(Note: There actually aren’t many NSFW lyrics in this video, and they aren’t even that outrageous, really… not like other Two Man Gentlemen Band songs we recorded at the show, which glorify drug and alcohol use.)
“We actually met on the very first day of art school,” John Leavitt said, looking across the table at Molly Crabapple as fans started to stream into The Slipper Room for the party celebrating the publication of their graphic novel, Scarlett Takes Manhattan Wednesday night. “I noticed she was the only one not drawing on a great big newsprint pad, but in a tiny Parisian sketchbook, and I asked her about it, and we just never stopped talking.”
“We actually dropped out of art school within weeks of each other,” Crabapple chimed in, “in mutual hatred and disgust.”
Scarlett Takes Manhattan emerged from Backstage (note: also NSFW), a collaborative project Crabapple and Leavitt published online at the webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE. Then, Crabapple recalled, Fugu Press came calling. “They were like, ‘Do whatever you like, here’s an advance, do anything as dirty or weird or obscure as you want,'” she told us. So they took one of the characters from Backstage and began to consider how she might have become a vaudevillian fire eater in late 19th-century Manhattan. Collaboration came easy: “We usually outline the story together, and then she’ll work on the designs and I’ll work on the script and we’ll email each other the scans and the scripts,” Leavitt explained, while Crabapple added, “John’s sensibility is very witty and comedic, and mine is very angsty and teenage girl-ish, so he reins in a lot of my excesses.”
“But if you’re wondering why the tone seems bipolar near the end, it’s because we were working independently,” Leavitt told us, laughing. “I kept telling her, it’s not Lolita! At best, it’s Little Annie Fanny with corset jokes.” (Meanwhile, Crabapple shook her fists, shouting “Damn you!” over this explanation.) Then it was time for the pair to get ready for their book party—which featured, in addition to The Two Man Gentlemen Band, live performances from three burlesque dancers, including a fire-swallowing act with a decidedly non-vaudeville musical accompaniment. (OK, we give: It was Brian Eno.) The mood was exactly in keeping with the tone of the graphic novel: good old-fashioned raunchy entertainment.