The Editor Speaks. - Daniel Raeburn

number 1The imp is the point where thedevil, the jester, and the childall three meet—and where morepointedly than in the comic book?Comic books were intended for kids,meant to be comic, and despite manywell-meaning attemptsat homogenization, arestill clearly the work ofthe devil. Witness ourfirst imp, Dan Clowes,and his fascinationwith satanism, sadism,sexism, racism, andmass murder. Nowthis is the kind of artistThe Imp likes—it takescomix seriously. That’sthe mission of The Imp…seriously.Comix, comics, whatever. The factthat I don’t know anything about comicscan only help me to take them seriously.We’ll discuss Jack Chick, not Jack Kirby.Even as a kid I knew Jack Kirby was ablockhead. Horror, war, Mad, and Plop!—that’s where my wee heart lay.I admit that to be serious about comixis to risk ruining them, like a good joke,by explaining them to death. For example,I say that potrzebie is the mother ofinvention because I know now that it’sliterally true: potrzebie is Polish for “necessity.”But to me at age seven potrzebiemeant nothing—or anything. It was purehumor, arbitrary to the point of inanityand therefore hilarity. The gag-meisterof Mad, Harvey Kurtzman, gleefully usedthe unknowable ejaculation to pop thebubble of American childhoods’ sanity,sure that we wouldThe Editor keep the word, makeSpeaks. it our own, make itthe shibboleth I nowinvoke. Yuh hadda bethere, man.I invoke the passwordaware, as was theimmigrant Kurtzman,that I laughed out ofignorance. Ignoranceis a big part of humor—that’s the devil of it. Laughing at aPole for pronouncing his need isn’t toofar from laughing at Chinese for theirnames, or at anybody for just being different.Ethnicity is an undeniable part ofcartooning—check American caricaturesfrom long before that little yellow mickall the way up to today’s evil arabs,brought to you by Disney—and it’stricky ground, ground our first imp hasrecently groped his way across. Spendingtime with this foole’s work has beenone of the great pleasures of my life.Ladies and gentlemen, the fallen worldof Daniel Clowes.The Imp, number 1, was published eventually by Daniel K. Raeburn, 1454 W. Summerdale 2c,Chicago, IL 60640, and is © 1997 by Daniel K. Raeburn. Artwork on every page but this is© Daniel G. Clowes. All artwork used by permission. Thanks a ton, Dan’l. Thanks also to FantagraphicsBooks and Monte Beauchamp of Blab! for permission to reprint words and pictures fromtheir fine publications. Thanks to Brian for use of the Blank Expression studio, my family and friendsfor support, and most of all to Tara. As Muddy siz, “You move me, dollin’.”1

Daniel Clowes is my kind of hopelessromantic. Like me, he’s acynic. He doesn’t moon, he’smean. He hates: that’s why he’s hopeless.Daniel Clowes’ hopelessness would haveprobably overwhelmed him by now but forhis own, invented defense against it: hisromanticism. This iota of sweetness, his softspot, is what saves Clowes from himself andhis otherwise all-consuming despair. But thekernel of romanticism, like faith, was moreof an idea than a reality at its conception.That’s how Clowes’ comic book, Eightball,began: as a cruel world. I instantly fell inlove with it.Eightball was so funny, so unfair, so wrongthat it was right. It made me glad that theworld was fucked up. Every single cretinmeant more grist for the mill of Clowes’pen; in this way I learned to be grateful forthe world in all its essential ugliness. Ilaughed at stupidity, then welcomed it. Apretty backward psychology, I admit, but asFrederick Exley wrote, hate can redeem aswell as love. Most people don’t agree withthis negative thinking: throughout his careerClowes has been criticized for beingmisanthropic and nihilistic. Of course hewas—that’s why I loved him. But my excusefor liking him was my taking to heartevery hint of his inner humanitarian, promisingthe grub would one day fly from itschrysalis. The odd thing is that, as he’s actuallybegun this emergence, Dan Clowes isno longer our funniest cartoonist—he’s ourmost profound cartoonist. The joke’s notfunny anymore, but it’s on Dan, and Dan istelling it.hen I lived in Chicago I was not‘‘W happy,” Clowes calmly explainsto me at his house in Berkeley. “I was muchmore hard at that point. Setting up a tripod2Lloydlloves in“I Love YouTenderly.”3Dan’s alter ego, Lloyd Llewellyn, fulminatesin “I Hate You Deeply.”by the Chicago River and machine-gunningeverybody would have made mehappy. I had fantasies like that. So whenI moved here I started to try to come togrips with that. That’s the inner conflictin my work.” Shy Dan stirs his tea andaddresses the swirl. “I’m trying to findsome sympathy for the mass of humanity.I have great sympathy for the specificsof humanity, for the individuals in theirstruggles. But when I see humanity as agroup it always repels me. I’m repulsed.”Vexation creeps into his otherwise evenvoice: “Would I create all these charactersand do this comic and do all thiswork if I really didn’t care?” AlthoughClowes’ question is directed rhetoricallyat his critics, I feel that it’s still his question,and it hangs in the air as though itwere in one of his own word balloons.The real-life Dan Clowes’ silveringhair accentuates his surprisingly quiet,perspicacious manner. His voice is kind,softened by experience and understanding.This gentle certainty, in combinationwith his button-down, sweater-andblazerattire, makes Dan Clowes appearto be nothing so much as a tall, thin manof the cloth. A dark, handsome priest. It’san odd similarity which deepens whenmidway through our conversation heconfesses his attraction for pictures ofwomen in full bondage gear. Drops ofsweat leak from his forehead as he patientlyexplains that his attraction is apurely visual, aesthetic one, and that hewould never, ever actually use suchimplements… .Dan Clowes seems to be made ofsuch contradictions, of opposites andtheir attractions. He works for The NewYorker and for Hustler. If not perverted,he’s certainly perverse—animated bywhat Poe called “the imp of the perverse,”the nagging tug of the irrationalor intransigent. When I inform Clowesthat I’ve gladly never been to Los Angeles,he urges me: “You’ve gotta go. Gotto. It’s the monoculture.” One hour laterhe cries, “When I go to southern CaliforniaI get so depressed. I can imaginehow the whole world could be like that.I’m not sure life would be worth living.”Then why go there? Does he have toposition himself at the limit of our westwardexpansion, at the cerebral cortex ofthe American consciousness, in order tochange its destructive thought patterns?No—nothing that grand. “I don’t knowthat that I’m fighting it,” Clowes admits,“but that’s where I get my inspiration. Ifeel like I could actually live in LAand do good artwork—but I’d bereally miserable.” Like the twohands of Robert Mitchum’spreacher in Night of the Hunter,it’s an old battle between loveand hate, and no telling which iswhich and who’s a-winnin’.

