Sammy Harkham culminates 14 years of artistic obsession with his comic 'The blood of the virgin'

Los Angeles, 1971. Seymour endures four hours on public transportation to get to Beverly Hills in time for the late-arriving meeting with his boss. He has not taken the car because his wife needed it to take their son to the nursery. In the morning, he has discovered that three gray hairs have come out. "We give you $5,000 for the script and shoot next week. Your first sale! Congratulations!" These words of his superior disrupt the life of Seymour, the protagonist of The Blood of the Virgin (Fulgencio Pimentel). It is the comic that Sammy Harkham (Los Angeles, 42 years old), renowned editor of the anthology Kramers Ergot, has been drawing for 14 years and one of the most anticipated projects in the American comic scene. Its title is also that of the film for which they buy the script from the protagonist, a 27-year-old man who works as an editor in the low-budget film industry.

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The comic comes at a time when old Hollywood songs proliferate, such as Babylon, The Fabelmanor Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. "It's true that we're living in a strange time now that these requiems come out, because it seems like it's the end of a kind of cinema as we know it," Harkham admits, "but I tried to put aside any romanticization of Hollywood from another era. In Once Upon a Time... Tarantino soaks up all this nostalgia. I was interested in the opposite, I wanted the story to seem as mundane and everyday as our current life."

Comic book artist Sammy Harkham, on April 4 at a house in central Madrid.Samuel Sánchez

The so-called exploitation cinema runs through the work, in which the egos of the directors coexist, the rugged plots plagued by terrifying creatures, the lack of budget, the improvisation in the shootings and the abuses of power of the bosses with the actresses. "In this type of cinema the subconscious is projected in a more extreme way even than in commercial cinema. There is an inherent tension between the world of movies, where the Freudian thing is completely exposed, and that of personal relationships, in which everything is hidden, "explains Harkham while smoking a cigarette – something that his protagonist constantly replicates in the comic – in the living room of a tourist house in Madrid, where he stayed during his short stay in the city.

A page from the comic. Fulgencio Pimentel

The 42-year-old author was inspired by his parents' relationship to tell that of Seymour, a Jew born in Iraq, and his wife, Ida, daughter of Holocaust survivors, raised in New Zealand: "Although my parents did not end up together, their relationship was one of the triggers of the plot. I used to listen to my father tell how he came to Los Angeles penniless, having passed through Israel and Australia. I realized that he talked a lot about his career, but as that facet of his life improved, the less he talked about his personal life, which began to decline. I thought there was an interesting dichotomy in how one aspect of your life can stand out while the other withers."

At one point in the book, the point of view of the narrative is directed at the character of Ida. Isolated by her incipient motherhood and disenchanted with her marriage, she goes to her parents' house, to New Zealand, in a desperate attempt to recover what remains of her youth. "This is part of my parents' story. My mother went on vacation and decided she didn't want to go back, so my father went after her and tried to get her back. I always found it very funny," Harkham says.

Cover of 'The Blood of the Virgin', by Sammy Harkham.Fulgencio Pimentel

The routine of Seymour's already worn family life is further disrupted when he receives the opportunity to direct the film, to which he devotes all his energies. The mold stain on the marriage room that he promises to remove at the beginning of the book is getting bigger and bigger. Harkham elaborates on the consequences of that neglect: "For Seymour, success in that industry conflicts with his principles. The end of the book coincides with the end of production. Seymour is left with the feeling that any creative process leaves, which is to ask: 'What is the value of this? Was it worth all the sacrifice?"

- I understand that these are questions that you also asked yourself at the end of the comic.

- Definitely.

- And what is your conclusion? Do you think your comic book matters?

— It depends on the day. What literature has always put on the table, from Cervantes to today, is a perspective on human existence and a feeling of not having answers. It allows all parts of our brain to express themselves without having a clear conclusion. Milan Kundera says the only immoral thing about art is that it has a moral. The world constantly pigeonholes people into political parties, ethnic groups, social classes... And literature is the only place where the individual can exist in all its facets.

— Seymour becomes obsessed with the film. Did you also become obsessed with your comic?

— Every day. My life revolved around that project. Especially since the pandemic I followed an almost monastic existence. It was like taking care of a garden for 14 years, in which I slowly watched the plants grow. My whole brain was on it. My automatic tasks, such as walking the dog, taking my children to school, washing dishes, allowed my conscious part to be in the comic.

Sammy Harkham in Madrid on April 4. Samuel Sanchez

Los Angeles, the main setting of the comic, is presented as the land of opportunities, but also as a graveyard of hope. Harkham, who was born and lives there – although he lived part of his adolescence in Australia – confesses that he is fascinated by the mythology of the American dream that falls on the city: "No matter what corner of which street I am on, I feel the history and the weight of all the expectations of the people who came to the end of the continent to look for a place to find their soul, their individual freedom and explore their own ambitions. But it also inherently contains that disappointment."

The interlude separating the work in two is the only chapter in color. It is a kind of parenthesis of the main plot, in which we follow the story of Joe, a cowboy from Arizona who moves to Los Angeles in the twenties and goes from being a set assistant to a mogul in the film industry. The author clarifies his intention when drawing this chapter: "I wanted it to serve to show the city without it seeming like it and create visual context for the main narrative. Because, although it seems that we follow the argument of the cowboy who becomes a film director, behind him we are watching the city grow around him. For example, readers can see that the LA River was a real river, not a concrete reservoir, or that Indians lived in the hills of the city."

Vignettes of the interlude of 'The blood of the virgin', by Sammy Harkham.Fulgencio Pimentel

The more Harkham comments on his comic, the more it is noticeable that he has left nothing to chance, neither in what he tells, nor in the way he tells it. It reveals, for example, that in the comic's interlude, Joe's character, a blond guy, with an American name, who jumps from milestone to milestone and serves as a counterpoint to Seymour's trajectory, always looks to the right, following the direction of reading. Seymour's ending, however, is more ambiguous. The only certain thing is that the three gray hairs on the first page become an abundant clump of gray hair in the epilogue. In the title, the word "virgin", which in English has no gender, could be associated with both the plot of the film and the character of Seymour, a dreamer who loses innocence throughout the plot, although with the Spanish translation that ambiguity is lost.

Art Spiegelman, author of the hegemonic Maus, praises precisely these nuances: "The blood of the virgin is a story about storytelling, the stories that people tell themselves and others. We see how Harkham becomes a master of comics and proves to be an astonishingly complex and subtle storyteller. It is a comic that deserves to be read and reread slowly, many times. There's a lot of fabric to cut here."

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