2023-11-08 09:57:05
‘Monica’ (Fulgencio Pimentel / ‘Mònica’, Editorial Finestres) is an undeniable masterpiece of comics in general and postmodern comics in particular. It has numerous cultural references and to the previous work and life of the author, as well as a fragmentary structure and more layers of reading, as they say now, than a mountaineer wears technical clothing in January. It’s a feast, come on, for comic criticism, so popular in graphic novel times. Luckily the book stands on its own and provides visual and narrative pleasure, even in its most enigmatic episodes, without needing to be gutted. At the same time, he transmits love for the profession of comic artist. So, without further ado, with you, Daniel Clowes (1961) on video conference from his studio in Oakland.
The time that an artist dedicates to a work has no importance or should not have any importance for the reader. But for you, dedicating seven years to ‘Monica’, did it generate anxiety or obsession?
No. I spent a lot of time deciding what I was going to draw. At first I had a lot of ideas and figuring out how to fit them together into a coherent way wasn’t particularly fun. But, once I had everything clear, I have never enjoyed my job so much. I think the reason I dedicated seven years to ‘Monica’ is because I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to continue because I was having a blast, so I added more and more details and tried things that weren’t essential. The day I finished the album I didn’t feel triumphant, but sad. It was like sending a child to college.
The counterculture of the 1960s is often presented as a utopian dream. At most, it is added that it became a nightmare from a certain point onwards. You only reflect the nightmarish side. Because?
I hope that just from the aesthetic of ‘Monica’ and some of the things I’ve drawn in my career you can see that I really appreciate the artistic freedom and ’60s look. But being a little kid caught in the middle of it all Those people trying to create a new world were terrifying. There was no safety for a child, it was chaotic. I wanted to capture that feeling more than make a historical assessment of that era.
I definitely thought a lot about the structure of ‘Desert Centaurs’
There is a long and very important stream of novels and films about the search for a person. Just three examples: ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad, ‘Desert Centaurs’ by John Ford and ‘Until I Find You’ by John Irving. Did you keep that cultural tradition in mind while making ‘Monica’?
I definitely thought a lot about ‘Desert Centaurs’. In its structure. There is a very clear initial event and a very clear final event, when they end up finding Natalie Wood. But the film has an episodic structure that allows you to take detours as long as you’re clear about where everything is going to end. We all know that one way or another they are going to end up finding it and that allows the story to progress in an unusual way. It’s a bit like a jazz composition in that you have a beginning and an end and in between a vague structure during which you can go in different directions as long as you more or less follow the path. Stories about searching for a missing person have always interested me and I think it is because my childhood is so difficult for me to understand that I have always been searching for their meaning. I have never been sure of the real events of my childhood. Nobody wanted to talk about them. So I’ve always been chasing that lost moment in my life that would explain everything.
To what extent is ‘Monica’ an autobiographical work?
From an emotional point of view, through and through. I tried to capture how I felt in every moment of my life and turn it into a story. Often the events reported have nothing to do with events that have happened in my life, but they reflect how I felt in different periods.
I found EC’s comics to be more extreme than any underground comics I’d ever seen.
How did you discover the comics from the EC Comics publisher and why do you like them?
When I was a teenager in the early ’70s, I had never heard of them. They hadn’t been printed for a while and no one was talking about them. Then I saw a book in a Chicago bookstore titled ‘Horror comics of the 1950’s.’ I grabbed it off the shelf and couldn’t believe my eyes. It seemed more extreme than any underground comic I had ever seen, and it didn’t make sense to me that this material had been published in the ’50s. I had seen quite a few films and series from the ’50s, in which there were no disses or blood and the couples slept in separate beds. Two people were shooting at each other and they just fell. There were no stab wounds. While, at the same time, those comics showed a man cutting up his wife and throwing the pieces into the garbage can. They blew my mind. At first they interested me only on the level of the shocking truth they showed. But as I got deeper into EC I saw how beautifully drawn those comics were by some of the best comic artists of all time, all working at the same time, competing with each other. Even now, as silly as some of the stories are, those comics mean a lot to me and are among the best of their kind ever made.
‘Monica’ recovers themes already present in ‘Like a silk glove forged in iron’, her first major work, although published in installments. For example, the aforementioned search for a person and sects. How are both jobs related for you?
For a period I become obsessed with an artist, say Alfred Hitchcock, and I watch all of his films and think about them every day. Until I get tired and move on to something else. So, 10 years later, I feel like revisiting that work and watching all the movies again. And they are very different. Some are much better than I thought and others much worse. Another ten years pass, a new immersion and everything is different again. I wanted ‘Monica’ to be a revision of ‘Like a Silk Glove Forged in Iron’ 30 years later. I seem to have a deeper understanding of those topics now than I did then, when I was mostly instinctive.
Why do your stories often have a sleepwalking atmosphere?
I don’t want my stories to have the meandering quality of dreams, I want them to be focused. But at the same time I feel that dreams are an honest expression of us. There we cannot censor ourselves and we get into very uncomfortable and very personal matters. I try to follow that code. In my fiction I try to be as honest and bold with uncomfortable matters as I would be in a dream.
We tend to assume that everything has been done and we limit ourselves to repeating the same things over and over again. Until images appear to tell you that you are seeing the world through a very small lens
He has explained that in ‘Monica’ he regurgitates images that have impacted him throughout his life, especially when he was a child. Is there a pattern to the images that has fascinated you?
Gosh, I’d have to look into it and think about it. Surely there is. Maybe it would be better to have someone examine it and evaluate it. But I would say that they always revolve around the unexpected. They are those images that you could never have imagined and that somehow exist. They make you see the world in a completely different way and tell you that there are a million things that could be drawn, or that you could write about, or that you could film because they have never been seen. We tend to assume that everything has been done and we limit ourselves to repeating the same things over and over again. Until those images appear to tell you that you are seeing the world through a very small lens and that there are millions of things that can become art.
In the 1990s he illustrated numerous album covers for groups from the independent rock scene. Was there a feeling of community between cartoonists and musicians?
I would say that there was envy on the part of us musicians. We could spend months making our comics and all our fans were guys with beards. While with only 15 minutes on stage the rock groups had a lot of girls around them. At that time comics were so detested by mass culture that we were happy to please anyone. The truth is that we were both part of the same marginal culture and addressed the same audience, people fed up with everything that came from the ‘mainstream’, be it cinemas, bookstores or the radio.
I love his cover of ‘Pay day’ (1989), by The Raunch Hands. Was it a group you liked?
Oysters, maybe it was the first tapa I made. At least one of the first. I like illustration and I really liked the group. I got to know The Raunch Hands pretty well when I lived in New York.
I listen to more and more soundtracks. Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, John Barry and things like that. And the Kinks, my all-time favorite group.
What music do you listen to now?
More and more, soundtracks. Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, John Barry and things like that. And the Kinks, my all-time favorite group.
On the double page of ‘Monica’ where the credits appear, he tells the history of the world in 20 vignettes. How did you choose those 20 moments?
He had many more. It was a complicated editing process. He didn’t want it to be an objective history of life on Earth, but Monica’s vision, the history of the world according to her sensibility. Like a history of the world according to the general culture of a person not particularly interested in history.
‘Monica’ has acquired the status of a publishing event in the United States. Do you feel like you’re marking a notable moment in comics history?
No idea. It was very nice to work for seven years on something that no one saw while I was doing it, not even my wife. He knew that he was happy with what he had done, but he doubted that he would interest anyone else. Seeing that the response is not only positive, but that each person makes a different interpretation, is very gratifying and much better than I expected. But I don’t know anything else.
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