Dan Clowes: He-Man Comic Artist
Comics Conventions
m: Could you describe what went on at the most recent comic book convention you went to?
d: Like they all are, these comic book conventions are definitely
tailored to, you know, Marvel and Image and DC comics, and it's
99% guys walking around dressed like the Hulk or whatever.
And then there are sort of one percent of people who are usually
older than everyone else, young adult types who actually come
over and look at our stuff. I had a table with the foremost
cartoonists of our generation, you know, the Hernandez brothers
and Jim Woodring and a bunch of people like that, and we'd sit
for hours on end without anybody looking at our stuff [laughs].
Jim Lee, (X-Men, among others) when he would walk around, he'd have a crowd of
thirty people hovering around him at all times like a swarm of
bees. So, you know, it really kind of points out that as popular
as we tend to think we are, we're not at all [laughs].
m: Yeah. Are the people in the business really like Doctor Infinity
or is that kind of a fabrication?
d: Um, well to some degree it is. But I've heard stories that are a
lot worse than the Dan Pussey story. And I've heard stories that
are very similar to it. I made up the whole thing about Dr.
Infinity having bunk beds in his studio and forcing seventeen-
year-olds to draw, and then somebody told me that there was a
publisher in the mid-eighties who hired teenage runaways to do
all the artwork, so it's not that far from the truth. It's a very
exploitative business. And they realize that young kids are just
dying to draw bad superheroes, and they'd pay to do it so they
take advantage of that.
m: Who are these older guys, the publishers, do they actually enjoy
the stuff they're making?
d: No, they think it's nonsense. They're sort of smaller time
versions of people in Hollywood who put out bad Hollywood
movies or sit-coms. You know, it's a way to make a lot of money.
And there's a big audience for it. They have no pretentions that
they're producing art. I mean they might say that in interviews
to make people think that it's something more than what it is,
but, you know, it's just a big business.
m: Sounds like it really lacks integrity.
d: Oh, completely. It's a foreign word. Every once in a while they
think comics of integrity might sell so they try to do a pseudo-Fantagraphics [company that carries Eightball] thing. There's a
thing called Vertigo by DC: It's sort of half-assed high-brow stuff,
but it's still got that DC Comics bent to it, and it just doesn't make
it. It's the sort of stuff some smart kid might write in high
school or something.
m: Do you like a lot of the stuff that Fantagraphics is putting out?
d: Oh yeah. I mean, ninety-percent of it I think is really top-notch,
you know, and the other ten-percent, I think they're being
charitable to publish.
m: Do you foresee any sort of Golden Age of comics happening
where the mainstream gets this voracious appetite for
Fantagraphics quality work?
d: No, I don't think that that will ever happen. I think there will be
no real interest in this stuff beyond a certain elite audience until
. . . I could see somewhere in the future people, you know,
historians of comics or pop culture looking back to this era and
saying this was a pretty special thing going on in comics in the
late eighties and early nineties. I think right now is an era when
there are a tremendous number of really talented cartoonists
working and most of them not making any money at it and not
selling anything, but doing work of really high quality. I think,
you know, someday there will be reprint volumes of the
Fantagraphics years. Who knows how long it will last. I hope it
will go on and flourish, but I have my doubts.
