ve probably gathered that about me. One of the other things I’m very big on is mental health. While there are varying degrees of how people keep their head in the right place, it’s harder for some than it is for others. Everyone is wired differently. One thing I feel helps people come to terms with their mental health, whether it is good or bad, is people sharing their stories and experiences. It helps people realize you’re not alone and that your better moments in life are in front of you. Enter Reid Chancellor and his new book Hardcore Happiness.

Pulling double duty as writer and artist, Chancellor previously tackled mental health in his earlier book, Hardcore Anxiety. Here he highlights some of the heavy hitters of punk rock with mini-bio comics of bands like Bad Brains, The Clash, and Black Flag sandwiched between his own journey with mental health. Hardcore Happiness follows this same format and continues the narrative of that journey, and showcasing bands. However, this time around, he chose bands that were personal to him and while every band may not be punk rock as we know, Chancellor considers them some what punk rock in his journey. Chancellor puts it all out on the table in regards to his mental health. Reid Chancellor was nice enough to give us sometime to speak about the comic, punk rock, and the Violent Femmes.

Dying Scene (Forrest Gaddis): How did Hardcore Happiness come about? I know it’s kind of a sequel to your early book Hardcore Anxiety?

Reid Chancellor: I always loved comics, I always loved punk. I never put them together. My wife was the person, when we first started dating, she was like, you could do comics. And I was like, I can’t do comics, I’m not a good enough artist to do comics. I had only read big name comic book stuff and bigger indie stuff. Invader Zim, Jhonen Vasquez, like, that stuff. She really pushed me to it. I came up with this idea and I reached out to Microcosm. They kind of pitched something back and forth. We ended up not agreeing, and I decided to try this on my own.

I did the smallest version of what Hardcore Anxiety became, and Kickstarted it. I sent it to Microcosm, and I was just like, “this is what I ended up doing. Let me know if you guys are ever interested in something like this.” And they responded, this actually works better than I thought it would. If you’re willing to have someone edit and dig deeper, we’re willing to do this.

That was in probably 2017, 2018, and then we worked on it for about a year straight, and Hardcore Anxiety came out in 2019. That’s my very first real book that I had done, and then just kind of kept doing it on the side. I still work. It’s not my full-time job.

Hardcore Happiness actually came from my therapist, who said I should do another book about trying to be happy. He’s read my book, and is in the book quite a bit. I was kind of like, that sounds like an excuse for me to draw you and make fun of you a little bit. I pitched it to Microcosm. The first book was not a huge seller, neither was the graphic biography of G.G. Allin.

I saw you did that one, too. 

GG Allin is a tough sell in general. Let alone in the midst of COVID. That book didn’t do that great because of the timing. If you don’t know who GG Allin is, you’re kind of like, I don’t want to read about it. If you know who GG Allin is, you most likely definitely don’t want to read about it. I didn’t know if they’re going to go for this, but they were super responsive, and they were like, send us a draft, or send us an outline. I started working on Hardcore Happiness. Part of me is a little bit glad you didn’t read Hardcore Anxiety, because I feel like Hardcore Happiness is so much better. There’s enough overlap there. You get a little bit more in the weeds in Hardcore Anxiety.

If you read that intro to Hardcore Happiness, you’re going to be like, why aren’t the Bad Brains in this book? Why don’t you talk about The Clash? Why aren’t you talking about Black Flag at all, or anything? They’re all in that first book. I just really wanted to be sure that I didn’t repeat any bands because I thought that was kind of cheating. I wish I could go back and redraw some of that early stuff, because the art is just not there. I’ve grown a lot as an artist. I’ve done more illustration gigs, so that’s really kind of helped weave it through. 

