Luke Healy turns harmless fibs about celebrity interactions into hilarious comics

Irish cartoonist, comedian and six-time published author Luke Healy is perhaps one of the most harmless liars in comic history. All artists lie, just a little bit (mainly in their autobiographical works), but Luke takes the ‘my Dad works at Nintendo’ cliche further than anyone else by drawing two comics about fictional celebrity encounters every morning. It all started when, last year, the comedian performed a monthly solo comedy show called Ass, in which he improvised anecdotes of embarrassing encounters with celebs. The hilarity of these skits is that it uses our almost encyclopaedic knowledge of famous people against us – how does a celebrity act in public? How do they look and sound? Would Tom Holland ever order a custom-made fursuit? Luke is never trying to be mean-spirited or mocking – inspired by his admiration for Mitch Hedberg, whose iconic non-sequiturs played on our most inner silliness. Instead, Luke aims for something absurd and alleviating.

It all begins with a Google image search of his chosen celebrity subject, and Luke usually just uses the very first result. If Ariana Grande is wearing a ball gown in the first reference Luke pulls up, then Ariana Grande is wearing a ball gown in Morrisons. The stories in the comics are always delivered in an economical four-panel layout, a testament to Luke’s sharpened sense of humour and delivery. Within the quadrant are skits that feel like daydreams or hallucinations: Olivia Rodrigo dressed as Queen Amidala at Forest Cinema in Walthamstow, Bad Bunny at M&S, Jeremy Renner at Oxfam, Sabrina Carpenter at Yo Sushi. The brilliance of the comics is that Luke juxtaposes the glam of celebrities with the low-brow kitsch of the UK.

“I usually start by picking a celebrity, and location – for example, Britney Spears in a TK Maxx. Then I pick a strong emotional POV for the celebrity to have. Maybe Britney loves Oreos…” says Luke. “The more mundane and specific the better. Then it’s just a matter of asking how Britney’s love of Oreos makes her behave oddly at a TK Maxx. Maybe she’s thrilled because finds a patterned blouse that will hide Oreo crumbs.” Luke pencils out the comics on his iPad, then prints the pencils and ink with a Rotring Isograph pen on standard printer paper, drawing everything quickly – he likes the scrappy look.

The comedian is a big fan of Ulli Lust and her book Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life, as well as the mini comic Apartment 3 by Pascal Girard, a foundational text for Luke’s style. But it’s clear that his true muse is the act of playing with the celebrity image. It may not even particularly be about celebrities per se, but simply their infinitely expendable and remixable image. “Usually, I’ll just choose whichever celebrity is top of mind. I write new celebrity comics every day, so most of them go undrawn, and I run through celebrities very quickly,” says Luke. “I get comments on lots of the comics like ‘oh my gosh, this is so Florence Pugh’ which is funny, because two minutes before I started drawing, it was going to be about Mel C.”

Luke Healy’s newest graphic novel Dogs On Dates is available now, published by Faber (UK) and Drawn & Quarterly (North America).