Seth and Daniel Clowes had a vision.

A reading vision. Instead of giving a slide show, or hustling to sell their books, they would have a chat. One they might have if running into each other back at the hotel after a convention— though, as Daniel noted, this probably wouldn’t happen in front of 400+ staring fans.
 

Housing Works Bookstore was quite the place to be Tuesday night, with a packed house of rapt fans. Some were even sketching the graphic novelists as they spoke (meta!). The setup resulted in a fascinating and hilarious discussion about Seth and Daniel’s humble beginnings, current lifestyles and future plans.

Back in the day (let’s say the eighties), the path from fan to pro was a huge leap. Both reminisced about seeing themselves in print for the first time. Seth thought his work looked “bad” (Daniel noted: “You already had the requisite self-loathing!”). And Daniel, who illustrated a feature in Cracked called “Aren’t you Nervous, When?”, remembered buying 10 copies before realizing “none of the girls I know should see this.”

Both loathed superhero comics. Daniel speculated that this was partly because their livelihood was tied up in the bigger comic books, and that being “the lowliest barnacle on the side of these companies” caused some shame. But it wasn’t all bad: “I guess it was kinda fun too, being part of something inaccessible. We were the true underground—literally in the basements of stores, getting water damage.”

Neither had any idea of their future acclaim. Daniel recalled living month-to-month, struggling but happy because he was doing what he wanted to do (“Though it was cheaper in the eighties—now I’d be a male prostitute”). Seth imagined himself mainly illustrating. At that point in time, unless you were doing something like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles spinoff, you probably weren’t in it for the money.

Both agreed that comics felt over in the nineties, but then resurged around the time of the Crumb film in the 90’s. Fifteen years hence, it’s become a legitimate art form. Though maybe not yet mainstream. Daniel put it this way: “I’ve never met a single person in my life who’s heard of anything I’ve ever done.” (Lucky for us, this made him remember a situation in which a surly Canadian border guard forced him to draw something to prove he was a cartoonist. Figuring the guy would taser him if he drew an Eightball character, Daniel instead drew…a puppy.)

Daniel’s newest book, The Death Ray, stems from a childhood dream of being able to make people disappear. He considered the power to cause “actual absence” terrifying. Getting older, the concept seemed way too obvious and embarrassing, so he let it go. But then, as an adult, he found himself discussing the worst comic idea ever: to feature an earnest, non-ironic superhero. Game on.

Seth’s most recent work, The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, features both real and fictional Canadian cartoonists. Daniel asked Seth if he’d ever met any of them, and Seth spoke of looking up one elderly fellow in a nursing home. Seth visited him, prepared with eighty questions, before realizing the man was no longer lucid. In the elevator someone had hung some of the man’s sketches, and Seth took one, figuring the rest would go into the garbage as soon as he’d passed. (Daniel: “So theft is preserving the art form. If you ever get the chance to steal anything of Seth’s…”)

Daniel remembered his semi-traumatic and all-too-brief meeting with Steve Ditko, the maker of Spiderman. Not realizing the man was “a crazy recluse,” Daniel was delighted to see his name in the phone book (under “Artists”). He went to the address, which was in the middle of “Taxi-Driver era” Times Square and on top of a peep show. A friendly doorman who’d never met the man (again, recluse) grabbed Daniel and took him up in the elevator. After a gruff “What do youse want?”, Steve slammed the door in their faces.

Daniel still considers him a hero: “He never embarrassed himself…he never teamed up with Family Guy.”

The two shied away from discussing “p-books” (a term Daniel had recently heard for physical books) vs. digital publishing— “We’re scared,” Daniel explained. Both stick to their old-school methods, which they’ve been using for decades.

Andy why not?  “It’s a simple bag of tricks,” Seth said. “to provoke such profound feelings with such simple tools.” He wants his work to look like he was in control, and not the computer.

Daniel added another plus for pen-and-paper: “That way we’ll have something to put on the elevator walls.”