I feel like in Hardcore Anxiety, I really scratched the surface of the whole “punk can open up the door to a lot of stuff, but doesn’t ever really encourage you to go through the door.” That’s kind of the last thing in Hardcore Anxiety I end on. I feel like there’s gonna be much more. There was like a part there where I started to go deeper into Shelter and the Aquabats and other bands. Sort of like with a little bit of that religion-tentativeness, because the Aquabats have a religious background with Mormonism and I started to weave into that. I don’t have the time or the space in this book to go that deep into it. Maybe that’ll be a whole other book eventually down the line where I’ll get to talk about that. I know with Shelter, I really want to talk about that a little bit.

I played in punk rock bands growing up, too. I think it helped me with my anxiety. Do you think it was punk rock or just doing art in general?

It probably was art in general, but at the time, I didn’t really understand that. I didn’t associate punk as art. I kind of associated it as a little bit less artistic. I don’t want to say anti-art. I was never a person that would refer to myself as an artist. Same as now, I still don’t say I’m an artist. I say I’m a cartoonist or an illustrator. I don’t think I’m Warhol. I don’t want that. Even just the pressure of that title. 

I think I just needed an outlet and I needed something that I was decent at. I tried to play sports. You can look at me and know that I don’t look like a sports person. I’m not good at baseball. I’m not good at basketball. I tried every sport. I was okay at hockey. I played for like 10 years and then stopped because I was playing music so much. I wanted to skateboard. I was terrible at it. I couldn’t do it. I can’t ollie. I just kept trying to find something I was good at. 

My sister was a really good artist and went to art school. I didn’t  want to piggyback on her thing. I started drawing out of necessity of being in a band. We need someone to draw a t-shirt. Okay, I’ll start drawing again and draw t-shirts. The DIY-ness of just that creeping into your subconscious of I want to do it all myself. I don’t want anyone’s help.

Are you digital or are you traditional with your art?

A hybrid of that. I tried doing purely digital for one book and I really regret that I did it. It didn’t look as good as I wanted it to. I kind of did a little bit of back and forth on Hardcore Anxiety because I drew it all traditionally. When I went back and did edits, I drew the edits digitally. That was helpful. I don’t think it’s super obvious when you go back and look at that book 

With Hardcore Happiness, I did all of my pencils digitally. All of my plotting and my planning and setup of the page is done digitally. When I’m ready to ink it, I can print it out. A lot of my buddies who do a lot of quick turnaround stuff have to do it that way just because they have to be fast. That helps me because I’m too heavy handed. So, I’ll draw the pencil and it’ll be too dark. I’ll have to erase it and it just ruins the page. So doing the pencils digitally, I can adjust for stuff. I can make actual room for the word bubbles and fit the panels better. I have to do the inking traditionally because otherwise, if I don’t, I just, I don’t do as much detail.

What are your influences in either animation or comics?

My biggest influence in comics is probably Jhonen Vasquez. He was probably the main guy that I got into. I loved Invader Zim growing up. Somebody was like, you know that he did comics. And I was like, what? I got Squee and Johnny The Homicidal Maniac and loved them. Bone by Jeff Smith is a huge one for me. Later, when I met my wife, she was like, you should read Blankets by Craig Thompson.

I didn’t know nonfiction comics were a thing. Like, I didn’t know that you could do like this self-embellishing, crazy memoir type story with comics. Evan Dorkin is a huge one, he did Milk and Cheese. He’s done some work for Yo Gabba Gabba and for the Aquabats. They’ve all done work together. The Aquabats did the theme song for his failed pilot that was going to be on Adult Swim.

I love King of the Hill. King of the Hill is, I think, the best animated show ever. It’s the only show that I re-watch at least once a year, like all 14 seasons. Whether that’s good or bad for my health, I don’t know. 

Mike Judge is one of my faves.

He’s so good. Me and my father-in-law actually always discuss it because he doesn’t like the early King of the Hill art because it’s so shaky. And I love that because that’s when I’m like, oh, he’s drawing it. That’s why I like it. I know he’s putting pencil to page on that. But even Beavis and Butthead, I mean, everything Mike Judge drew, I always loved his art. That’s probably the big one. 

