Daniel Clowes on comics

“Even (especially) in their most debased form, comics have an aura to them of unspoken truth. Image, for example, a child born into a hellish marriage, the details of which are so horrific that they are never discussed. His parents soon divorce and an older brother, the only witness to the horror-years, is too traumatized to communicate with the younger child. The only transmission of information comes indirectly from the older brother’s stack of comics, remnants of the hellish marraige years, that express, through his selection in buying these particular comics, the nature of the trauma in mythic/symbolic terms (hags, mad scientists and invulnerable super-tots), in a house that has repressed emotional horror to a lifeless approximation of ‘normalcy’ these comics are a record of unspoken and unspeakable truth. If the young boy should one day create his own works of art we could expect him to in some way address this hidden language and to interpret his notions of the truth based on this experience.”

— Daniel Clowes