Lets talk about Daniel Clowes!

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Because: I got my copies of 'David Boring' and 'Like A Velvet Glove...' back off Archel the other day. And I re-read Boring, a slow depressed hour, and I was just blown away by how good it was. In a quiet way, sure, but, I mean, staggered.

(something that impressed me, to start off (SPOILER): all the tiny parodies of interpretation (the "movie... star" puzzle scraps, the comic pieces, him not being able to do the cryptic crossword), the way they work into the way 'Boring' can't be resolved either. I rate how he weaves in all this wanky clever stuff while still seeming to write like an author-as-filter, like he's just splurging his demons onto paper. That's class, that is).

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Monday, 28 June 2004 14:27 (twenty-one years ago)

i love him. he's one of my top 5 favorite comic artists (completing my predictable hipster canon of phoebe gloeckner, debbie dreschler, and los bros hernandez). i've always been impressed by his intense attention to detail and by how well he manages to balance a very mannered visual style with a sense of real feeling. others working in a similar vein (tomine springs first to mind) seem forced in comparison.

― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 28 June 2004 15:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Heh, now I wish I'd re-read them properly again before giving them back :)

Great stuff though, detailed without being fussy, which is hard to pull off I imagine.

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 28 June 2004 15:08 (twenty-one years ago)

anyone go to the MoCCA festival in New York?
Clowes is definitely awesome, but i'm always surprised at how little attention he gets now (i mean, in the immediate now). was the movie too much? is he dead?

― Anne Ishii (ill iterate), Monday, 28 June 2004 16:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha, I have been among the more vociferous opponents of the splinter boards, but I don't know what to make of discussing comics here!

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 28 June 2004 17:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I went to the Mocca Festival. It was pretty good. No big surprises and lot of crap. Clowes is pretty great but I have to disagree with the opinion that Tomine is forced. I can see why he may seem so but I think that may be a function of his visual style as of his writing/narrative pacing. I think I even like him more because I think he's the better artist.

― Moti Bahat, Monday, 28 June 2004 19:48 (twenty-one years ago)

"Comics"? Surely you mean "graphic novels," Martin!

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Monday, 28 June 2004 21:53 (twenty-one years ago)

I reckon he writes on two completely plausible and equally valid and both-totally-enjoyable-and-awesome levels in a way I can't think of anyone else really doing in the same way, not in comics but in all literature. Keats, maybe. Possibly I said this earlier.

Is liking Clowes and Ware and Tomin etc sorta the radiohead/oasis of comics? I feel not, but I can't really put my finger on why.

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 00:03 (twenty-one years ago)

(Wow, I come across sorta wankerish on this thread, ugh. (haha, "on this thread")).

Lauren, tell me about the other people in yr canon! I dunno anything about all this.

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

phoebe gloeckner does pretty explicitly autobiographical work about her adolescence in '70s san francisco. her most recent book is diary of a teenage girl, which combines typewritten journal extracts with lots of illustration. she has one other book, which also contains some really stunning anatomical drawings (she's a medical illustrator by profession). there's a thread on ile on diary, which you may want to look up. like clowes, she's an astounding observer with almost scary attention to detail.
the hernandez brothers are the creators of the love and rockets series, as well as various splinter strips. i don't even know where to start with them... if you do a google search then you'll turn up loads of information. at this point, l&r has been anthologized into a long series of proper books.
debbie dreschler also does a sort of autobiographical teenage girl thing, but set in the '60s midwest. again, very keenly realized. the best starting point for her is, summer of love, the short collection that compiles her five volume comic (nowhere).
a few other well-known non-mainstream artists that i like: julie doucet, lynda barry, joe matt, and ariel schrag (she can be VERY twee, though).

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 00:20 (twenty-one years ago)

No, I mean comics.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 18:53 (twenty-one years ago)

i like "art school confidential"

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 19:29 (twenty-one years ago)

asc rules. i'm starting to "laugh out loud" thinking about it.

g!, didn't you write a review of diary of a teenage girl?

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:19 (twenty-one years ago)

"David Boring" RoXoR. I particularly liked the middle section on the island, where they thought they were the only survivors of some mysterious plague that had wiped out the world's population.