Ren and Stimpy is great. SpongeBob SquarePants, I love SpongeBob’s animation. I love the random hyper-realistic stuff that SpongeBob and Ren and Stimpy would do. Yeah, I love, so anytime I draw a splash page or something in the book, I’m always like, that’s when I have to go all out.

I try to be simple and do everything with as few lines as possible to tell the story, but anytime something’s up close, I’m gonna put as much stipple shading. I’m gonna draw every tiny little stupid zit I have or a little freckle or anything.

I’m gonna go all out on those just because I loved that juxtaposition, that random, almost scary, why are we that close type of detail.

You have short bio-comics of punk rock bands in between chapters. You said you kind of hit your big strokes in Hardcore Anxiety with The Clash and Bad Brains. What made you choose the bands in this book? I don’t wanna say like your B-tier bands, because none of those bands are B-tier bands.

In Hardcore Anxiety, I felt the need to do the heavy hitters, the pillars of punk. This one, I wanted to kind of pick ones that maybe they don’t get as much love. I wanted to kind of shine a light on that. As much as I listen to The Clash, so do a lot of other people. 

The Clash were fantastic. I love everything about The Clash, but the number one thing that I think they did amazingly was shining a light on other bands. They were one of the first bands to tour with Grandmaster Flash. Like they were shining a light on stuff that was completely different. I have an opportunity to do that. Like 

Gorilla Biscuits are a huge band, but there are plenty of people who don’t know them. Like my dad doesn’t know who the Gorilla Biscuits are. My dad was a New Wave guy. He liked Devo and The Clash. If he hasn’t heard of it, then I know there are people out there that just haven’t dove into that. They’ve never heard of Youth of Today. They’ve seen the logo or something, but they don’t know that band. I was like, how can I kind of bridge that? 

Then another thing I did in this book that I didn’t do in the first book is, I didn’t care what other people would maybe consider punk. There’s a chapter on the Violent Femmes and a lot of people would be like, the Violent Femmes aren’t a punk band.

They were on Slash.

Exactly. Brian Ritchie released three solo records on SST that are avant-garde jazz music. Don’t tell me they’re not punk. You put something on SST and they’re not a punk band.

Paul Baribeau is a guy with an acoustic guitar who just sings really, really sad songs. There’s gonna be people who are gonna be like, he’s not punk. He would definitely, if he ever read this, would be like, I’m not punk, why am I in this book? It’s the idea of, I don’t really care. The book’s not there to have the argument of what’s punk and what’s not. The book is there to kind of shed light on the fact that anything and everything can be punk. It’s a matter of how, what lens do you view it through? What lens do you create it through?

It has nothing to do with if it makes money or if it’s commercially successful. It has to do with how the art got created and what was the objective of the art, the intention behind it. I love that I fought to put in The Mullets at the very end, because nobody knows that band. That’s like local to me. I knew that going into it. Like they don’t make music anymore. The guy lives forty-five minutes away from my house. I went and met him because there’s no information on him. I had to get the story straight from him. I wanted to be sure that I told it, because I was like, where else are you gonna find that? We aren’t gonna hear about that. 

Mock Orange is another one that I don’t go deep into their history, because they’re not really a punk band. They’re from that scene, but they’re talked about in there. I have this opportunity. My favorite bands are people that I know. These people are my friends, and that’s incredible to me. 

I have an opportunity that I can put them in the book and talk about them from my experience, but also the experience of knowing them, and then hopefully get other people to listen to them and to share their music with people. The plan with this book was to try to shed some light on bands and also just break down that stigma. I didn’t want somebody to come back and be like, you didn’t talk about the Sex Pistols, which I do realize at this point, it’s on principle.

I didn’t put the Sex Pistols in the first book, which was probably a mistake, because I probably should have talked about the Sex Pistols in the first book. Now I’m like, I’m not talking about it. I didn’t want to go back and do it, because I was like, I want to talk about this different stuff, and the stuff that was super specific to me a little bit in that too.

