Dan Clowes: He-Man Comic Artist
Lloyd Llewellyn
m: That's where Lloyd Llewellyn started.
d: Yeah, I'd never even thought of, I mean, I made up the character
of Lloyd Llewellyn as a kid but I hadn't really thought of a look
for him. The first panel I just made up the way he looked, I
didn't put any thought into it at all. . . .
m: So how would you describe that look, kind of a fifties...
d: Uh yeah, just this kind of fifties pastiche kind of thing. I was
kind of really into all these fifties gag cartoons at the time and I
thought, you know, I was just doing it for my own amusement. I
had no intention of it ever being printed. And so when I finished
it everyone said, "Oh you should send this off to some publisher
or something" and I thought, "Who, though, Marvel," you know,
what am I supposed to. . . .And so I thought, oh there's Love and
Rockets, which is a cool magazine, I'll send it to these guys. And
then I found out they do The Comics Journal and I thought, oh
well maybe they'll review it or they'll send me some feedback or
something. And then like a week later I get a call from Gary
Groth saying, "we want you to do your own book and. . ."
m: Oh wow.
d: Yeah, so it was, like, unexpected. I was not ready for that at all,
so I was completely overjoyed. I thought, oh I'm going to make
all this money doing this comic book. I had no idea what a dismal
world underground comics was [laughs].
