It 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 ClowesIt's hard to tell if anyone's interested in reading a serialized story. But it's interesting to put in a cliffhanger each week. That was popular in old comic strips. They'd write a weekend story different from the daily strip. So people follow one story day to day, and a separate story on weekends. If you read them, you think "I'll read two more." Then you're like "I gotta find out!" And you read 500 more.
Daniel ClowesMore and more, I tried to make comics in the way I like to read comics, and I found that when I read comics that are really densely packed with text, it may be rewarding when I finally do sit down and read it, but it never is going to be the first I'm going to read, and I never am fully excited to just sit down and read that comic.
Daniel ClowesI'd always wanted to do a weekly strip, or a strip that was in installments like that. It's been fun trying to figure out how to make that work. Their standards are so prissy that they won't allow me to use all kinds of language. Not only can you not swear, this morning I was informed I couldn't use the word "schmuck." I couldn't use "crap," "schmuck," or "get laid." Those three were beyond the pale. But you get around that, and it comes out better. I can't quite explain why.
Daniel Clowes