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- This clip from an unreleased documentary calledA Boy Named Charlie Brownhas Schulz explaining why Charlie Brown suffers. God, I love to hear Sparky's voice.


Daniel Clowes
Drawn & Quarterly

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I'm actually trying to entertain people, believe it or not.This seems sort of like a transitional phase in your career, where you’re gradually shifting focus from lost and lonely teenagers to grumpy, seemingly sociopathic middle-aged men. This comic has both.
Drawing those few pages with the angry, middle-aged Andy definitely led to Wilson and Mr. Wonderful. My characters are never intended to be symbols, but at a certain point it became clear that America was no longer a brash, vulgar teenager, but edging much closer to an angry, fading, hopeless, delusional, middle-aged man.This comic also includes some similarities to Ghost World. Two teenage friends grow apart over the course of the story, and the book starts with the same duo-tone soft blue spot coloring of Ghost World. Are both of these comics referencing a specific friendship you had? Or possibly several? Or maybe some romantic relationships?
I had many friendships when I was younger than either Andy or Enid in which I was sort of the innocent counterpart to a more charismatic, devious kid. And I was always having to grapple with my own questionable morality. The Eddie Haskell-Wally Cleaver dyad holds a lot of resonance for me.
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About the fireworks—it is supposed to be the 4th of July. I guess I'm just used to northern California where it's always cold after dark.Do you see yourself as a bad person? Are you just interested in the ways that people justify their selfish actions and personality flaws to themselves?
I think it's hopelessly reductive to think in terms of good or bad in regard to human nature. Whenever I hear of someone doing something particularly strange or awful I like to try to imagine what it would take for me to do the same.

My favorite is Curt Swan as inked by George Klein. These seem to me to be the least stylistically-inflected comics of all time. It’s as though they're standardized pictographic transcriptions of reality.

My resolution at age 50 is to try to be proud of what I've done and not fixate so much on the mistakes and inadequacies. So I will say I like both the book and poor Andy.
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Psycho will never be collected if I can help it.The Cracked stuff will probably find its way into a book at some point, but unfortunately most of the originals were destroyed during the anthrax scare after 9/11. The Cracked archive was owned by the Globe, a tabloid in Florida. They were one of the targets of the guy who mailed envelopes of anthrax, so they burned everything in the building, including many Stosh Gillespie pages.How much do you think about the reader and specific feelings you want to impart to them?
I'm absolutely trying at all times to transmit very specific emotions, but I can't expect more than a tiny handful of readers to pick up on them.Did you really shave off the stash? If so, the world is a lesser place.I did shave off the moustache and I cut my hair as well. A girl tricked me, but I don't regret the change. The handlebar moustache has turned into a trend popularized mostly by people I don't relate to and I no longer enjoyed being recognized. Thanks for reading these questions.
Thanks for writing them.Go buy all of Dan's comics from Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, and Pantheon or you aren't a true appreciator of comics. Either that or you are poor.
