Dan Clowes: He-Man Comic Artist
Ghost World
m: Let's talk about Ghost World a little bit. Um, one of the things
that strikes me about it as different about it than Velvet Glove is
just the way the narrative is cast. It's not as episodic, it's a lot
more linear. What were you going for there, were you just more
interested in the narrative?
d: With The Velvet Glove, you had to read all the episodes to have
any clue as to what was going on, and I really didn't like that at
around issue seven or eight, that some new fan was picking this
up and had to skip the first fifteen pages because they didn't
have a clue what it was about. So I wanted to create these
stories that were sort of self-inclusive, so somebody could just
pick it up and they could just read GhostWorld and figure that
was the first time it had ever appeared, and these characters
were just being introduced for the first time. They'd make some
sort of sense out of it and then they'd find all these other stories
and they might add up to a larger story as a whole, but they
weren't really related exactly, they just had some sort of
thematic similarities.
Mostly I was just interested in creating characters
'cause in all
my other work the characters are just sort of archetypes and
they're really broad characters. Even inVelvet Glove, the
characters are, you know, not very firmly etched, they're just
sort of ciphers based on what they symbolize pretty much. I
spent a lot of time with girls of that age of [characters Enid's and
Elizabeth's] type, and I thought I had a good flair for what they
were interested in and the way they talked. And I didn't see
anybody else really dealing with that, the way girls really are
sort of on their own. The whole idea just appealed to me that
the two characters are sort of bound together, but each sort of
represents part of my own personality, they sort
of represent this entire psyche split into two parts. I was just
kind of dealing with that and just basically trying to create
characters that would be appealing -- to me anyway, I don't
know if to anyone else.
m: Yeah, well I can say to me too. But that's interesting to me that,
well, one that you take a female perspective on this. . .
d: That was sort of what it was. That I wanted to see if I could
learn what it is to be female by writing these characters, which
so far I have to some degree. And there are some areas that I
have to ask my girlfriend, "What's this mean when this
happens?"
m: The color of Ghost World, makes it look like everything is kind
of bathed in a TV glow. What's the purpose behind that?
d: It was actually kind of a happy accident. First I did it intending
it to be grey tones, and my publisher said, you know we're
printing this book in colors so we could do it in color tones. And
at first I thought, no, but then I started looking at these old
Mexican comic books I had that are all printed in just two tones,
and this other blue tone had this really kind of other-worldly
feel to it. I mean we don't really see the world in a blue light
very often. I mean, as you say, it's like a TV glow sort of seen
through a window you're driving by in the suburbs at night or
something. It's a really kind of eerie, ghostly thing, so I figured
I'd give it a shot, and I was so happy with the way it printed.