If the impending californication of theworld inspires Clowes, it’s becausestrip-malling is only part of an even largerforce: the future. “The whole idea ofthe future is just a constant nightmare tome,” Clowes says. “It’s really the mosthorrifying thing.” One can either runfrom this future or face it; right now,Dan Clowes is doing both. With one foothe’s in flight, fleeing from the future intoan imaginary past. This is nothing new;he’s still as nostalgic as he ever was, evenduring his obsessions with JFK-era zipa-toneiconography. But with his otherfoot Clowes is making a stand. He’s tryingto construct some kind of meaningin a country where nothing has meaning,where nothing is sacred except thefree market, the freeway, and the headlongpursuit of happiness. Is life worthliving when there’s nothing but yammeringairwaves and strip malls? I wonderif it is even possible to be original ina hyper-accelerated Culture-culturewhich simultaneously inspires and devoursnewness, devours even its ownpast. “That’s what Ghost World is about,really,” Clowes says. To make somethingout of nothing; that is the question, andessentially what Clowes’ latest serializedcomix and first feature film, Ghost World,is trying to do.4Clowes has embodied his hopes forthe future in the form of eighteen-yearoldEnid Coleslaw and her closest friend,Rebecca Doppelmeyer: the heroines ofGhost World. Born four years ago as acharacter sketch in the pages of Eightball,Enid and Becky walk and talk just likereal teenage girls: smart, bratty, funny,cruel, romantic. They’re normal misfits.Enid reads books, Becky changes thechannels; Enid spies on satanists, Beckystares after every other guy she sees. Enidmight go to college next year; Becky willnot—that’s the wedge between them inthe comix. “I wanted to create two likeablecharacters,” Clowes says. “Charactersthat I liked, anyway. That was mysole intention.” Of course, according tothe inexorable law of the Clowesian universe,irony happens: “I get so many letterssaying, ‘You obviously hate thesecharacters. They’re so awful. It’s greatthat you’re parodying the modern teenager.’”But even though these fans gotClowes’ intentions wrong, they’re stillright, in a way. If they think the girls areawful it’s because Clowes is awful, as hehimself admits: “Basically the girls haveall of my opinions,” he says.“I can getaway with it because it’s two teenagegirls. If I had some cranky old man sayingthe same stuff it would just seemawful. He’d be a horrible monster.”As the title of Ghost World suggests,the girls live in a limbo betweenchildhood and adulthood, between thepast and the future. It’s a concreteworld defined literally by commerce.Each episode to date revolvesaround places of business:diners, a supermarket, asex shop, record stores. It’sthe late–twentieth-centuryAmerican quest for definition:you are what youbuy. And what’s for sale?Crap. Lame, tacky crap.Becky and Enid wallow incrap, learn to live with crap—even love it—and yetthey’re not really buying it.They instantly reject anything slickor advertised. Hipness is unhip. Thegirls of Ghost World are today’s teen heathens:they don’t believe in MTV. In thelong tradition of all alienated teenagers,they hate phoniness—but in their ultraironicsensibility completely inept phoninessis good because it is transparent. Theworst recreation of a 1950s diner is thereforethe best. The lamest stand-up comedianis therefore the most revered.Becky and Enid can seeright through to the comedy’spathetic, human core,and in that sense they experiencesomething genuine.That’s what they crave.They’re lonely, and theywant contact, fellow conspirators.For this reason thestory is ultimately Enid’sstory. She’s driven impishlyto initiate contact with theother oddballs who inhabittheir city. Besides spying onthe neighborhood satanists,Enid is chasing Bob Skeetes,the psychic astrologer wholooks like a piece of cosmic5driftwood; teasing Josh, the loner andonly boy she likes; and cruelly using anassumed personality to answer a lonelyheartsclassified ad. It’s obvious thatEnid hates everything only becauseshe truly wants somethingand hasn’t yet foundit. The paradox of her insecurityis that she primarilyrejects people becauseshe is so afraid oftheir rejection.She’s obviously a lotlike her creator, whichputs her creator in a bitof a spot. Despite all theego obsessions of Eightball,Clowes says that he’s notcomfortable with the creatingor reading of his comix in a highlypersonal manner. When a comix reviewercriticized him for keeping an “icydistance” between himself and his characters,between himself and his readers,Clowes thought: “That’s great. I couldn’task for more.” He emblazoned the critic’sphrase across the masthead of his verynext issue. Given this, doesn’t Dan’s personalaffection for Becky and Enid makeAt the local grocery store, Becky Doppelmeyer discovers whatsatan-worshippers eat for every meal.

Ghost World a little too close for comfort?After all, Clowes has already inserted hisrumpled, eager self into the story as a cartoonistwith one eye for teenage Enid—who, it must be said, bears a remarkableresemblance to the real-life Mrs. Clowes.Is Dan worried his sympathy will cloudhis artistry? “I’m almost too close to thatproblem to answer,” he replies. “The interestto me lies in the conflict betweenentering their world, becoming veryclose to them, and then viewing them ata distance. You have to be sitting in theroom with them and also be the fly onthe wall looking down at them.” Fortunately,in the story Enid dismisses hercomic father and potential HumbertHumbert: “He was like this old perv,”she laments. Good eye.Not only is Clowes juggling hispersonal and his omniscient perspectives,he’s juggling them in thecomix and in the film, simultaneously.He’s working with Crumb director andAmerican music documentarian TerryZwigoff. On the first day of 1997 he says,6“We’re about two-thirds done with thescript.” Of writing the comix version ofGhost World and the film version of GhostWorld at the same time: “It’s weird.They’re different. They’re very differentbecause the characters are the same butnot the same. They’re a shade off. It’svery confusing. I can’t remember if a lineof dialogue appeared in the comic or inthe movie.”Clowes isn’t giving any scoops regardingthe script, at least partially because,as he claims, he doesn’t reallyknow what he’s doing. But he drops afew hints: mainly, it’s even more of ablack comedy. “We made it more Hollywood-friendly,”he says. I listen, notwithout fear. “Adding some other charactersso there’s a beginning, a middle,and an end. It’s not just a random, picaresquekinda thing where they’re runningaround having all kinds of adventures.”Enid’s decision about college isno longer the wedge between the girls.“But it has a substitute for that, whichhas the same dramatic function that has.”And the plot is…? “I don’t know.We don’t really know what we’re doing,so I think that’s a benefit. We’re on pageseventy-four and I don’t think we’vedone that yet.” He laughs. “We’ll getaround to it.” I get the idea: never talkabout a work in progress. Next question.I ask the man who has already drawnthe fictional Hollywood ruination of hiscomix if he has creative control of GhostWorld. Unfortunately not, Clowes says,because he and Zwigoff are dealing withwhat they call a “real” studio. He adds,“But we’ve got as good as deal as youcan get with a ‘real’ studio.” His discussionpicks up speed; from this, I get theimpression that he and Zwigoff havethought through this from every angle.“They can’t make it unless we agree.They can suggest changes, and we canagree to make them, but if we don’tagree, then we just say, ‘Thank you verymuch,’ and walk. So, they can’t make itwith another director unless we actuallyget started filming the script and they fireTerry and hire another director.” Uh,right. They can’t fire the director unlessthey fire the director. “But nobody wantsto do that,” Clowes says confidently.“They really want Terry Zwigoff.” ThatI can understand, and Clowes is right totrust Zwigoff—but what about the studio?What do they care about your7script? “They don’t want me. They haveno idea who I am. They’re all excitedbecause they think, Oh, it’s a comic.Comics are hip. But they’ve neverlooked at my comics.” They in this caseare Jersey Pictures, Danny DeVito’s filmcompany, the company behind Pulp Fictionand Get Shorty. Hence the hip.Funding is being provided by UniversalPictures. “The studio of BorisKarloff,” Dan smiles with reverence—areverence made touching, not false, byits germ of irony. That’s what this is reallyall about: we’re dorks. Two shy guyswho still like comix and monsters. It’salive…! Gasp! (choke!)Clowes isn’t too worried about hiscomix being mangled by Hollywoodnincompoops, mainly because it’s achance for him to do something that anyastute observer of his comix, especiallyLike a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, can seehe’s always wanted to do: make a movie.“This movie is more of a technical exercisefor me than a way to really expressmyself,” he says. “I’m so uncomfortableand unfamiliar with what I’m doing that

