"It's embarrassing to be involved in the same business as the mainstream comic thing. It's still very embarrassing to tell other adults that I draw comic books - their instant, preconceived notions of what that means"
About this Quote
Clowes is naming a cultural shame that isn’t really about comics at all; it’s about the social penalty for making anything the mainstream has decided is childish, disposable, or nerd-coded. The sting in his phrasing comes from how he loads the blame onto “other adults” and their “instant, preconceived notions.” He’s not confessing insecurity so much as diagnosing a reflex: the way a medium gets flattened into a stereotype before you can even describe what you actually do.
The line “mainstream comic thing” is doing double duty. On one level, it’s a swipe at a commercial ecosystem that, for decades, trained readers to expect capes, gags, and endless IP churn. On another, it’s a defensive maneuver: Clowes positioning his work as adjacent to comics but not reducible to the cultural image of comics. That tension is basically the alternative-comics project in miniature - fighting for the medium’s literary legitimacy while resenting that legitimacy has to be petitioned for at all.
Context matters here: Clowes comes out of the ’80s/’90s indie scene (Eightball, Ghost World), when “graphic novel” was both a genuine formal expansion and a marketing euphemism invented to help adults say the word “comics” without flinching. His embarrassment is less personal than strategic. He’s pointing at the gatekeeping built into taste itself: how quickly “I draw comic books” gets translated into “I never grew up,” and how much energy an artist wastes managing that mistranslation.
The line “mainstream comic thing” is doing double duty. On one level, it’s a swipe at a commercial ecosystem that, for decades, trained readers to expect capes, gags, and endless IP churn. On another, it’s a defensive maneuver: Clowes positioning his work as adjacent to comics but not reducible to the cultural image of comics. That tension is basically the alternative-comics project in miniature - fighting for the medium’s literary legitimacy while resenting that legitimacy has to be petitioned for at all.
Context matters here: Clowes comes out of the ’80s/’90s indie scene (Eightball, Ghost World), when “graphic novel” was both a genuine formal expansion and a marketing euphemism invented to help adults say the word “comics” without flinching. His embarrassment is less personal than strategic. He’s pointing at the gatekeeping built into taste itself: how quickly “I draw comic books” gets translated into “I never grew up,” and how much energy an artist wastes managing that mistranslation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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