Daniel Clowes

Clowes was born in Chicago, Illinois, to an auto mechanic mother and a furniture craftsman father. His mother was Jewish, whereas his father was from a "reserved WASPish Pennsylvania" family; Clowes\'s upbringing was not religious. In 1979, he finished high school at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he earned a BFA in 1984. It was at Pratt that he met and befriended fellow cartoonist Rick Altergott, with whom he started the small-press comics publisher Look Mood Comics.\n', '

According to Clowes scholar, Ken Parille, the cartoonist had an early response to a "graphic" comic when, at age four, he burst into tears and began hitting his head against a wall after seeing a cover of a Strange Adventures comic book that depicted a family dying of heat. Later, he received "piles of 1950s and 1960s classic titles like Arc…