if I could just write a script that actuallyworks in this weird, algebraic way that ithas to work, I’d be happy.” The technicianin him awakened, Clowes growsnearly animated, awed: “It’s really likesolving a huge trigonometry project. Thisaffects this, and if you change this it affectsthat, and so on and so on. It’s ahuge equation. A huge, unwieldy set ofvariables.”The same goes fortrying to figureall of Dan’s variables.It’s as though thereal Dan Clowes weresurrounded by the funhousemirrors of his life,his work, and his opinions,the reflections ofeach facet so distortedand infinite in conjunctionwith the others that ultimatelythey’re all indistinguishable. There arehundreds of Dan Cloweses and many ofthem, if not most, are laughing at you.Meeting Dan and talking to him confusedme even more because, like thebest artists, Clowes doesn’t know whycertain subjects keep coming up. Youcan’t explain a joke, and Clowes oftencan’t explain his work. “I’m so close tothat question I can hardly even comment,”he says, or, “I dunno.” He says,“I dunno,” to me a lot. Like most smartIn “Why I Hate Christians,” Clowes’devil’s advocate defends Christianity.8people, Dan Clowes is quite aware of justhow little he really does know—and hisuniverse seems to revolve around thesevoids.For years Dan has rejected religionsagain and again. And again. Andagain. The self-described Christian-haterand avowed atheist keeps coming back.“I’m not exactly sure why, either,” hemurmurs. “For someone whowas raised with no religionand with no pressureto believe in anykind of religion.” Hismurmur disappearsinto a silent, private blackhole of sorts whose gravityhas drawn much of his thinkingand feeling and holdsthem tightly. He offers theobvious: “The idea of a beliefthat is larger than our personal interactionson a day-to-day basis is interestingto me,” he says. “I’m not sure I have afix on that.” I prod him: what aboutyour namesake, a seer of apocalypse? Hedescribes being taken as a child by hisgrandparents to a performance of theBook of Daniel by divinity students atRockefeller Chapel in Chicago. Theprophet’s vision of the multiheaded,apocalyptic monster scared young Danielso badly that he vomited.I try to unwindClowes with themost obvious deityin his work: OldScratch. “Usuallythe people whobecome Satanistshave a real issuewith the Christianreligion,” hesays. “It’s the flipside of the coin.”Before I can half-jokingly ask him toclarify whether or not he’s describinghimself, he continues: “They were usuallybrought up in really oppressiveFrom “Devil Doll,” Clowes’ parody ofJack T. Chick’s religious tracts.Christian homes, and they’re trying toplay that out. To me, they’re equally remote,and dull, and wrong-headed. Arethey really any different than Christianswho, perhaps, also have beliefs thatwould lead them to do us harm?” Goodpoint: more human lives have been takenin the name of God than have beentaken in the name of Satan. “It’s alwaysoccurred to me,” he concludes,“that ifyou’re going to believe that much, whynot just go the whole route and becomea Christian? If you actually do believe inone you should believe in the other.” Toembellish Lloyd Llewellyn’s defense ofthe proposition that haters make the bestlovers: it’s a yin-yang kinda thing-thang.Perhaps the attraction to religion is aresult of its very conspicuous absence inchildhood. To a child like Daniel ofurban Marxists, religion is the forbiddenfruit. “I have a bunch of friends whowere raised just like me,” Clowes says,“who became born-again Christians.9They hated that they were raised theirwhole lives with geometric possibilitiesgoing off in every direction. All of a suddenit was too much: ‘What do I do?’They became very narrow.”Daniel speaks from experience. Atone point the circumstances of his lifenarrowed such that he himself saw thelight. The light was cast, appropriatelyenough, from the flames of the hellfireand brimstone comix booklets of Jack T.Chick. Dan recalls “a really bad weekend”when he was in art school: hisBrooklyn apartment had no gas and noelectricity—in the winter. “For somereason,” he begins, “I went into a Christianbookstore. They had a spinner rackwith all the Jack Chick comics for eightcents each. So I bought sixty of them,five dollars worth, a stack which is stillthe core of my collection.” When he arrivedback at his dark apartment, Clowesbundled for warmth and read all sixtyDevil Doll sees the light.booklets in a row, by flashlight. “It wastoo much for me,” he stresses. “I was reallyconvinced that I was fucked. Ithought, Okay: he’s proven his point. I’dnever been absolutely convinced by acomic book before in my life, but I was

sure that he was right and that I’d beencrazy all along. It was so convincing. Iwas in the right frame of mind, and toread that many in a row, this overwhelmingtidal wave of Christianitycoming at you—it’s anamazing experience. Herewas this comic dealing withlife and death. The absolutemost important thing. Imean, he was pulling out allthe stops, there was no softpedaling,he was just rammingit down your throat.Never before had Ibeen affected like thatby comics.”“Of course,” Danadds, “a couple ofhours later I thought:‘What am I thinking?’”If Clowes rejects religiousorganizations,he’s just begun to explorethe religious questions hefeels must be asked: “While I don’t acceptorganized religion,” Clowes says, “Istill think it deals with questions that haveto be dealt with. I think that’s sort ofwhat I’m looking for in my comics.” Inthe first panel of Clowes’ recent story,“Gynecology,” the voice of the omniscientnarrator asks the reader: Do you believein God?With this question Clowes is pointingout that we do have to believe in acreator in order to experience a story.We have to suspend disbelief, have faithin the author-ity, to enter His inventedworld. “I am this dime-store god creatingthis stuff,” Clowes explains. “To me,these characters are real and the readersare imaginary, rather than the other wayaround. In the mind of the creator, thesesituations are reversed.“ Like a dimestoreZeus asserting his authority, ClowesGawd.10throws a bolt of lightning in the firstpanel. The lightning, says Clowes, ismeant to evoke the sense of a frozenmoment: “When the world is illuminated,”he says, “and youall of a sudden see everythingwith perfect clarityfor one second.” Thisbeginning visualepiphany echoes at theclimax of the story,when our half-a-man“hero,” the artistnamed only Epps,has a vision in hisbathtub. Epps’ epiphany?Humans areall animals, of nomore consequencethan ants—but he’sthe exception, ofcourse. His life hasmeaning. That meaning,however, is whatever youmake of it. Each and everycontrary interpretation is equallyvalid. Meaning in such abundance thatit’s finally, perhaps, all meaningless.“That’s my view of the world at theworst possible moment,” Clowes says.In his vision Epps sees the Dr. Disguisedolls he collected as a child.“That’s a lot of what this story was about:my worst-case thoughts. When I get asdepressed as I can get, these are thethoughts that cross my mind.” We lastsee Epps on the rebound, described as apinball in a machine. Life, like the inventedcomic, is mechanical. But, toparaphrase Clowes himself, there’s an invisiblemembrane of truth we fathomthat connects these random and arbitrarymachinations. A ghost in the machine:our single interpretation. It may be fuzzy,may be only one of many interpretations,but it’s God, for lack of a better word.These are the conclusions that Clowesliterally drew: “I had these many ideasthat I’d sketched out,” he explains, “andArt critics are tricked by Epps’ prankster friend, Peach,into seeing pornography as fine art.11The dimestoregod.somehow I created a way to link themall together that made sense, had somemeaning.” In this respect Clowes is likeJoseph Conrad, whose Marlowe said thata story’s meaning is not inside the storybut outside it, in the unseen. Cloudymeanings surround the story and renderits meaning visible as haze illuminates thehalo around the moon.But what is the halo surrounding thestory? From the first bolt, light is themost dominant visual metaphor. Eppsand the wife of the singing gynecologistlie in adultery with all the lights on whilethe cuckold himself hums a familiar tuneand peers deep into another dark maw ofhuman birth with his penlight. The charactersare looking for something, mainlythemselves, and in doing so they imitatethose who’ve come before. The lightof Clowes’ story illuminates every cornerof a world where everybody is at besta copycat; at worst, a plagiarist: “I thinkthat everybody, every artist is, to somedegree,” Dan says. “I have a lot of troubleseeing where my style begins andwhere the styles of my influences end.It’s something I want to figureout.” But the story, as anybodywho has read it knows, containsno easy answers. “I’m not surethat story helped me figure anythingout,” Clowes admits, “butit made for an interesting tensionto keep the story going.” Althoughhe maintains that he’s notnecessarily accusing himself ofplagiarism, the story smells to melike guilt. Here’s the catch-22: ifa conscience accuses itself of failing, isn’tit then working? Or can people turntheir conscience on and off like a lightswitch, as a gynecologist should turn offhis sexual impulse?Epps’ art appears in Peach’s porno magazine.