I say in the introduction, I had originally put stuff on the Go-Go’s and Suzi Quatro and talked about Blink-182. Those bands weren’t really deeply personal to me. It felt kind of like I was putting on an act and I didn’t like that. These bands are important to punk, but they’re not in this book; not because it wasn’t authentic to my story. Trying to find a way to navigate that, and that’s a little bit of a cop-out sometimes. I should want to talk more about that and want to bring light on their presence in the importance of punk. In the end, I have to keep everything as authentic for me, especially when I’m writing my story.

I don’t want to make it seem like I was ahead of my time and I’m super inclusive and really smart about this. I wasn’t. I was a dip shit punk kid like everybody else who heard The Clash and The Ramones. That’s all I listened to for the first five years of being into punk. That’s what everybody else did too.

If it wasn’t right in front of you, you didn’t know about it until later. Now we have the internet, it’s different. I can hear crazy punk music that comes from Greece from some random guy who reads my book and sends me his music. I would have never in a thousand years known what to search to find a Greek punk band or stuff like that. So it’s just all different times, different worlds. You see Duff McKagan wearing a Ramones shirt or something and you’re like, I guess I should look into who The Ramones are.

Going with what we’re talking about right now, our punk trajectories where we’re kind of the same. How we determined what’s punk and what’s not. What made you break that?

I really don’t know the exact moment that it broke. I probably want to credit my wife a little bit to that. This anecdote is in the first book where I talk about the first date me and my wife went on. We were sitting down at this Mexican restaurant and we’re just talking about music we like. I knew that she liked punk music, but she liked Green Day, The Living End, and some other more obscure punk bands.

I was kind of like, she knows a little bit more. I was like you should know that I love Creed unapologetically. Legitimately Creed was my first concert and I love it. I wish sometimes I didn’t, but I do. And she was like, it’s okay. I like One Direction. That was the moment where I was like maybe this is okay. Maybe you can like both. 

I love Randy Newman. I think Randy Newman is the best American songwriter of all time. I think he’s incredibly smart and surprisingly more punk rock than you would think because of his political persuasions. The way that he comes across he’s kind of like, the call is coming from inside the house songwriter. Where he puts himself as these characters that are pretty terrible. If you’re not aware of that, it goes over your head. People are like he hates short people and you’re missing the point. 

The last record he put out was like 2018, he’s got a whole song about Putin putting his pants on and taking off his shirt. That’s what weeds out what’s punk and what’s not. People who aren’t afraid to talk about that. It doesn’t matter if you play with a guitar or if you’re on a piano or if you’re gonna play the music with the flute. I don’t care. Music comes from a specific place. That’s what makes something punk. The need to create. The intention of creation is what makes it. that has nothing to do with what it sounds like. 

I always bring up Green Day because, regretfully, I was the person who was like Green Day is not really a punk band. They used to be a punk band. My wife is a huge Green Day fan. She’s like I think you missed some of the point. I was that guy who was like American Idiot is not punk. Now looking back, I’m like that was a pretty big protest record. Very political. I didn’t get it because I was like it’s popular therefore it can’t be punk and that’s not the point. Realizing that is a huge thing. I mean it’s a rite of passage everyone goes through. Every punk person whoever gets into punk is going to have that phase. They’re going to be like, “Nope, you’re not punk. I’m punk or that’s not punk.”

Hopefully everyone grows out of it eventually and there are plenty of people who still don’t grow out of it. I just went to a show a couple days ago and there’s still that one guy who’s there who told me that I shouldn’t be allowed to play some show because I hadn’t paid my hardcore dues, yet. I don’t care, it’s like I did what I did . I’m happy where I’m at. I know what I’ve done and what I get to keep doing. 

I just didn’t have the time to do it anymore. Plus like my kids were getting into bands that aren’t for me and I don’t want to be, like, “Well, your shit sucks to a five-year-old.” 

