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Friday, Nov 6, 2009
With a new graphic novel out and a movie on the way, the author of "David Boring," "Ghost World" and "Eightball" talks about writing stories, making movies and what it's like being him.
Dec 5, 2000 | Daniel Clowes opens the door to his Berkeley, Calif., house, and the image of him standing there -- as if in wary anticipation of some unforeseen but likely horror -- recalls at least half a dozen of his comic book characters in action. Clowes himself is ethereal in a way that makes you wonder if his feet are actually touching the ground. He resembles one of his creations, with their neatly pressed, buttoned-down clothes and tentative, slightly anxious eyebrows hovering in mid-forehead. Framed by the straight lines of the doorway, it's almost as if he has drawn himself -- just before finding Tina, the potato-headed mutant from his first serialized story, "Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron," naked and sobbing on the steps.
Clowes -- whom fellow cartoonist Chris Ware calls "easily the best cartoonist in America" -- is probably most famous for his original comic book series "Eightball." "Eightball" has been variously described as a "cult," an "alternative" and an "underground" comic -- meaning that Clowes doesn't draw mutants, aliens or men in tights. Or rather, when he does, his mutants are lonely teenagers working as waitresses at roadside diners, his aliens -- sports fans, New Agers, stockbrokers, idealists -- are terrifyingly terrestrial and his spandex-clad crime fighters pop up primarily in the ardent fantasies of Young Dan Pussey (pronounced, of course, "Poo-say"), superhero comic book "penciller" and recurring "Eightball" underdog turned insufferable success.
Success spoiled Dan Pussey, but it definitely hasn't spoiled Dan Clowes. If Clowes is a cynic, then a cynic is a disappointed romantic who takes the world very, very personally. Twice a year for the past 11, "Eightball" has mercilessly taken on middle-class conformity, artistic pretension, teen angst, cartoonists, hipsters, the horrors of adulthood, proselytizing Christians, sports fans, sexual banality and desperation, advertising, consumerism, the entertainment industry and, perhaps most consistently, Clowes himself -- in haunting, hilarious and beautifully rendered stories of every length. While his drawings are darkly beautiful and eerily precise, typically the characters of "Eightball" fall somewhere between plain and repulsive. "My mom would always say, 'Why are your people so ugly?'" laughs Clowes, whose take on his characters has softened somewhat over the years. The sharp, scathingly misanthropic energy of the early-'90s "Eightball" has mellowed into a moodier, more melancholy empathy without losing any of its satirical bite.
"Somehow," says colleague Ware (whose graphic novel "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth" was recently published), "he's able to blend satire and sympathy, two sensibilities which are generally mutually exclusive."
Now on issue No. 21, "Eightball" is one of Fantagraphics' bestselling titles (along with Ware's astonishing, hyperelaborate "Acme"). In his 15 years as a professional cartoonist, Clowes has won numerous Harvey Awards (including ones for best writer, best continuing series and best single issue); published seven graphic novels, among them the recent "David Boring"; and written the screenplay for the upcoming Terry Zwigoff-directed feature film "Ghost World" -- which is being produced by John Malkovich and will star Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi -- from a story first serialized in "Eightball" and later published as a graphic novel of the same name.
Clowes' house is calm, quiet and crammed with meticulously arranged and organized stuff that makes you want to sit on the floor immediately and start rummaging through it. His office, in particular, is an art director's dream. Books line the wall-to-wall shelves, and freshly drawn panels rest on a wooden drafting table, patiently awaiting ink. Clowes and his wife, Erika, whom he met on a small-scale California signing tour in 1992 ("I had just gone through a depressing separation from my first wife, and was trying to escape from the grim horribleness of Chicago; a beautiful young woman in Berkeley asked me to sign her underwear, and the rest is history"), will soon vacate the house for a larger one not far away. When I remark on the enviable order of the place, Clowes tells me it is neater than usual because he's expecting movers, who will be arriving soon to give him an estimate.
"Actually, they're packers," he amends. "Did you know that those are separate jobs? I didn't know until a good friend of mine turned out to be a packer."
Packer or mover, it's hard to imagine either would require a customer's folders to be labeled in artful, award-winning lettering and arranged by date. Then again, the kind of movers Clowes would create just might. And then they might tie him up, carve a supermarket logo into his heel and make rare Asiatic sea crustaceans come out of their eyes. When I point this out, Clowes admits to his penchant for structure. "I whipped my wife into shape," he says. "She got tired of having me ask, 'Why is this not in alphabetical order?'"
