Penguin Random House Imprint Pantheon has released his next graphic novel from Ignatz winner and Herblock Award finalist Mattie Lubchansky. Simplicity: You will receive a novel that will be available for sale on July 29th, 2025!
Known for her work in political cartoons as an associate editor of Ignuts Award-winning magazine and website The Nib (thenib.com), and on the weekend of the critical graphic novel boy, Lubchansky’s comics often address social and political issues with a sharp wit and distinctive style. Simplicity is no exception: “In the near future America collapsed, collapsed into a semi-monitored, walled city-state, during which many unruled wildernesses fell.”
Beat caught up with LubChansky via email to discuss the simplicity of her latest long-form work, the research process involved in creating the book, and the crucial reasons for creating a trans culture for trance, and what readers can expect from the simplicity of her latest feature films.
Ollie Kaplan: How would you explain simplicity to someone?
Mattie LubChansky: It will take place in the future in the near future. There, America collapses into a half-monitored, walled city state, with many unstoppable wildernesses in between. A kind of careful scholar with ti disease sets out to Mount Catskill to study the cults that have been in a village called “simplicity” since the 1970s. Things get weird.
Kaplan: What did you learn from creating a boys weekend? How did you create that knowledge?
LubChansky: I can’t remember who said it, but I remember hearing prose novelists talk about how they’ve done what they’ve done so far. Boys Weekend was the longest job I’ve ever done – I had lots of minicomics and novels (Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook) under my belt, but it was a real learning experience.
Photo credit: Mattie Lubchansky/Pantheon
Kaplan: Why did you choose to tell this story as a manga?
LubChansky: The short answer is that it’s the perfect medium for genre fiction storytelling for my money! But more specifically, “Is this a cartoon?” is like asking myself a lot when I have an idea, as I was used to going straight there. I believe in my time as an editor as a pen edition to give this feeling. But to make it simple, the story for me is very visual. I had a really vivid sense of both how the world looked. When I first started the project, all I had was Lucius and the vision he had in the book, almost everything else was downstream from that iconography.
Kaplan: Where did you get world inspiration with simplicity?
LubChansky: I really relied on research into this book. I had this idea about how mainstream society works in the book world. It was just burning the speculative fiction machine that we’ve always been with in my brain, drawing a straight line from where we are. But I had no concept of what life would be like in an honorable settlement, or what it would be. A friend told me to get a copy of Paradise. This is a non-fiction book about “communal” settlements in America before the 19th century.
Photo credit: Mattie Lubchansky/Pantheon
Kaplan: What makes a story about a cult?
LubChansky: I don’t think I’m particularly interested in “cults.” I’m also less interested in how communities work (or don’t) and how ideas and ideas are rooted in a particular time or place. Boys’ weekend and simplicity cults are very different. I honestly didn’t necessarily think of the sap in this book as a cult… They have a much more thoughtful concept of the world, purpose and willingness. The boy’s weekend grey hands were (deliberately) very vague and inexplicable, and based on a very habitual “Erdrich” belief system, I wanted readers to feel what Sammy was feeling about it from the gate. Meanwhile, Lucius simply put, he says, oh, these people seem to have some good points.
Kaplan: You previously said, “Capitalism presents a vision of what a desirable person should be, and those aspirations present a more unstable, violent, depressive version of masculinity, whiteness, straight, or a vision of what you do.” What you said made me think how important gender is and that it’s not policed in simplicity in various communities (at one point, Lucius points out that his body costs him compared to SAP members). How do you think capitalism will have on strange bodies?
LubChansky: Yeah, I think I still agree with myself! It’s also easy to wonder if your desires are being sold to you…but I think our desires are still taken seriously. However, I think the biggest impact is essential. The transition is prohibitively expensive. Even if we get a lot of the care covered by insurance, it takes into consideration all sorts of surgical recovery, including jobs that many of us can’t afford. Preparing without insurance is prohibitively expensive. Capitalism needs that lower class, and the strange people are just one of them. Being poor is scary to your body.
Photo credit: Mattie Lubchansky/Pantheon
Kaplan: What impact do you hope that this administration will have in its attempt to erase trans people from public life?
LubChansky: I have no illusions about Republicans and Terf maniacs picking up this book and blowing their minds away. That said, I think it’s really important for trans people to create a culture. We should be in the library, in the bookstore, in your home. I feel very privileged to be able to live there and I take it seriously. I clearly hope that CIS people will read it, but I want to create a trans culture for trans people. Another important thing for me is that there is a lot about sex and sexual desires in this book. Transsexuality is demonized to an extraordinary degree. But I don’t think we need to do anything to taste ourselves anymore. No matter how small we become, they’re going to call us perverts. There’s no reason to play that game anymore.
Kaplan: You previously mentioned that your work is always political. What role does comics play in political resistance?
LubChansky: I know there are a lot of people who do really political work that I think is changing their minds and hearts, but I’m a little more tired of that aspect. I don’t think anyone can change their minds with books. But what I’m kind of a horny optimist is that people change their minds. They really do it in their own words. This is also an organisational mechanism. You can become a small pebble that rolls down the hillside, and suddenly the person who hears your story will experience an avalanche.
Photo credit: Mattie Lubchansky/Pantheon
Kaplan: You are well known for working in nibs and other short comics. How does the artistic process of creating short form comics compare to long comics?
LubChansky: This is a completely different skill I’ve had to learn in the last few projects. The big thing I had to teach myself was patience. I work pretty quickly, but still only finishes 4 or 5 pages per week. So you really have to really commit to seeing it, and you can’t get an immediate dopamine hit of public responses to work – I finished simplicity over a year ago, and I just had it in my hands today (!). So you really caught me, but I feel it is extremely valuable.
Kaplan: Is there anything else you would like to add?
LubChansky: I really hope this strange, horny chord book will find an audience. I’m very proud of that. And people should know that it is horny.
(Featured image: Pantheon/Sylvie Rosokoff)
Pre-order Mattie Lubchansky’s latest graphic novel, “Simplicity”!
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