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Daniel Clowes

The_Hook_UpThe_Hook_Up 8,182 Posts
edited December 2005 in Strut Central
I was never a fan of comics or graphic novels until recently...I had a girlfriend a couple years ago who was into them and we have them here at the shop, so I have started reading them. I am really appreciating Daniel Clowes...dude can nail a personality, I mean you know someone exactly like one of his characters. Also, dude can make despair and mundane entertaining. I like dude. Any of y'all into this stuff?

  Comments

  • parsecparsec 5,087 Posts
    Hells yes, I must have about 20 Eightball comics and love Ghost World. That movie is hilarious imo.
  • parsecparsec 5,087 Posts
    I kinda want this
  • SwayzeSwayze 14,705 Posts
    this is my favorite...

    and on a separate note, i have this at home...
  • p_gunnp_gunn 2,284 Posts


    ik have this, except on a 2 foot X 2 foot Boston subway ad... carried that shit all day, but it was worth it...
  • luckluck 4,077 Posts
    and on a separate note, i have this at home...

    Drinky Crow!

    Dan Clowes is a nice man. He's very genuine in person, even at the end of a 4-hour signing session.
  • Pedro_NortePedro_Norte 84 Posts

    Just got through reading this one and, like Ghost World, it would adapt well to the big screen. Clowes runs the gammut of comic book styles & the segement of Blue Bunny alone makes this a worthy purchase.

    Is his screenplay for Art School Confidential based on any previous work?
  • theory9theory9 1,128 Posts
    and on a separate note, i have this at home...

    Drinky Crow!

    Dan Clowes is a nice man. He's very genuine in person, even at the end of a 4-hour signing session.

  • BeardedDBeardedD 770 Posts
    Is his screenplay for Art School Confidential based on any previous work?

    Yes, it was like a four pager in issue #10 or so... A long time ago. Apparently the movie has some sort of absurd murder plot or something like that. After the film version of Ghost World my expectations are not very high.

    I think Chris Ware and Hollywood have been negative influences and in the last five years Clowes' work has become way too clenched and formal (no more Grip Gulch and Shamrock Squid), but yeah, he'll always be in a class of his own. And the most recent Eightball was definitely the best in a long time.
  • canonicalcanonical 2,100 Posts
    this is my favorite...
    That comic is seriously

    I like the 8-ball stuff as well. Especially the short one on Christians.
  • generiquegenerique 625 Posts


    I think Chris Ware and Hollywood have been negative influences and in the last five years Clowes' work has become way too clenched and formal (no more Grip Gulch and Shamrock Squid), but yeah, he'll always be in a class of his own. And the most recent Eightball was definitely the best in a long time.

    I never thought of it like that but you're probably right. I enjoy his more formal stuff too, but I miss the oddball stories. But it's where he's at. David Boring was excellent though.

    When it came out I bought Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and there were around 10 blank pages in it and I remember being intrigued by Clowes' eliptical way of telling the story... turns out it was a misprint. Ha! But anyway, I like the way Clowes keeps you guessing. He's the only comic artist I read everything from.
  • Birdman9Birdman9 5,417 Posts
    I had followed Clowes' work from Lloyd Llewellyn #1 up through probably 1996 or so as far as Eightball. I still enjoy browsing a new issue now and again and enjoyed the adaptation of Ghost World. A friend of mine showed him a Clowes-inspired tatoo he had done in the early 90s(around the time the Misfit Lit exhibition was traveling), and the look on Dan's face was priceless. He looked completely mortified. As someone mentioned, he was a really nice dude when I met him way back when, and I am happy he has had some success.

    As far as 80s/90s underground comics go, tho, I have always been a bigger Love & Rockets and HATE! fan, with Eightball after that.
  • sabadabadasabadabada 5,966 Posts


    MEATCAKE
  • generiquegenerique 625 Posts
    I had one weird experience with Daniel Clowes. I read David Boring and had a deja vu to a story I made myself 10 years ago. There are several similarities. It was a story on a incestous group of people on a remote island. The main character has an obsession for a girl that drowned in the sea and in the last scene they are reunited underwater in a kind of sick ending. Anyway, I know Daniel Clowes has the Dutch magazine it was printed in... and the girl in David Boring is called Judy, like in my story.

    Weird.