No one wants to do that. I am a music snob. My wife brings it up to me all the time and I’m aware of it. If you can remain aware of it then that can at least help keep you humbled by it.

Your kids will break you of that. Let me tell you. It’s gonna happen.

I’m ready for it. 

I was making fun of my wife about Paramore. Two years ago we went and saw them with the Linda Lindas. Paramore is all right.

Exactly, I know that there’s gonna be plenty of times where I’m gonna eat my words    and  feel like I’ve already kind of done that with my wife with some of the pop shows that we’ve gone to. Where I’ve been like I don’t know if I’m a fan of this and then we walk away from the show like, “Well that was pretty good yeah it’s not that bad. I can put a couple songs on.” 

I’ve eaten so many words when it comes to music snob stuff and i have my cousin who who likes just the same punk rock and and got me into like rockabilly and psychobilly and all this stuff too he goes you are such the fucking music snob for someone who listens to everything.

Exactly, I also like some awful shit. I like terrible music and I’m okay with it. I think the beautiful thing with like making that realization and telling my wife that I was an unapologetic Creed fan. It’s okay. I taught marching band for a while at high school and a big thing that we always talked about with my section was like trying to get everyone to you know do the icebreaker stuff like, “What music do you like?” 

I would give the same speech every year. Someone’s gonna say, “I like Skillet” and someone’s gonna reply, you’re a moron because you like that band. I would always stop them and say everyone likes terrible music and the sooner you realize that the happier you will be. The other realization of every band is somebody’s favorite band. As messed up as that is, that’s the truth. When I first heard Limp Bizkit, I remember thinking people like this and then now I kind of get it. It’s not anyone’s job to tell somebody or to convince somebody that their music taste is bad because it’s a pointless fight. 

You mentioned you did the GG Allin book, is there another band you do a full book on?

I’d love to do one on the Violent Femmes. I’ve talked about doing one on them for a long time. I mention it in the book because I did do a gig poster for them. That conversation was sort of started by me reaching out to Brian Richie and their management and asking, “Why isn’t there a book on the Violent Femmes. There’s no book like nothing. They were going to do that documentary…

They were working on a documentary when all that shit exploded and Brian Richie was gonna quit. 

I learned some inside baseball with some with their relationship being backstage with some of it. Just like odd stuff. They’ve figured out what works for them. I want them to keep making music. I remember when me and Brian talked about it at some point, he gave me his blessing to make a book. I would love to do it. I just would have to put in a lot more research than you would think. Especially on a band that’s even still active. I mean GG Allin had an active career for like thirteen years. The Femmes, that first record came out in the 80s. Forty plus years of music that’s not stopped 

I would love to do one on The Aquabats. I’d love to just do an Aquabats comic book. I did a fan comic of them years ago. I just gave it away for free. I’m kind of amazed there isn’t a comic book about them. Like that they haven’t done a superhero book on them. I don’t know if that’s for lack of trying. I’m because there’s big name comic people who love that band. It’s just not coming out or not working the way they wanted it. 

The other one that I’ve played around with would be doing a Tiny Tim. I kind of pulled back from it. When I was going to start working on it, that documentary came out. I didn’t want to come on the coattails of that. There is a Tiny Tim-GG Allin connection. Also Tiny Tim kind of was a creep and did some pretty inappropriate things. 

The GG Allin book was really hard to navigate because I don’t condone anything that that man did. I am just fascinated to a core by that guy.  Was it a character? Was it not a character? What was real? What wasn’t? His upbringing was doomed from the start. I approached it like a true crime book rather than a music biography. 

Oh, that’s a good way to do that.

That was the only way to do it. I really don’t even like his music. I mean his first record is good and everything after that is pretty bad. Let alone the subject matter being bad. He should have the free speech to create stuff, but also should probably be in jail for some terrible things that he did. Tiny Tim kind of has a little bit of that as well with some underage girls. 