“There are few, if any, objectors,” says thedime-store god. “After all, who wants to lookfoolish criticizing what is clearly an ironic statement….”But Epps says that the “innocence”of stereotypes is what inspired him. He complains,“Everything today is so ‘ironic’ and‘self-conscious.’”12Our conscience in the story is troubledby Epps’ use of racist stereotypesand caricatures to earn big moneyas a fine artist and a commercial artist.This idea came to Clowes both fromwithout and from within. From without,from a society where advertisers haveused photos of victims of aids and genocideto sell top-dollar fashions, fulfillingall Orwell’s prophecies of doublethink.Advertising now goes as high as it can goby going as low as it can go, albeit underthe guise of irony: “It sort of has thispatina of pc-ness to it,” Clowes says. “Ithink there’s a lot of stuff on teevee that’svery borderline questionable in terms ofwhat it’s saying about groups of people.I think there’s stuff that’s not too far fromthat; I was only simplifying it to an extent.”Does he think such blatant stereotypingwould fly in real life? “No, thatwas tweaked a little bit. I think somethingthat’s maybe not so cut and driedas that would fly in a slightly different climate.I could see something like thathappening and there not being thatmuch of a response to it.”But Clowes also sees the stereotypesarise from within himself. Epps’ love ofstereotypes is rooted in his nostalgia—and nostalgia is one of Dan’s deepestyearnings. It worries him. I asked Danfor his general understanding of what he’scalled the psychopathology of nostalgia.“That title was based on an article Ifound in an old psychoanalytic journal.As I read it I realized that this guy wasbasically talking about me. It made mevery uncomfortable. The article saidspecifically: ‘The nostalgic will go to oldmovies and be unhappy because the audiencelaughs in the wrong places.’Things like that. I thought, ‘Oh my god,I’m deeply troubled here.’ So I tried tolook at it in the harsh light of reality.There’s a lot of trouble to being nostalgicbecause you can’t really edit every-thing out of the past. You can just benostalgic for the music of the 1920s, butthen you sort of inherently have to acceptthe way the culture was back then,and there are many things that were obviouslywrong with the culture. It’s adeep problem. It’s a conundrum.” Dan’sunderstanding of the racism inherent inhis nostalgia seems right, yet not entirelyjustified. To me, it’s downright puritanical.I wonder, is his sympathy for humanitysupposed to come at his own expense?Because this humor, if that’s whatit is, is so—forgive me—black that I canfind little to laugh at. It’s scary. “I try tobe mean,” he agreed. “I tryto be hard on myself.” I toldhim that he was indeed.“Good,” he nodded. Cloweshas turned his unforgivingand sometimes unfair eye forsatire on himself.If Dan’s childhood immersionin urban, leftist,academic culture made himown up to any inner demons,it also made him morethan a little naïve. He saysthat, as a boy, “I realizedthat there was racism in theworld but I had never beenconfronted with it directly. I’d had it directedtoward me by black kids in theneighborhood, but white racists in a positionof power, exerting that racism andthat power for no real reason other thanto make themselves feel better? I’d neverseen an example of that.” Dan first becameaware that all was not well whenhe moved to New York as an art-schoolstudent. “New York was the most racistplace I have ever lived. I used to go tothe actual pizzeria that was in Spike Lee’sDo the Right Thing. It’s right on MyrtleAvenue. They really did have pictures ofVic Damone on the wall. I’d hear theseguys say stuff that I’d never heard beforeThe man who sells Epps hisSambo figurines.13in my life. Even art students whom youwould think of as liberal, you’d hearthem say the most amazingly, outrageouslyracist stuff.” It’s clear to me fromDan’s other comix and from talking tohim that he is not a racist—but in“Gynecology” there seems to be no differencebetween living in a racist societyand supporting it.It’s apparent that as Clowes digs deeperand deeper within himself, he throwsthe stones he finds not at himself but ata dummy, a likeness. Like the nostalgicbrat who narrates “mcmlxvi,” Epps isonly partly Clowes. It’s as thoughClowes were bothclaiming and disclaimingthe sin,showing sympathyyet condemnation.It’s displaced guilt.But there is nodogma to Clowes’guilt—he even distanceshimself fromhis own artistic pronouncementsof guilt.The black and whitecouple in the story,Bunny and Lieberman,who act asmouthpieces for the moral perspectiveon nostalgia outlined above by Clowes,are themselves compromised by theirown plagiarism and hypocrisy. “I don’tthink there’s anybody else in that storywho’s held in a less harsh light,” Clowessays. “I sort of keep everybody in thesame light.” The light doesn’t get turnedoff in the world of “Gynecology.” We’reall guilty.Asked if he suffers from liberal guilt,Clowes hums a skeptical note thatneither rises to assent nor descends to no.“I do have a certain amount of guilt thatkeeps me somewhat in tune with what’s

going on,” he admits, “but whatevercomes out in my work ispretty much accidental, just somethingin my personality thatcomes through.” To Dan, politicshave no place in art, mainly becausethis is America and nobody’slistening anyway. “I wouldnever think, ‘Affirmative action isgood, so I’m going to do a characterthat shows that in one of mystories.’ I can’t stand that kind ofwriting,” he sighs. “I hate theUpton Sinclairs of the world. Ithrow the book across the room. If youreally want to do political things, don’tbe an artist, because nobody cares aboutwhat artists do. You’re only speaking toother semi-intellectuals and other artists,so it’s not going to change the world. Goto Hollywood and make a blockbuster.”But just because Clowes doesn’tpreach to the choir doesn’t mean that hedoesn’t have a message. I refuse to believethat, in this era of identity politics,a story about an artist who makes his fortunepainting Sambo dolls, buck-toothedchinamen, and hook-nosed Shylocks isnot a political story. “Any subject matteris good if it’s part of the psychologicalThe Clowesian protagonist of “The Gold Mommy”gets his head checked.Insignificant Shrimp and Willie Willions discuss what’sso darn great about children’s comics.14body of the work,” he shrugs. “If itcomes out in the inner life of the story,that’s fine.” Perhaps the political signifierin Clowes’ work is the absence of politics.After all, his pen drips contempt forEpps at several points in the story, particularlyas Epps passes through a ghetto.“I think there’s a reason all the sort of,naked characters I do about myself tendto be very self-centered and apolitical,”Dan says, “because that’s something Iworry about in myself. I feel like I’mvery narcissistic and solipsistic and not involvedin a community at all—and notreally interested in it. On a very reallevel, I can’t say I’d be upset if ninetypercent of humanity was justwiped out. On a very real level,I’d be extremely happy if it wasthe right ninety percent.” Hechuckles. “It’s hard for me to reconcilethat.” Then why does heclaim that he only feels comfortablein an urban environment?Why hasn’t he moved into a cabinin Wisconsin—a fantasy he admitsto? “Yeah,” Clowes concedes.“I’d feel guilty, like I was givingup. I’d feel like I was escaping. Ithink I’d feel really guilty. I feelguilty for how nicely I live now.”Dan Clowes feels guilty about notfeeling guilty.Childhood is another conundrum ofDan’s. Childhood, or the lack of it,is perhaps the root of an adult’s nostalgia,and in Clowes’ universe everyone, itseems, is trying to hang on to their childhood.Enid clutches her Goofie Gus doll,plays her kid records over and over whenshe’s low. The narrator of “mcmlxvi”hangs on to his ray gun and Batmask. Inhis moment of truth, Epps sees the Dr.Disguise dolls he collected as a child.Clowes clearly misses his childhood—ordoes he? “That’s a big paradox,” he says.“I would never, ever, want to relive mychildhood. I was miserable.”Maybe that’s why Clowes is obsessedwith it. Being raised by his grandparents,both of whom took ill and needed littleDaniel to take care of them, instilled inDaniel an almost overwhelming sense ofmortality. “I could see them dying. I feltlike everything was in total flux andchanging, and they were going to die beforeI got out of high school. There wasreally this fear of things changing. I stillhave this dread of the future that I’m tryingto conquer. I have this very strongurge to make things last, just to give myselfsome kind of solidity in life.” Hence15the nostalgia; hence the collecting andtreasuring of artifacts; hence the kitsch.The very thing that made the past miserable—impermanence—makesit nowseem preferable to the future.Nostalgia isn’t rooted in happy memoriesor relationships; for Clowes, it’s almostthe opposite: it’s rooted in poignantmemories and isolation. “You fetishizeobjects,” he said, “and objects take theplace of people. So it’s more of a returnto the objects that I had to make into myfriends. That’s sort of a simplified way ofputting it, but it’s true. I put a lot morestock in an old chair in my living roomthan a kid who has lots of friends or whohad brothers and sisters would havedone.” This lonely void is not only theroot of Clowes’ nostalgia but, perhaps,his artistic impulse. Clowes thinks it’s theroot of most impulses, the driver of mostpeople’s lives: “I think everybody has thevoid they’re trying to fill with whateverthey do, whether they’re workaholics ora drug addict or an alcoholic or a womanizeror whatever. I think art is just oneof those things. So certainly the roots arein a miserable childhood.”This page: from “Why I Hate Christians.”

