Thanks to the great cartoonist, critic and educator, Stephen R. Bissette, who generously got the whole project going, last year Dark Horse Books finally–after more than two decades!–collected the 3-issue Freaks’ Amour comic-book series into a full-fledged and beautifully produced graphic novel. The series was originally scripted by Dana Marie Andra and drawn by Phil Hester and Ande Parks. To make the package deluxe, Steve wrong a long introduction, the artists contributed new drawings, Dana wrote an afterward, Gary Panter permitted us to reprint his 3-page Freaks’ Amour adaptation (first published in Young Lust, 1980), and I wrote a brand-new story set in the Freaks’ world, but decades after the story in the novel. It was a little daunting to go back to material I’d worked on when I was 28, 29 years old, but it proved a lot of fun. For some time I’d been wanting to do another “monolog/one-side-of-a-conversation” story–hadn’t done anything along those lines since Sunburn Lake–and so that’s what I did with “There Used to Be Freaks.” It’s very short and very pointed–it’s not the most subtle fiction I’ve ever written–but I was pleased with the result. (The graphic novel, by the way, is still very much in print and available.)

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