Mother Jones: You’ve said that you don’t really care for the term “graphic novel.”
Daniel Clowes: I thought it would never catch on. It’s a terrible term. They’re not novels; most of them are memoirs, in fact. “Graphic” implies an illustrated novel; that’s not what it is. I just thought people would say, “It’s a comic book, why are you trying to trick us?” But it worked: “Graphic novel” now means something very specific. People hear those two words and take them to mean a type of book that is generally correct. I give up—it works. The branding guys won.
MJ: That reminds me of the character in Ice Haven who describes “graphic novel” as a “vulgar marketing sobriquet.”
DC: I had fun with that. I also called it a “narraglyphic picto-assemblage.” When I went on my little book tour for that book, two or three people introducing me would say, “Among his many narraglyphic picto-assemblages are Ghost World…”—they just absolutely took it seriously. It’s hopeless.
