The Onion’s A.V. Club talks with cartoonist Daniel Clowes about his New York Times Magazine comic strip, influence, style and the Eightball #22 controversy:
AVC: Recently, a teacher in Guilford, Connecticut was fired for giving Eightball #22 to a student. Do you have any comment on this?
DC: When the Guilford story first broke, I was contacted by several journalists who wanted my take on the whole thing, and I decided I was the last person in the world who should be commenting on this case. Having no specific knowledge of any of the players involved, I thought I would spare the world another half-baked opinion. Any defense of the teacher’s actions boils down, at some point, to an appraisal of Eightball #22, and I’m not the best person to do that. All I can say—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.
There’s much more at the link, of course.