In “Like A Weed, Joe,” a pubescent Rodger Young scratches outhis message to the girl in the Christ family next door.The birth of Daniel GillespieClowes was a miracle—sort of.His parents had been forced toget married ten years earlier by the accidentalconception of Daniel’s olderbrother. By the time of Daniel’s conceptiontheir already-shotgun marriagehad greatly deteriorated. “I don’t thinkthey liked each other very much at thetime I was conceived, so it’s a miraclethat I exist,” Daniel said in one of twoprevious interviews covering his childhoodin Chicago. These interviews—in1988 with Monte Beauchamp in Blab!magazine and in 1992 with Gary Grothin The Comics Journal—are particularly revealingbecause of the way Clowes summarizeshis life, performs the necessaryre-presentation of the facts to form a coherentlife story. His comedy has, as always,its beginning in tragedy.Daniel’s parents divorced after hisbirth and his mother then married theowner of a south side garage and autopartsstore. But infant Daniel’s stepfatherwas crushed to death only two years laterwhen the stock car he was racing rolledover on top of him. Although she never16drove an automobile again, Daniel’smother became a mechanic herself andcontinued to run the shop. However, shewasn’t able to handle all of her responsibilitiesalone. Daniel’s mother—whomClowes describes as “more like a waywardsister” than a traditional mother—and her University of Chicago academicparents formed a committee-family ofsorts to jointly raise Daniel. “I grew upin an almost socialist atmosphere,” Danielremembered, “…a very intensely pc, liberalatmosphere. It was thekind of neighborhoodwhere all the parents listento folk songs and talk aboutEugene Debs.” Clowes’publisher, Gary Groth,quipped: “Perhaps DanQuayle would understandEightball now.”As Daniel Gillespie’sbop namesake implies,the Cloweses were loversof popular culture. Danielgrew up listening to TomLehrer records on the familyphonograph. “My parentswere book collectors,”Daniel said, “and they wereobsessive about never throwing anythingaway.” Daniel’s older brother had bythen grown into what Daniel describesas “a frighteningly smart guy,” who, likemost teens, was caught up in the spirit ofthe late 1960s. In this spirit, Daniel’sbrother left the household and went toCalifornia, where he eventually becamethe inmate with the highest tested IQ inthe history of the California penal system.But before he left, he amassed agigantic book and magazine collection.“[He] was a media junkie,” Daniel said.“He bought probably every dc comicand every Marvel comic, and FamousMonsters of Filmland, and Hot Rod maga-zine, and Playboy and all that stuff.” Thatstuff also included “a million” of the undergroundcomix of the 1960s. Everythingwas permitted: “We just had it alllying around in this communal room thatwe had,” Daniel remembered, “and nobodyever tried to keep me from any of it.”Daniel’s earliest memories were impressionsmade in this communal room,as a preliterate child sorting throughevery branch of our popular culture,puzzling over the bizarre fruits of somany imaginations. “I can rememberlooking at a lot of old dc comics beforeI could read,” he said, “and reading themlike hieroglyphics; there’d be a panelwhere people are kissing, and I’d think,‘He’s trying to bite her face off.’ I wouldn’treally know what they were doing.”Within these larger misunderstandings,Daniel developed a confounded understandingof sorts. One imagein particular made a deepimpression on him: thecover to an issue of StrangeAdventures. The illustrationshowed a typical family tryingto drink from a fountainunderneath a gigantic hotsun. “The family is sweating,”Daniel recalled, “butfor some reason all thewater is frozen, and the kidsare trying to drink thisfrozen water out of a fountain.I can remember seeingthat cover and then startingto cry and bashing my headagainst the wall…. I thought,‘How can this be? It’s so hotand yet the water is frozen.’” Danlaughed at the memory. “These imageshad real power over me.”These images made Daniel want todraw them himself. “I remember lookingat a Superboy or Jimmy Olsen comicbook for hours and thinking, ‘How did17this guy draw these lines?’ And havingno idea how someone could draw perfectsmooth lines like that. I rememberwanting to be able to do that very badly.This is before I was able to read, so Imust have been three or four.” Danielbegan copying superheroes onto sheetsof stationery, trying to match his lines tothose in the fictions that surrounded him.Relatives and his parents were enthusiasticwhen presented with his efforts.They told him that he was very talented,and that his drawings were great. Ofcourse, Clowes said, “They would havesaid that if I’d drawn the worst piece ofshit. But at that time I really took it asencouragement.” This misunderstanding,he maintained, was perhaps the primefactor in his continuing effort and eventualsuccesses: “I think that had a lot todo with it.”The Christ girl writes back.The goal that young Daniel wasdrawing toward was Mad magazine.“The first day I saw Mad, it changed mylife.” Daniel asserted. “I remember I wasin first grade; I could barely read, but Iwas obsessed with it.” Daniel’s prehensilemind seized upon the image of Alfred

