Frank J. Barbiere Discusses the True Crime & True Romance behind Violent Love
Art by Victor Santos
Last month, Paste brought you an exclusive look at the prologue to Violent Love, Frank J. Barbiere and Victor Santos’ upcoming Image crime series. The title is utterly accurate: Barbiere and Santos tap into a long tradition of doomed, guns-blazing romance in their nesting tales of crime and passion in the ‘60s and ‘80s. It’s clear from the opening sequence that protagonists Daisy and Rock don’t wind up with a traditional storybook ending once the bullet casings cool, but Barbiere and Santos have plenty to say in the meantime. Paste corresponded with Barbiere over e-mail to discuss the bloody inspirations behind Violent Love, collaborating with Santos and the series’ potentially Criminal future.
Paste: “A criminal romance inspired by true events”—just how true are the events behind Violent Love, and how’d you come across the inspiration?
Frank J. Barbiere: The “true events” that are inspiring Violent Love are drawn from a wide variety of sources, as well as some personal experience/feelings on relationship and love. Largely, what we hope to achieve with that statement is a feeling of authenticity—a “faux-true crime” tone to the story that helps establish it as a de facto slice of Americana. Obviously, the films of the Coen Brothers are a huge influence (particularly Fargo and No Country for Old Men), so it’s also an obvious nod to them—but far deeper than that is the reason why developing a faux-true crime story works so effectively. As with Fargo, there is an immediate sense of the fact that we’ll be seeing grounded, human elements in the story (as well as plot beats) that wouldn’t necessarily be there if this were entirely a work of fiction.
Paste: Bonnie & Clyde, True Romance—even Romeo & Juliet to an extent. What do we find so compelling about doomed, self-destructive, violent love? Why do we romanticize it so frequently?
Barbiere: Victor [Santos] has spoken to this and I agree that love and crime are both intense acts of passion on opposite ends of the spectrum. Just as love is intoxicating and alluring, so is crime—that buzz of doing something outside of the rules, making your own way. I think there is a piece of all of us that longs for something more—something outside the rules of society and conventions we’re forced to deal with day-to-day. I think the rise of the anti-hero and crime stories in TV and film (as well as comics) are a direct response to the overindulgence of typical “good guy/gal” stories and speaks to a more visceral part of the human psyche. We’re definitely not trying to romanticize “violence” per se—I myself am a pacifist who loathes violence in real life. But the idea that there is an intensity here, an element of the Wild West—violence is a big part of that, and we are going to see it horrifically realized in the book. I think its intent isn’t to titillate, but to shock with how horrific it is—something we tend to be a bit desensitized to in a lot of modern fiction.
Violent Love #1 Variant Cover Art by Victor Santos
Paste: This is your second collaboration with Victor Santos after Black Market, and I love the slightly looser look he’s bringing to the book. How long has Violent Love been in the works?
Barbiere: We started discussing and developing VL as soon as Black Market finished. We really enjoyed working together and found we collaborate well, so really wanted to keep the wheels turning. Victor is unabashedly one of my favorite artists working in the industry, and any chance to work with him is a dream for me. I’m immensely flattered he wanted to keep collaborating and VL really is us both bringing everything we love about comics to the table. The chance to work on an ongoing series that will have a nice, long run is a dream come true, and the fact I get to see new art from Victor every week is just icing on the cake. We’re pretty far ahead already (wrapping the 4th issue currently), so we can assure readers the book will be on time every month, which is a relief!