Dan Clowes: He-Man Comic Artist
Punk Influences
m: Do you think being part of that scene influenced you a lot as far
as your art?
d: Oh yeah, sure, because one of the things about the scene was that
it gave people the freedom to be whatever they wanted to be.
You didn't have to feel guilty for liking stuff like comic books. I
mean, when I was growing up, I went through this kind of hoity-
toity private school where if you even brought up something like
comic strips, it was just laughed out of the room, and then all the
sudden I had this attitude like "ey, fuck you, I can do comic strips
if I want, comic strips are awesome!" It's kind of like, you know,
I was into all this total junk culture at the time, just bad rock and
roll from the sixties and all this crap, and then all the sudden I
was allowed to like this stuff, and it was really cool, so yeah it
was great. It was a very freeing experience for me because
[before] I felt like there was nobody else who shared my
aesthetics and that they were really stupid. And all the sudden I
was meeting all these interesting people who were into the same
kind of stuff.