E. Neuman’s leering face. “The covers,”Daniel remembered, “the NormanMingo covers used to really get tome….This was before I could really read,This page: from Clowes’ take on FredricWertham’s infamous 1953 indictment of comicbooks, The Seduction of the Innocent.so it had nothing to do with what theywere parodying. It was just the look ofit.” His grandmother held an issue up toDaniel. “Why do you want to read this?”she demanded, pointing at Neuman’sface. “Look at this boy—he’s an idiot!”Despite this pressure, or perhaps becauseof it, Daniel’s conviction was firm: “Iwanted to work for Mad,” he said. “Thatwas my goal at age six. I had no goalother than that.”And what of the underground comixlaying around his brother’s haunt? Ironically—butnot surprisingly—one oftoday’s best underground cartoonists hadmixed feelings about the comix he readin the third grade. “I didn’t really thinkof them as comics,” Daniel said. “Ithought of them as pornography…the18early undergrounds seemed really aliento me, and I didn’t relate to them at all.I still don’t completely.” Not that thisfeeling of alienation stopped him fromenjoying them—or treasuring them. Inaddition to his brother’s comix, Danielhad a pile of undergrounds all his own.His aunt had mistaken a pile of Zap andWonder Warthog comix at her house foryoung Daniel’s superhero comics; shemailed the comix to Daniel’s house witha note explaining that he must have forgottenthem at her house. “It was thegreatest day of my life,” Clowes toldMonte Beauchamp. “I still have some ofthem.” Daniel and one of his rare childhoodfriends were so impressed byRobert Crumb that they drew their ownissue of Big Ass comix. In the third grade,Daniel explained, “We thought it wasabsolutely the funniest name in theworld.”But another part of Daniel looked atwhat he was doing, and was ashamed.Despite his family’s open and acceptingattitude toward the ephemera layeringthe end tables and bookshelves of theirhousehold, Daniel of his own free willfelt guilty about reading this pornography.“I’d sneak them over to a corner“I’m so glad I didn’t read the full-length JackChick comics when I was little,” Daniel says.“They might’ve really fucked me up.”somewhere and read them when nobodywas around.” Although he treasured undergroundcomics, Daniel didn’t exactlylove them. “They were pretty outlandishwhen I was eight years old,” he said.“Even now it’s pretty heavy.”19This page: an episode in Clowes’ semi-autobiographicalsatire of the comics industry andall its dorks, Dan Pussey.Meanwhile, Daniel had entered theUniversity of Chicago LaboratorySchool, a school for the children of facultymembers. Like him, the 75 or sochildren in Daniel’s class were “childrenof really smart Jewish intellectual liberaltypes,” Daniel recalled. “There was thisintense sameness about the kinds of kidsthat went there.” Although Daniel gotgood grades, he had no talent for popularity.“I never got along with anyonethere except the losers, outcasts, and misfits,”he said. “I was definitely a loner.”Like many who later go into art, heoccupied himself in his isolation bydrawing pictures and fantasies. Althoughbeing a pariah made him the obvious targetof bullies, Daniel attempted to appeasethem by playing the funny man;not the class clown, but the quiet, nerdysubversive. “I would draw pictures ofteachers picking their noses and stuff likethat,” he recalled. “I’d always go fartherthan the other artists in school. I had notaboos.” By the time he was in the thirdgrade and under the sway of Mad andZap, Daniel knew everybody in hisschool and they knew him. “I had donesomething to offend everybody in theschool at that point,” Daniel said, “andthen I had to go another ten years withthese same kids. By the time I was inhigh school I just hated everybody, andthey hated me, and everybody hatedeach other.”Teenage Daniel masked the innersting of rejection by adopting the pose ofarbitrary contrariness: he marched aboutdeterminedly to 78 r.p.m. John PhilipSousa records rather than move to theomnipresent, long-playing grooves ofYes and Zep. Doing most things in a deliberatelyunpopular way made Danielappear to be a self-selected rather thanbranded geek, but he probably foolednone of his classmates and certainly came

no closer to fulfilling his desire for a truerexpression of his self. “The thing aboutgoing to school with the same eighty kidsfor your entire life is that if you were totry to change your personality at all, thesekids knew you so well that they’d knowit was some kind of phony thing, thatyou were just trying to create some newimage.” That was exactly what Danieldid want to do: “All my lifeI’d been wanting to reinventmyself in the way Iknew I could be.” But helet his classmates trap himinside of his own self-image.Daniel’s chance for escapecame his senior year of highschool in the form of acceptanceat Brooklyn’s PrattInstitute. He graduatedwithout having dated a girland left immediately forNew York City.‘‘Ireally fell in lovewith the city,” DanielThis spread: From ArtSchool Confidential.said of his arrival in NewYork. “I really liked the factthat it was this decaying island of hedonists.”Because Daniel’s grandfather washis guardian, the University of Chicagopaid Daniel’s tuition in full; becauseDaniel’s stepfather had been killed Danielreceived four or five hundred dollars amonth in social security benefits. He wasfree in New York with a steady supplyof spending cash. “That was the greatesttime of my life,” he claimed.The first thing Daniel did upon arrivalin New York was to immediately implementhis long-awaited reinvention.It’s fitting that, given his history ofadamantly contrary behavior, he adoptedthe pose and philosophy of total fractiousness:punk. Although Daniel’s needfor punk music and punk culture wasdeep, his adoption of it was for the same20reason as always: to be different. The boywho air-tubaed in high school again said“Fuck you” to the popular crowd—inthis case the aging baby boomers nowentrenched in the coastal media establishmentslike Rolling Stone—by againacting deliberately like an idiot. ButDaniel was not only reacting to his NewYork context; he was also reacting to hisliberal background. “Itwas very hard for me torebel against my parents,”he said, “because theywere so cool and acceptingof anything I woulddo…I could have dyedmy hair green and gottena pierced septum andcome home and theywould say, ‘Oh, you lookcute.’ Basically, the onlything I could do was embracethe punk philosophyof utter stupidity.That would be the onlything that would offendmy parents, the really crassstupidity.” Gary Grothasked Clowes why, if he wanted so badlyto rebel, didn’t he just become a Republican?“Well, it wasn’t that far fromit,” Dan replied. “In a lot of the attitudes.I wasn’t political enough to do that. Iwasn’t that crazy.”Daniel’s politics extended only as faras his myopia allowed; he was againstReagan only because he felt sure thatnewly-elected Reagan was going to usethe newly-reinstated draft to send youngDaniel to battle the Soviet Union inAfghanistan. “Other than that I reallydidn’t give a shit,” he recalled, addingwith characteristic self-deprecation, “I’vealways been pretty much interested inmy own little world.” Other than punk,Daniel’s own little world consisted ofwhat he considered to be an average artstudent’s cultural immersion: Americanunderground and French films, reading“Burroughs and Bukowski and all thatshit,” as he put it. “It’s all so cliché, it’shard to talk about.”Although Daniel learned a lot at Pratt,he insisted that he learned nothing fromPratt. He remembered only one teacher,a painter of Harlequin romance covers,who taught him how to mix a flesh tone.That was it, Clowes said. “He was theonly guy who was honest about actuallyteaching us a specific technique.” Manypeople have told Clowes throughout hiscareer that he was lucky—which itself hedoes not dispute—and that his luck consistedof having four years at one of themost famous art schools in the countryto learn and practice the craft ofcartooning. “That’s kinda whatgets my goat,” he said. “I learnednothing of what I do now in artschool. Absolutely nothing. Everybit of it I had to figure out for myself.I didn’t even have tips.” So althoughDaniel has a B.F.A on hiswall—“like a dentist’s office”—heconsiders himself completely selftaught.Daniel graduated from Prattin 1984. The greatest time ofhis life had peaked, along with hisconfidence. He walked out of Prattwith the blessings of his teachers,who told him that he should havebeen freelancing for years. Hestepped into the offices of NewYork City publishers as though he werethe next Seymour Chwast.Daniel persevered as publishing’simage-makers ignored his vision. Althoughhe almost never got past the receptionists,he continued to leave his stilldistressingly-crispportfolio with them,day after day: Time, Fortune, Esquire…allthe big boys. Nothing. For months.Eventually he found himself trying to getwork in the porn industry, then the lowestof the low: a magazine for doll collectors.“That was the most depressingtime in my life,” he remembered. “Thatwas even worse than high school.” Hehad no work, less and less money and littleor no idea what he was going to donext to earn a living. “I’d better accomplishsomething,” he said to himself, “orI’m going to blow my brains out.”Driven by despair, Daniel sat downand did what he’d always wanted to do:actually draw comix. Again, Daniel’smisunderstandings about the value of hiswork ironically helped him: “The factthat I was so unfamiliar with the existingcomics market really helped me, because“Remember,” Clowes warns, “the only piece ofpaper less valuable than one of your paintings is aB.F.A. degree.”21if I had known how few people therewere that would publish my work, Imight not have even thought about it.”With a mindlessness worthy of a Zenmonk, he simply sat down to draw. Outsprang a character: tall, white, clean-cut,smoking an ever-present cig: American.Lloyd Llewellyn delivered himself.“There was no thought that went into it

