I was thinking about Daniel Clowes recently because I just read American Parano (they had a copy at the local library!). It was good, and it reminded me a lot of Clowes, both the drawing style and also the characters and theme and flow. I can only assume that the authors (Hervé Bourhis and Lucas Varela) had that influence.

And, indeed, some googling reveals this from Bourhis, listing his influences: “Franquin, Goscinny, Daniel Clowes, Gotlib, Blutch, Bretecher, Chaland, Hergé, Goossens, Kirby . . .” That link includes an image of a BD cover of a poseur wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt: it’s a very Clowesey look and attitude. Also this from an article about Varela:

Varela a ce trait clair qui rappelle certains auteurs indés américains, comme Daniel Clowes ou Chris Ware. C’est millimétré, ultra-efficace et d’un foisonnement de détails hallucinant. Cette précision lui permet d’être à l’aise dans toutes les thématiques, de les tenir à distance et de donner un caractère inquiétant et détaché à ses fantaisies.

I then happened to come across this interview by Françoise Mouly of the modern cartoonist, discussing his recent book, Monica. Clowes has done a lot of interviews over the years, and I like how open he is. Rather than hiding behind a my-art-speaks-for-itself pose, he talks a lot about his sources and motivations. This interview is particularly interesting in that it includes discussion of the particular visual ideas that Clowes cites as inspirations for his book, with lots of side-by-side comparisons of images, with sources including:
– Life Magazine from 1955
– The cover of an EC war comic book from 1952
– A page from a cop comic from 1962
– An EC horror comic from 1953
– A Hogarth panel from 1742
– A New Yorker cartoon from 1977
– A grotesque Bible comic from 1968
– Photos of 1970s character actors William Conrad, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Deacon, and Michael J. Pollard, along with panels from Monica with faces that look just like those people.

Regarding this last bit, Clowes said:

Like anybody my age, I watched a lot of TV as a kid. Kids no longer have the same shared universe of actors’ faces that many people my age would recognize—people like Yaphet Kotto. I realized at a certain point that, in my comics, I basically have a small Hollywood studio from the sixties, and I use them as archetypes. I think of the woman who plays Monica as my Liv Ullmann; she also “plays” Rebecca in “Ghost World” and “Patience.”

Richard Deacon is one of my favorite character actors. Deacon always played, like, the fussy, angry neighbor who complains about there being too much noise. He’s one of those guys who won’t have a big part in a movie (he plays a neighbor in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” for example), but he will do anything. He’ll be in the smallest sitcom, where he just has one line. I love that type. And I love that somebody like Hitchcock thinks, We need a fussy neighbor—how about Richard Deacon?

I wanted to cast my comics with the right actors for each part. I think of my characters as actors—that’s what I’m trying to channel. I imagine myself being them, acting as I write. In terms of dialogue: at a certain point, I’ve thought about it so much that it almost feels like improv between the actors. I usually write the dialogue very quickly. That’s the only way I know how to make it come alive.

That’s really interesting!

And, in case you’re a few decades younger than me or not from the United States or just didn’t watch a lot of TV when you were growing up, William Conrad played Cannon, Yaphet Kotto was in Blue Collar, Richard Deacon played Mel Cooley in the Dick Van Dyke Show, and Michael J. Pollard’s face seems vaguely familiar to me but I can’t remember anything he was in.

The whole interview is worth reading. I love learning about sources and development of art, partly because it moves us away from the artist-as-hero narrative. Ultimately it makes Clowes more, not less, interesting, to see his own personal swipe file.