Please check out our tumblr: http://danielclowesreader.tumblr.com/
It features unusual images, little-known fun facts, and more about Clowes, as well as posts on the forthcoming collection The Daniel Clowes Reader, an anthology of his comics, interviews, and essays about his work.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
The Daniel Clowes Reader is on tumblr.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Kim Thompson
In the early 2000s, the now-defunct Comics Journal message board was a rough and tumble corner of the Internet. While many smart folks regularly posted there, it was often overrun by a few angry and misguided know-it-alls, who knew very little yet believed deeply in their pronouncements on comics and the world.
Enter Kim Thompson.
Kim was the rock-solid antithesis of these windbags. He was smart: he could systematically dismantle their arguments without breaking a sweat. He was knowledgeable: he spent his whole life immersed in American and European comics, possessing an encyclopedic knowledge far beyond that of his hapless interlocutors. He had real-world experience: when discussing comics and publishing, he knew what he was talking about, with years on the front lines, editing, printing, distributing, marketing, and selling comics.
They never had a chance.
It was always a pleasure to dial up the message board and watch Kim go to work. While his combatants likely thought of these exchanges as self-validating contests of masculine wills, Kim had a much broader, more vital agenda (though I’m sure he had fun demolishing stooges). He was setting all of the message board’s readers straight, taking all of us to school. He was a strong voice of intelligence, experience, and information.
I was in awe of Kim’s thick skin and tenacity. Many times I started typing a reply to a post, only to delete it. I didn’t want to get into an endless scrap with some dude who likely had more perseverance than I did. Then, maybe an hour or two after backing out of posting, I’d check the board to find that Kim had said what I wanted to say and more — all of it expressed with a force and clarity I never could have mustered. On a few occasions, I was one of Kim’s targets. But what he had to say, even when I disagreed with him, was always worth considering.
Think about that: How many people have you known whose comments are always worth considering? That’s right. Not many.
In these ways, Kim was more than a publisher or an editor: he was an educator. North America, and the world really, learned about comics and art through his message board posts, the anthologies and comics he edited and/or translated, the cartoonists he and Gary Groth published, and his writings, which I always wished there were more of.
Though I only met Kim a few times and exchanged a few emails with him, from reading so much of his writing I think I have a pretty good idea about what made him tick. Kim was never shy about revealing his personal investments in his writing. He meant what he said, and said what he believed without hesitation or deception.
This is Kim Thompson as I knew him: extremely smart, ferociously (and thoughtfully) argumentative, deeply knowledgeable and experienced, and a tireless advocate for comics when the medium so desperately needed him.
[Above image: back cover detail from Daniel Clowes's Eightball #18, 1997]
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Comic Close Reading at The Comics Journal.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Saturday, December 8, 2012
"Slow Comics" Movement
Because "The world don't move to the beat of just one drum."
Speaking of which, the Diamond distribution monolith will not be carrying Ticket Stub, so if you are interested in obtaining a copy you will have to take a more proactive approach, either by ordering it from the Yam Books website or through one of these fine establishments, with likely a few more to come:
Family, Los Angeles, CA
Secret Headquarters, Los Angeles, CA
Mission Comics, San Francisco, CA
Quimby's, Chicago, IL
Comix Revolution, Evanston, IL
Atomic Books, Baltimore, MD
Big Brain Comics, Minneapolis, MN
Desert Island, Brooklyn, NY
Forbidden Planet, New York, NY
Jim Hanley's, New York, NY
Reading Frenzy, Portland, OR
Floating World, Portland, OR
Copacetic Comics, Pittsburgh, PA
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Charles Burns's The Hive, Romance Comics, History, The Kiss, The All-Black Panel, Etc . . .
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Stubs, Post-Its, Pogs...
Rina Ayuyang has a recap soundly squared away here. Hopefully all those luminaries won't be disappointed when they actually read my book. I look horrible in the pictures.
Thank you to the organizers of BCGF for considering me a guest and to all the folks who stopped by the Yam Books table to say hello. Thanks to Lark and Robyn for congeniality.
I was surprised to meet so many non-cartoonists who had read my book and liked it. One fellow told me he found it in a public library in the children's section--whoops.
The panel I was on was more crowded than I expected, but I felt it went okay. I afterward read a blog post that said I was inarticulate. I felt bad for Anouk Ricard who was thinking fluent French and speaking limited English. (Check out this clip of her characters on YouTube; it is cool.) Tom Spurgeon did a great job of trying to keep the nebulous topic balanced.
Tuesday I was back at my cubicle at work trying to stay awake.
Biggest thank you goes to Rina for publishing Ticket Stub and holding down the tables for the "transcontinental tour." I hope Yam's future is bright and also that she gets back to drawing comics! I likely won't be traveling like this again for a while.
Next up is the Giant Robot annual Post-It show, washed out scan above.
Still drawing laborious comics too...
Monday, October 22, 2012
Daniel Clowes Bibliography Updated
After too long, I have updated the Dan Clowes bibliography:
http://core.ecu.edu/ENGL/parillek/dcupdate.htm
If anything is missing,
please let me know at
kparille -- follow this with the
at sign -- then add
hotmail -- then add the
.com. Or put it in a comment below . . .
Saturday, October 6, 2012
A Salute to Game Show Podiums
On October 13 and 14, cartoonist/publisher Rina Ayuyang and I will be at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco.
Then on November 10, we're at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. I should also have two new pages in the next issue of Smoke Signal there.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
New "Formalist" Close Reading up at The Comics Journal
Grid at TCJ: Construction Manual * John Hankiewicz’s “The Kimball House.”
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Cover From Another Brother
I inexplicably got asked to do a DVD cover--was it last year?--but after watching the movie I thought, "Why me? My artwork doesn't seem to match the tone of this film at all." But I turned it in, and inevitably the idea became to divide up my drawings and put them somewhere in the booklet instead. My vanity was hackled, so here it lies in the storage locker:
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Daniel Clowes in New York Times
The Times has a cover feature on the cartoonist in the April 1 Arts & Leisure section:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/arts/design/daniel-clowess-retrospective-at-the-oakland-museum.html?hpw
Thursday, March 22, 2012
I'm sure that you all have been checking out boingboing.net everyday, looking at the Clowes oddities and entering the contest to win a copy of The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist signed by Mr. Clowes. Here's another oddity, an OK Soda "cold vault static cling" from 1994. These were used in the large coolers that hold soda in convenience stores. I drank some OK back in the '90s.
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