Clowes says his instructors were mostly minimalists and abstract expressionists. “They were all so beyond figural drawings and all that stuff that was so buried and in the past, they couldn't believe anybody was bringing that up again,” he says. And Clowes didn't just want to do figure drawings, he wanted to make comics.
“They would just say, 'Well, comics are basically inherently stupid.' The preponderance of the evidence was such that that was possibly true. There were just years and years and years of really dumb comics.”
I can relate.
via The Serious Comic Art Of Daniel Clowes : NPR.
Will Wilkinson 