“I usually don’t talk about myself or my work with anyone other than my wife. So doing this with others is such a strange experience for me. In any case, I don’t think I’m the only person this has happened to. All the comic book artists I know are very quiet, reserved people and don’t like to talk about themselves. However, we have to promote our work in the world we live in. In my case, since I only get interviewed when I publish a new book, I only have to face it every four or five years,” admits current comics writer Daniel Clowes, who is about to launch Monica, his latest comic, with publisher Fulgencio Published in Spain by Pimentel.
“Every book is different for me. While I’m working on them, I think about doing something different. Then, when I see it finished, I realize I’ve always been writing the same book over and over again, just in different permutations. Hitchcock, one of my favorite creators, who makes the same movie over and over again with minor changes.” “Or that’s what happened to George Herriman and his Krazy Kat comics; although they were simple, they never stopped innovating.”
All of Daniel Clowes’ books are at hand on one of the shelves in his study. Just by looking at the thorns, you can review your entire life at a glance. «As I was designing Monica’s spine, I realized that this book was different from the others. Monica helped me re-examine a lot of the things I did when I was younger, when I wasn’t thinking about things the way I do now, when I was more impulsive and less thoughtful, or when I didn’t see things. from different perspectives. “In this sense, I think Monica is an interesting culmination of my career,” says the author, and continues in this new work what he started with his previous work: Patience is a comic in which he reflects on the vital issues that he started to concern him with his personal and creative maturity.
«Both Patience and Monica move in a different direction than the previous books. In Monica’s case, I didn’t even worry about the reader. In my first books, I wanted everything to make sense, to be clear, to be interesting to those who read it. But Monica was specially made for me. My only audience was myself and I didn’t care what others thought of him. At first I even considered printing a few copies of Monica and giving them to my friends. But when I started teaching and saw that it was well received, I decided to show it to the rest of the world.
Organized in short chapters, Monica is a conceptually mature work whose structure is reminiscent of Clowes’ early works published in comic book format, 16- or 32-page magazines with short stories that even market dynamics cornered. from fanzines.
«When I was making Eight Ball, I liked to draw something, finish it and start doing the next one. Partly it was about doing different things, partly because I didn’t have many ideas that would go further or allow for further development. I have longer ideas right now. I actually have both: ideas that are too short or ideas that need too much room to develop. Monica’s chapter structure allowed for a comic book format, but my editor would never agree to that because the way things work now doesn’t allow it. In any case, I’m not ruling out a limited edition comic coming out at some point in time.
Despite these differences between Monica and the rest of his work, Daniel Clowes’ new graphic novel shares common elements with his other books. «I find it very difficult to create likable or likable young male characters. After thinking for a while, Clowes dared to answer and asks, “I don’t know what the reason is.” “Maybe it’s because I knew so many insufferable teenagers in my youth, but it might also be because the men of my childhood held no mystery to me. But the women in my life were more complex, they had secrets, their emotions were harder to understand.
a kind of friendship
Born in Chicago in 1961, Daniel Clowes became interested in comics by reading EC publishing house’s comic books, legendary publications such as Mad Magazine, Superman’s adventures and the first Marvel comics. In his youth, he met underground comics writers such as Robert Crumb and Clay Wilson, and shortly before turning professional in the field, he witnessed the new golden age that Art Spiegelman’s Raw magazine brought to comics.
«I still read comics. A lot of the writers I love are obvious, like Chris Ware or the Hernandez Brothers, but I’m also interested in new, super talented people who are doing really good things. For example, Simon Hanselmann, who is a funny writer and a really great artist. In any case, I realize that fewer and fewer people are reading comics,” Clowes explains.
«There are now apps that allow you to read comics on your mobile phone or computer, but these tend to be very flat and simple offerings artistically and narratively. That’s why I work for them, even though I know the number of people who read comics is decreasing. For those who sit in a room with a book, without headphones or video or anything like that, because what I’m looking for is to convey my own experiences to others. “The experience of one person talking to another and establishing a kind of friendship between themselves,” explains Clowes, who thinks narrative resources such as open endings allow him to establish a closer relationship of trust with the reader.
“I don’t like completely closed endings, I prefer the ones where you have to make the ending. Actually, what I like most is that the reader cannot stop reading the book, he has to open the book from the beginning and read it again to understand what happened. Let the reader search for what I wanted to do last. This way he can match his understanding and have a unique ending.