Wood and Clowes
by Jeet Heer
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
A photo you can stare at for hours.
Daniel Clowes has never made a secret of his Wally Wood fixation. Wood’s life and career, in all its lurid glory and splendid squalor held a particular fascination for Clowes when the younger cartoonist was starting out, a fascination that continues to this day. One example worth calling attention to: compare Gil Ortiz’s amazing photograph of Wood sitting by a typewriter (found here)with the back of the cover Clowes did for Ivan Brunetti’s An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, volume 2. The large panel with the cartoonist sitting on his bed is clearly inspired by the Ortiz photo.
The entire cover, a fine example of Clowes’ recent move into fragmented storytelling, calls out for a Parille-ite close reading. Briefly, the large panel with the cartoonist on the bed is, I think, the central scene. All the major graphic elements for the front cover and the various smaller fragments are taken from stuff the cartoonist sees in his room. The whole page is about the relationship between the limited physical space a cartoonist works in (the squalid room) and the products of his imagination. This relationship shows elements of both discrepancy (the images the cartoonist draws are more romantic than the reality) as well as linkage (the graphic elements of what the cartoonist draws are taken from stuff around him). Especially interesting is the fact that the cartoon Ivan Brunetti is nothing like the actually existing Brunetti: the cartoonist only deals with the editor through the phone and has an unreal (and hyper-exaggerated) image of what the editor is like.
Clowes cover.
Labels: Daniel Clowes, Ivan Brunetti, Ken Parille, Wally Wood
I remember seeing that cover from across the room in a local chain book-shop (which will remain nameless) and recognizing Clowes’ art almost instantly…it was thrilling, for me, to see a piece of his that I hadn’t seen before; I was prepared to buy the book without knowing what it contained, it could have been Ukranian poetry for all I knew. When I found it to be this amazing anthology of “alternative” comics, many of which were new to me I was, literally, over-joyed. I’m sure I would have found my way to “Graphic Fiction Vol.2” regardless of who had drawn the cover but I think it reflects highly on Daniel Clowes that his art is so recognisable…even from 15 feet away…even with my terrible eyesight!
Never seen that photo of Wally Wood before but now you’ve pointed it out the connection seems pretty explicit! I know Wood wrote some of his own work but it seems pretty weird to me that he was photographed at a typewriter…some lovely details in the background. It’s a pretty insalubrious looking flat, sorry, apartment isn’t it? Real “myth-fodder”…
It’s probably significant that there is no computer anywhere in Clowes’ very detailed picture.
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