All I can say on the Guilford story - and this comes more from my perspective as a father than an artist - is for parents and administrators to give so little value to the career of a public-school teacher - to allow him to be cast aside without exhausting every avenue to resolve the issue - is an obscenity worse than anything I've ever drawn in my comics.
Daniel ClowesAvatar is a total nerd thing, and yet our popular culture has somehow made all that stuff acceptable.
Daniel ClowesFace it, you hate every single boy on the face of the Earth!" "That's not TRUE, I just hate all these obnoxious, extroverted, pseudo-bohemian art-school losers
Daniel ClowesEverybody just lets the media do their thinking for them... that's why you'll never hear any reggae on the radio!
Daniel ClowesIt keeps me moving when I see people doing stuff that I see as "my" direction. I think, "Oh, it's been tainted. Now I've got to do something new." There's nothing worse than working on your own stuff and thinking that someone else is following you along.
Daniel ClowesYou have to find the tone of the piece and modulate that. There are ways to indicate that - I try to incorporate the biggest range I can within the story, going from humorous to serious without it being jarring. That's the hardest part, to keep that balance. It requires being constantly aware of where you are in the story. You can't really do that in a movie: You can't slightly modulate the tone by the way the character's eyeballs look in one certain scene.
Daniel Clowes