See, this is where I disagree with him. I don't mind reading a story with a jerk protagonist once in a while, as an experiment, but Clowes has pretty much built his career on writing characters like that. And the reason it becomes hard emphasizing with such characters is not because Hollywood has brainwashed us into accepting only likable protagonists, it's because most people aren't jerks. As Shakey said, comics like Hate prove you can write jerk charactes with sympathy, but the misanthropic way Clowes treats his gets tiresome after a while.
― Tuomas, Thursday, 1 March 2012 09:07 (twelve years ago) link