In general, I love how flat and emotionally detached people are in Dan Clowes stories. But I also like the funny stuff, like "Needle dick - he fucks bugs" (or whatever it was called).

Isn't there a new issue of "Eightball" out soon?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:22 (twenty-one years ago)

lauren: yes, but it was lost in the nethernet limbospace. it was linked from this ILE thread:

The Diary of a Teenage Girl - Phoebe Gloeckner

phoebe g. read it and sent me an email and we had a brief email conversation about local stuff, she was very funny.

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

his funny stuff is priceless: i hate/love you deeply, zubrick and pogeybait, art school confidential, the obsessive 60s dude, peace bear and hippy pants, and on and on. perhaps this year i'll get around to making my "sensual santa" christmas cards.

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:47 (twenty-one years ago)

he works so slowly these days (or, publishes slowly, anyway), it's frustrating to be a fan of his work.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:04 (twenty-one years ago)

he's one of my top 5 favorite comic artists (completing my predictable hipster canon of phoebe gloeckner, debbie dreschler, and los bros hernandez).

hey, lauren, you have the same top 5 as me! (except i'd stick charles schulz in there somewhere)

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 20:41 (twenty-one years ago)

david boring was good but it seemed a bit, um, gimmicky compared to clowes's best work, which i think = ghost world, as obvious a choice as it is. enid and becky might be my favorite characters in all of comics. i liked the film at the time but looking back i don't think it really came close to capturing everything special and eerie and sad about the comic.

everything you say about phoebe gloeckner = completely OTM, she's great. i've been meaning to read some julie doucet but i can't seem to find any of her stuff.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 20:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait wait, let's go back to "why the hell isn't this on I Love Comics?"

Lauren: has Peter Bagge fallen out of the Hipster Canon?

Is liking Clowes and Ware and Tomin etc sorta the radiohead/oasis of comics? I feel not, but I can't really put my finger on why.

Er, because most people who like music have heard of Radiohead & Oasis?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 23:49 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm sure bagge is still well up there. i just never got that into him, so i'm leaving him out of my list. it's a good point, though - he's totally one of the indie heavyweights.

― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 1 July 2004 00:35 (twenty-one years ago)

oh! i forgot to include lynda barry in my list. everyone drop what you're doing and go read some lynda barry, for serious.

― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 1 July 2004 00:38 (twenty-one years ago)

For those of you keeping score at home (or, more accurately in this case, not), there's an (allegedly) wonderful I Love Comics satellite as well.

― Picard Maneuver (Leee), Thursday, 1 July 2004 05:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait wait, let's go back to "why the hell isn't this on I Love Comics?"

probably because 95% of the threads started there are about mainstream superhero comics.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 1 July 2004 10:32 (twenty-one years ago)

And 99% of threads started here are about books.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 1 July 2004 11:11 (twenty-one years ago)

well, comics ARE books, technically.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 1 July 2004 11:27 (twenty-one years ago)

This makes me think of how I used to read guitar magazines as a teen (I know) and there was this guy who wrote in a letter and was like, "Why do you guys talk about basses and have bass tablature in your magazine, it's called GUITAR World," and the editor's response was something like "It's called a bass GUITAR" and nothing else. That was awesome.
Comic BOOK. Graphic NOVEL.

― St. Nicholas (Nick A.), Thursday, 1 July 2004 13:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I read Blankets by Craig Thompson recently. That was very good.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 1 July 2004 13:46 (twenty-one years ago)

i've been meaning to read some julie doucet but i can't seem to find any of her stuff.

i like her a lot for the most part, although she gets a bit self-consciously arty-wacky-surreal sometimes in a way that irritates me. she's got a very intense visual style that i admire, though.

― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 1 July 2004 13:57 (twenty-one years ago)

velvet glove = a riff on lot 49, right?

― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 1 July 2004 14:57 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm gonna start an I Love Graphic Novels board.

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 1 July 2004 15:57 (twenty-one years ago)

;-D

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 1 July 2004 15:57 (twenty-one years ago)

probably because 95% of the threads started there are about mainstream superhero comics.

Post it and indie will come.

― Picard Maneuver (Leee), Thursday, 1 July 2004 21:32 (twenty-one years ago)

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