    I read in an interview that he gets a lot of ideas out of random pulp stuff, so it's not unthinkable he checked out my story and used a bit of it, besides countless other references to countless other weird comics and movies, no doubt. Still I sort of liked the idea, although it may as well be coincidence.
  • SwayzeSwayze 14,705 Posts
    (no more Sensual Santa[/b] and Shamrock Squid)
  • SwayzeSwayze 14,705 Posts

    I read in an interview that he gets a lot of ideas out of random pulp stuff, so it's not unthinkable he checked out my story and used a bit of it, besides countless other references to countless other weird comics and movies, no doubt. Still I sort of liked the idea, although it may as well be coincidence.
    i dunno... if i were you, i'd be kind of pissed. my mom went to the bernley art school, here in seattle, before it became the art institute in the early 80's. in one of her design classes, she came up with a product called "nico-dent", which was a small, square-shaped chewing gum infused with a low level of nicotene used to curb one's addiction to smoking cigarettes. it was submitted to a national design conference, where she won some sort of prize... but nothing else. hmmm... about 10yrs later, a product called "nicorette" came out on the market, that was almost the exact same thing, even down to the shape of the gum's blister-pack, etc. she never went after the pharmaceutical company for stealing her shit for fear that she was a lowly, single mom without the means for adequate representation. fuck man! i could have probably gotten the castle greyskull playset afterall...
  • parenparen 537 Posts


    i just played this out a couple of weeks ago for the first time in years.
  • gloomgloom 2,765 Posts
    fuck man! i could have probably gotten the castle greyskull playset afterall...



    you would think you make these stories up, but they are just too to not be true.
  • generiquegenerique 625 Posts

    I read in an interview that he gets a lot of ideas out of random pulp stuff, so it's not unthinkable he checked out my story and used a bit of it, besides countless other references to countless other weird comics and movies, no doubt. Still I sort of liked the idea, although it may as well be coincidence.
    i dunno... if i were you, i'd be kind of pissed. my mom went to the bernley art school, here in seattle, before it became the art institute in the early 80's. in one of her design classes, she came up with a product called "nico-dent", which was a small, square-shaped chewing gum infused with a low level of nicotene used to curb one's addiction to smoking cigarettes. it was submitted to a national design conference, where she won some sort of prize... but nothing else. hmmm... about 10yrs later, a product called
    "nicorette" came out on the market, that was almost the exact same thing, even down to the shape of the gum's blister-pack, etc. she never went after the pharmaceutical company for stealing her shit for fear that she was a lowly, single mom without the means for adequate representation. fuck man! i could have probably gotten the castle greyskull playset afterall...

    Good story. This is very different though. Daniel Clowes absorbs elements and makes them into something new. My story was pretty gruesome, softporn horror stuff. The elements Clowes may have taken take on a whole other meaning. The girl that is kissed underwater in his page appears out of nowhere at the end of the story. She might be there for real, but the way she submerges out of the water in the first drawing of the page suggests she is a product of David's imagination (a girl drowned there earlier in the story). So it's much more poetic and meaningful whereas my story was about actual necrophilia etc.

    It's actually something of a cliche, the erotiscism of a girl's corps in the water, like in pre-raphaelitan paintings so I would have written it off as coincidence if there were not more elements like the girl's name and there's an anagram of my name somewhere. So he actualy hints at it and that is the kind of game he plays in general because this is just one example. I think if you will rent any Something Weird video you will likely find a quote or a scene you will recognize from one of the Eightballs.

    I wrote him about it and included a tape with Bollywood rock&roll (I am a graet collectro) but he didn't reply.



  • Birdman9Birdman9 5,417 Posts


    I wrote him about it and included a tape with Bollywood rock&roll (I am a graet collectro) but he didn't reply.




    I have always gotten the impression that he is much more stand-offish than say, someone like Peter Bagge, with regards to people/fans. Just from refrences in his work, he seems to be very uncomfortable with the idea of people relating personally to him through his work. So even though I am sure you were not remotely creepy but making contact as a peer, it does not surprise me at all that he never responded.
  • p_gunnp_gunn 2,284 Posts


    i just played this out a couple of weeks ago for the first time in years.

    wow, i need that...

    anyone who misses Clowes more juvenile stuff should read Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comix

    shit is so wrong, but so funny...

  • BeardedDBeardedD 770 Posts
    The real epitome of the shit is Clowes' favorite comic -- Doofus by Rick Altergott. Total genius, I've laughed myself to tears dozens of times.
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