at all,” Daniel said. “That very first panelin that very first story was the first drawingI did of him. I was stuck with himafter that.” Lloyd Llewellyn’s characterfollowed from his thoughtless creation.With no idea what he was doing,Clowes naturally tried to keep openevery single option. Therefore LloydLlewellyn was a cipher at his birth. “Iwanted not necessarily an innocent in a22corrupt world,” Clowes said, “but astraight man to a wacky world.” LloydLlewellyn was picked up by FantagraphicsBooks and Dan’s career as a cartoonistbegan in 1986.Over ten years later LloydLlewellyn remains a mixture ofmodesty and ambition: ambitiousin that Clowes managed to cram init almost every single pop-culture obsessionof his youth, summarized nicely byissue one’s Kurtzmaniac Mad-like cover;ambitious also in that each issue grewmore and more sophisticated graphically,proving a fast learner at work; yet ultimatelya modest comix in that it remainedthoroughly comic in every imaginableway, laffs from so many angles thatit wasn’t actually about anything.This initial aimlessness was due in partto Clowes’ ambivalence toward thedominant visual aesthetic, an aesthetic sostrong that it, more than plot or character,was what Lloyd Llewellyn wasabout: Men. Men in the early1960s, in skinny ties, in paddedsuits, and in power—but not necessarilyin control. Loaded menwith loaded sidearms and, in Lloyd’scase, a loaded sidekick (quasi-ethnic,natch). And women, of course, plentyof women who were nothing buttrouble—mainly because the men weretoo dumb to learn. Clowes called thisaesthetic “space-age machismo,” but itwas never clear what the author’s intentionswere other than silliness. NowClowes admits to being a bit two-facedabout his intentions: “Lloyd Llewellyn wasreally a fake parody. It was me drawingthis stuff that I loved, and wanted todraw, and then pretending that it was aparody so that people wouldn’t make funof me.” He laughs. “The very best reviewsI got dealt with it as a ‘brilliant parody.’I would think, ‘These people don’thave a clue what they’re talking about. Ilove this stuff!’” And if they did have aclue? “They’d think I was part of theproblem.”The problem being sexism. It’s literallya big problem: gigantic tits.Clowes’ explanation—“I think that’s becauseI couldn’t draw women at all”—Ibuy, but only at half-price. After all, thisis an artist who appears in red-blooded-American-male magazines like Cad andRandy. I press him regarding his nostalgiafor space-age machismo and hear themagic words: “I dunno,” he murmurs.“To me it has this quaintness to it. Itseems so divorced from the way theworld was at that time; it had this unrealityto it that I found very interesting. I’vegot to say, whenever I’ve gone to a stripclub or something I’m almost totallybored and uncomfortable and don’t findit all that interesting in person, and yetsomehow the idea of that lust world inmy comics was very appealing to me.I’m not really…I can’t really…put it ina more particular…just the whole dynamicis interesting to me, the weirdpower structure that is involved in that.”Power structure? “It’s a weird thing.I find it very appealing, visually. I don’tmean sexually appealing, but to draw thelines and the curves and the look—I reallylike to draw women in full bondagegear. That latex look. But I couldn’t beless interested sexually in it. Absolutelyuninteresting. My wife is the same way.She really likes that kind of rubber andlatex stuff. She’s always buying thosemagazines with pictures of it. Her mother’sconvinced that I’m a pervert and thatI’ve gotten her involved in some kind ofsadistic scene.” Clowes is adamant that hecouldn’t keep a straight face if he and hiswife tried to actually dress up and act outa sexual power trip. His face is perfectlystraight as he tells me this. “Completely23not interesting to us, except in this visualway. Just the look of it. I don’t thinkour personalities have to be related to it,that much. I mean, it’s just a pure aestheticchoice.”While we’re on the subject of pureaesthetic choices, I ask Dan about his recentwork for Hustler magazine. Themain appeal of working for them is, ofcourse, the money. It’s good money,Dan says, as good as Time or Newsweek—and they pay right away. But Cloweschooses Hustler because he especially likestheir attitude: “They’re the only maga-

zine that will call you up and say, ‘Wewant you to illustrate this stupid article,’in a totally self-deprecating way. ‘It’s adumb article that we made up about achild molester. We’re pretending it’s areal exposé, or an interview,or something. Just doa really, really sleazypainting.’ They never askfor sketches. Never askfor changes. You dowhatever you want andthey love it. They’re sofunny to deal with. Theyhave such a cynical viewof what they’re doing.”To a slight but, I think, more importantextent, Hustler fits Dan’s aesthetic of perversity:“It’s sort of vaguely amusing tome to be involved in it,” he says, “becauseit is the stupidest, sleaziest magazine.The whole editorial thrust is soweird. It’s this false audience that Flynt’screated—this libertarian, redneck liberal.I don’t think it’s in line with anybody’sphilosophy. It’s a totally createdthing.” As with space-age machismo, it’sa sense of unreality that draws Clowes tomess-age porno.Clowes assures me thathe’s been criticized for hisportrayal of women as sexobjects—but not from anybodywhose opinions hecares about. “I don’t careabout anybody’s opinion,”he says. “That’s the problem.”I mention other cartoonistswhose work he respects.He replies, “All thecartoonists I know whosework I respect have muchdeeper problems with women,or men, than I do.” Helaughs. “That’s part and parcel of thewhole thing. That’s sort of what we’replaying out here.”Velvet Glove’s ClayLoudermilk tries to locatehis estranged wife afterunexpectedly viewing herin a sadomasochistic film.24For a long time many people otherthan me suspected this immaturityin Clowes. I thought by the time ofEightball 12 that the only thing holdingClowes back was Clowes himself. Thiswas at least partly due to thefact that I didn’t look longenough into his disturbing,ten-part comix opus, Like aVelvet Glove Cast in Iron, to seethat the mature work I cravedwas right under my nose, hiddenin symbols that didn’t somuch add up as accumulate,and which I was too impatientto do the work of actuallyweighing. But it was also because Cloweswas too shy to admit completely the vulnerabilityI demanded; a vulnerabilitywhich, although subtly present in thepages of his work, I viewed and exaggeratedthrough my own projections.Until Eightball 13 and the publicationof “Blue Italian Shit.” “Blue Italian Shit,”itself a reference in the story to wearingabsurd, costly fashions, was Clowes’breakthrough, the point where he laidbare all his romantic tendencies in a wayboth forgiving and unsparing.Rodger Young, thenarrator, is in essence akind, sensitive kid withoutthe courage to turn hissensitivity into principles.He wears false, tough-guyprinciples like he wears hisleather jacket. The story isset up so that it’s technicallyabout Rodger losinghis virginity, but by the lastpanel that loss is an anticlimax,an afterthought. Thestory is really about a boytrying to live up to society’sterrifying, absurd definition of masculinity,and hating it, yet still wearingthe shell. At every moment of truth,Rodger clams up to protect the pearl ofhis romanticism. It’s a clearly autobiographicalstory—“between forty and sixtypercent true,” Clowes admits. It’s hardto trust my own reasons for elation atreading the story because I identified soRodger Young is afraid of girls. But boy,does he want them.much with Rodger Young: brand-newin an old, crumbling city; wearing a blackleather jacket to protect me in my nightlyperegrinations; feeling closer to myvirginity than I had since the night I’dlost it. But in retrospect I was right aboutthe story: “Blue Italian Shit” was notonly a coming-of-age story initself but also for Clowes as anauthor. The story was the firstmerging of the personal probingof Like a Velvet Glove… with thearticulate focus of his previousrants against society. It’s not hisbest story, but it’s the most personaland therefore perhaps themost pivotal of his post-Velvetwork. It was a naked attempt tosay goodbye to machismo andto spoof romanticism at thesame time. Now that Cloweshad turned his sarcastic eye on25himself and mustered an amount of compassion,there was nothing he couldn’tdo, as evidenced by the consistently improvingstories that immediately followedit, one after another: that same issue’smuch more ambitious Ghost World, then“The Gold Mommy”; “Like A Weed,Joe”; “Immortal, Invisible”; “Caricature,”and finally, “Gynecology.”Not coincidentally, a concurrenttrend is Clowes’ making everyissue harder and harder for himself tocomplete, both as a writer and as anartist. There’s a direct relationship betweenClowes’ frustration and the qualityof his stories. “I would say aroundissue twelve or thirteen,” he says, “I justgot slower and slower.” He explains thathe used to do very little revision. “Inthose days I was much happier with whatI was doing, which is weird because Ilook back on it now and I would giveanything to be able to burn it all. It’s aterrible, terrible thing. Most people canlook back on their work and feel happyabout it. I feel awful about it.” Everypanel, he explains, now goes throughmany intricate stages. “Now I have sucha high level of expectation for myself thatit’s very, very difficult to meet it,” hesays. “I’m expecting much more out of

This page: from “Caricature.”myself than I’m delivering, so I’m constantlyfrustrated.” He laughs. “I’m killingmyself.” Only two 36-page issues ofEightball came out last year, yet Clowesworks like a scribe at his desk fromevening until sunrise every single night.He makes his equation between knowledgeand labor perfectly clear: the morehe learns about comix, the longer it takeshim to draw them. The nocturnal creatorsees geometric possibilities going offin every direction.Faces have always been Clowes’ favoritesubject; they’re his strength,and a statement about where his prioritieslie as an artist. I don’t think it’s a coincidencethat he’s also one of the bestwriters in comix: it’s that focus on character,on the human. He’s got a theoryon faces, one played out at least in partin the story “Caricature.” In the story atraveling caricaturist, Mal Rosen, ekesout a meager living by doing state-fairstylecaricatures of people, the kind ofcaricatures which take unique, not-necessarilypretty people and bland them allto goofy icons—what Clowes calls “thehappy mass of sameness.” The irony ofMal’s approach is, of course, that theoriginal idea of caricature was physiognomy:to render a unique, oftengrotesque, inner state. Although the26story’s about many other things—primarilythe importance of illusions inchasing a goal—the difference betweenthe current practice of caricature and theoriginal practice of caricature is remarkablysimilar to what Clowes himself istrying to do with comix. He’s trying tomaintain the simple, iconic tradition ofcomix faces—a tradition which by itsvery simplicity allows the reader to projectherself onto the character; in effect,to identify with the character—while alsotrying to capture the verisimilitude ofphotography, which, in comix, can distancethe reader.* It’s not easy to mergethe two languages, to balance the subjectiveand the objective. “I’m trying tocreate a new visual language of how todraw humans,” Clowes states. The artistwho is trying to find some sympathy forhumanity says that, in a comix context,a normal person appears ugly simply becausewe’re so used to the simplified,*For the original and much better explanationof this theory, read Understanding Comics,by Scott McCloud. Tundra Publishing Ltd,1993.beautified comic language.“Ideally I’d like to draw thesevery specific, not exactly uglyor pretty types— but it’s hard toget that across in a comic whereeverything’s so iconic. If I wereto draw somebody who isthought of as beautiful in a veryaccurate but still comic style—she wouldn’t even look beautifulunless I exaggerated things properly.Her eyes would look too small and herface would have a weird shape.” Playingdevil’s advocate, I ask Clowes a questionfrom one of his own stories: Why areyour people so ugly? “We see enoughbeautiful people,” he says to me. We’resitting in a Berkeley café peopled bysome of the brightest youth ofAmerica’s Golden State. “Ilook at the world and I don’tsee that many beautiful people.”As a comic artist DanielClowes has been largelyignored both by Comics andby Art—at least by the buyersof each business. One of thecontinuing obsessions of Eightball hasbeen the relationship between art andcommerce, and hilarious observationsabout the sometimes inverted relationshipbetween art’s merit and its price.Considering that Clowes makes a decentliving not from Eightball but from albumcovers and the porn industry, consideringthat the only way he was even ableto produce Lloyd Llewellyn and the earlierEightball was by living for free throughluck and thrift with friends and relatives,he’s bitter. He says so—“bitter”—with alilt that almost turns it into two syllablesof laughter. But the way he sighs out hisexplanation of grievances against the AhtWuld indicates stoic acceptance morethan his younger anger or hysteria: “Youjust feel like people who are interested in27becoming successful fine artistsare interested in coming upwith something that plays offof people’s expectations in theart world, rather than actuallysitting down in a room andproducing something ofmeaning to them. It’s likethey’re second-guessing thewhole question of, What isArt? To me that gets really tiresome. It’spart of this whole system where you’reresponding to what’s been done before,rather than what you’re actually interestedin yourself.”Clowes is resigned to his fate as amiddleman between comics and art. Ina way, that’s become his stance. In histypically self-deprecating style,Dan does not define himself asan artist. “I’ve always thoughtit was a good idea to just callthem comics, and call yourselfa cartoonist.” He explains thatit used to be considered an insultto call a film a movie: youwere abbreviating the podunkphrase, movin’ pitchers. Butnow, calling a movie a film can be pretentious—andcomics are comix, notgraphically sequential narratives. Thisfilmic cartoonist sees a similarity: “Whenyou’re part of the lowly tradition ofcomics it tends to be a very liberating ex-

perience. With a historyso limited, there’s somuch that can be done.It’s virgin territory.” Theattraction of the medium andthe curse of the medium are almostidentical: total freedom and guaranteedobscurity—a hipster’s paradise. Or hell.Clowes seems to have internalizedthis paradox; in fact, it fits his aestheticof perversity to a t-square. Althoughhe was practically born into thisdamned art form, this fallen world ofcomix, and has done as much as anybodyto champion or redeem it, Clowes alsodeliberately draws work that will justifythe general condemnation of comix. Thekey to his puzzle is sleaze. On the onehand, it can be discouraging: “I wantpeople to see comics exactly the way Ido. I see that it has this sort of inherentlysleazy quality, but I can see beyondthat, see the potential of the medium,what it really is. It bothers methat people always see thesleazy part of it, but I thinkthat I’ve tried to deal with thatfor so long that I’ve gotten tothe point where it just sort ofamuses me that people only see comicsas completely trashy. I realize that peoplehave bigger things on their mindsthan the Meaning of ComicBooks.” But on the other hand,Dan Clowes has done so much tokeep the sleaze in comix. He elevatesthe form to the level of literatureand yet he refuses to take outthe trash; your comix, I tell him,are both Art with the capital A andcomix with the x. “All right!” hesays—his one and only exclamationpoint during the hours wespent together.He’s aware of the balance heholds between the high and the28low, yet he finds it difficultand probably destructiveto articulateany reasoning or thinkingthat goes into maintainingthe equilibrium. “That’s somethingthat I’m dealing with on a day-todaybasis,” he says. “It’s something I’mso close to I can hardly even commenton it.” Dan Clowes is sure of one thing,however: he has to be wary of the desireto grow up. He refers to his “giant battleplan to make comics acceptableas art,” but in almostthe same breath assertsthat there’s a faith to bekept. “I think you haveto be true to comics tosome degree,” he says.“The history of comics The “meaning” ofis so spotty and disreputablethat I think it’s im-in a nutshell.Velvet Gloveportant to maintain the tradition,to keep true to what comics havecultivated, which is this sleazy, lowdown,back-alley demeanor.” The sleazemay be discouraging, he explains, but it’salso valuable: “You can’t be a sculptorand have that behind you,” he says. “It’ssomething you can’t buy.” That’s DanielGillespie Clowes’ final truth: by necessityand by choice, he’s a believer in hisown inheritance.Clowes’ work can be ordered from FantagraphicsBooks at 1.800.657.1100.