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Dan Clowes Interview

post #1 of 9
8/13/09 at 11:46am
Thread Starter 
This is pretty great. He talks about comics, Ghost World, The King Of Comedy and the creative proccess. His barbs are sure to anger any fans of Cracked Magazine.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/sacks/clowes.html
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post #2 of 9
8/13/09 at 12:24pm
"No one was ever a fan of Cracked." Clowes sums up my childhood trips to the supermarket magazine section perfectly.
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post #3 of 9
8/13/09 at 12:36pm
I never connected the Seymour prank in Ghost World with Scarlet Street before. Mind blown.
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post #4 of 9
8/13/09 at 1:20pm
Thanks for posting this. I'm only familiar with Ghost World and something else of his I read I can't remember the title of, but it was a fascinating interview. I was especially interested in what he had to say about how needless revision saps the momentum of creativity.
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post #5 of 9
8/13/09 at 1:21pm
I don't know if this is cool or embarrassing to admit but I absolutely remember him from Cracked. His style was memorable even then, although I didn't really like it at the time (I was 10). And I'm pretty sure he used his own name more than once because I recognized it later on. I remember seeing Ghost World on the shelves in the late '90s and being surprised/impressed that someone had made it out of Cracked with a career.
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post #6 of 9
8/13/09 at 2:18pm
Thread Starter 
His Cracked stuff was memorable for the art. It was like his Lloyd Lewellon material (early 60's advertising pop art meets Bernie Krigstein). The writing, in keeping with Cracked's editorial style, was lame.
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post #7 of 9
8/14/09 at 2:04am
Quote:
I sort of do want to end up like that − that's the pathetic part about it. I look at that book and I am thrilled to be a part of it. It's sort of like the ending to The Shining, when the camera zooms in on that group photo with Jack Torrance at the black-tie party in the 1920s.

There is something so great about becoming that guy.
Having read so many Dan Clowes stories, I find it absolutely no surprise that he would think this.

Wasn't there a Death Ray adaptation being developed? Did that just evaporate away or something?
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post #8 of 9
8/14/09 at 10:35am
Pretty great interview, all around.

Quote:
And yet there was something to be said for the learning process in the pre-Internet era. If you were really interested in an obscure movie or a little-known artist, you would go out and research on your own, and every little tidbit of information had such power and weight. Nowadays, you can just click on Wikipedia and learn everything in five minutes. The thrill of discovery is greatly lessened.
I know this is hardly an original statement, and that the good probably outweighs the bad in this particular situation, but I do look back in awe sometimes at the pre-Internet days, and I've found that I'm developing a certain tendency to seek out more obscure shit, in pretty much every medium - french comic books, european crime thrillers, Balearic and Cosmic Disco records, victorian detective lit - because it's more difficult to find a lot of info on this stuff. For the most part it's all still on Wikipedia, but at least it's only stubs.
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post #9 of 9
8/19/09 at 4:28pm
I was a fan of Cracked. I may have also had shitty taste.

Even in retrospect, though, Cracked did have one thing going for them: John Severin, who is still one of my favorite pencillers of all time. Always preferred his realism to the more caricatured style of Mort Drucker.
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