Dan Clowes: He-Man Comic Artist
The Noo Yawk Yeahs
m: So, how did you support yourself when you were in New York?
d: Well, when I was in art school, it was in the pre-Reagan years
and my step-father had died when I was a kid, so I got Social
Security money from that, so I just lived on that. I got like
$300/month from that, which was more than enough. And, I
actually had a scholarship for the first two years, so I didn't have
to pay tuition or anything. And after that, I took out a loan and
just borrowed money from relatives to live in New York, which I
had to pay back later. So after I got out of school I lived in New
York trying to get illustration work. I decided if I got a job or
something I would never attempt to get work, so I just conned
my parents into lending me money and I had to pay em back
later [laughs]. Cause I figured, oh after a year I'll be making all
this money as a famous illustrator. It really sucked to have to
pay with only the money I was earning from comic strips.
m: Did you find work as an illustrator or . . .
d: No, no, I never got a single job: It was harsh. By the end of
college I had this reputation as this guy who was going to walk
right out of college and be a big illustrator. All my teachers told
me, "you should have been working for a couple of years now,
you've got this marketable style. You're going to walk right into
these magazines and get work right away." And so I went out
with this buoyant confidence, made appointments with all the
magazines in New York, which is virtually every magazine in
America is out of New York. And, you know, I spent my days
going to art directors and after three months I never once got
even an inkling of work. I mean no one even ever said, "we might
call you someday." They were all kind of like, "thanks, bye." A lot
of it I would just take my portfolio and a secretary would have
me drop it off with her, and I was sure that nobody even looked
at it. Cause all those art directors hire out of agencies and stuff
like that and don't want some creep walking off the street. It's
like trying to be an actor and walking into a Hollywood studio
and saying, "I'm a great actor," you know, "here's a photo." And I didn't even want to be an
illustrator, that was just the only way I figured I could make any
money at art.
m: So even if you had gotten to where you wanted. . .
d: Yeah, even if I had gotten job offers I wouldn't have been that
happy. So that's when I actually started doing comics again. I
just did that in my spare time, and at least this is what I enjoyed
doing, and I could get some sort of solace [laughs] out of it. When
I finished it, that's when I sent it off to Fantagraphics, and that's
when I got my own comic. So it ended up working out for the
best.