If it ever comes to fruition it will be a Violent Femmes book. It’s like I got less than ten years. I probably should do it at the fiftieth. Who makes a band with no kick drum in 1981. I’m fascinated by all of the antithesis of what is the popular punk movement while also being a part of it. 

Exactly. Well that’s like you were saying, how are they not a punk rock band? For a genre that celebrates outliers they were the outliers of the outliers. 

Everyone always credits REM as the birth of alternative music, I think the Violent Femmes were right there with them if not before. You’ve got The Replacements. I mean it’s hard to find something much sooner. The more I talk about it, the more I think I have to do this book. That may be the next thing on the docket. 

Do you do any fiction writing? 

I’ve done one long form fiction book that I Kickstarted called, Summer Vacation. It’s about a group of teachers that have a band and decide to go on their first tour ever during summer vacation. It’s like all of the first tour problems, but they’re like guys in their forties. They’re really bad at it. I really enjoyed doing it. I had that idea forever, but it was like three years in the making. Fiction is not my strong suit, at least long form fiction. Just trying to find the right beats for it. I do a lot of short form fiction like stuff in mini comics here and there, but mostly the non-fiction in comics. That’s what I like to read, as well. 

I read a lot of memoirs and biographies. I try to stay in that lane. I’m open to doing more fiction stuff. I edit myself so much with having that full control of the story. I can’t just create something out of thin air. I can’t just add something to it. I like having that real life lens to help me stay close. Otherwise, I’d just be constantly re-editing. Every book would take me like four years to make. 

I had to get over that with fiction writing. I got stuck on something for weeks and just figured it out. It’s been one of those good writing weeks where you figured out the puzzle. 

That Summer Vacation book, I drew the entire two hundred page book twice. I drew it once digitally while coming up with the story and then I hated it. I re-drew it completely traditionally and changed all the beats. That’s why it took three years. I’m open to doing more. I self-published that, which was fun, but I want to do something and get it published through a more traditional or comic publisher. It’s always a gambit you never know what you’re going to get. 

Do you storyboard or do you write a script out first? 

I suppose it depends. I’ve tried different methods. I do a script typically. When I actually get to lettering. I know the idea of what I’m going to do. So, I kind of place it back and forth. I’ve done different methods for Hardcore Happiness. I didn’t script out anything. I had an outline. Since that can be a little bit more free-flowing, a little bit more artistic, a little more avant-garde, I don’t need to show it. A lot of it is internal dialogue with myself about how I’m feeling about this and how I’m interpreting it. 

I can draw a big picture in my head with a bunch of crap falling out of it. I don’t have to just draw myself talking. The book is one hundred ninety two pages total. I broke down some panels and that’s really helpful when I have a great editor. The editing team at microcosm has been fantastic. Where they’re like, “Hey, you spend eight pages telling this story, you can do it in three. 

Okay, but it’s the Femmes, they deserve more.

The book is immensely better for it in a lot of ways. This is the first book that I’ve gone back and looked through a draft… There’s nothing that I wish I would have done differently. I wish I would have fought for that. Everything that I wanted to make it into the book, I did fight for and it’s in there. Everything that they pushed back on they were right. 

This is a really great book. We’re very much a big therapy family in my house. I appreciated a book like this. I’ve had my anxieties and my wife has anxiety and depression. I always like trying to hear other people’s stories so I can learn and get more understanding. I always feel like I fall short on support sometimes. 

In the end that’s the whole point of it, all have our shortcomings with it and the point is to keep doing the work to keep striving forward. That’s the message of the whole book. The happiest moment in your life doesn’t have to always be behind you. It can be in front of you and that’s okay. Realizing that it’s not behind you is actually a happy thing. Just kind of reshaping the lens that you’ve used through all of that. 

For more about Reid and his body of work including gig posters, books, print, music, and more visit here. If you’re in the area go see Reid at one of the stops on his book tour. Dates are listed below: