Parents of Connecticut Teen Mistakenly Believe Daniel Clowes’s Comics Are Sexy

The story so far: Nate Fisher, a Connecticut high-school English teacher, resigned last week after the parents of a freshman girl complained that he’d given her a copy of Eightball No. 22, a comic book by Daniel Clowes. The comics blogs went crazy with people arguing the issue, and we went ahead and called the girl’s dad a “blowhard” based on his quotes in the New Haven Register article about the case.

Well, the girl’s father may be a blowhard, but her mom is no coward; she’s now twice braved the wilds of a comics-blog comments thread over at the Beat to tell her side of the story.

Or at least it seems like it’s her, the Internet being what it is. “Danielle” comments here and here, and claims that she and her husband were concerned that the teacher was giving the girl the comic not as an educational tool but as a way of coming on to her. Which leads to two questions:

1. Did school administrators make any effort to determine whether this was true before suspending the teacher and (as hinted at in later posts by Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics, Eightball’s publisher) pressuring him to resign?

2. What kind of idiot would try to seduce high-school girl with Daniel Clowes? Good Lord, do they think he was trying to creepazoid his way into her pants?

Earlier: Daniel Clowes, Pornographer?

Comments by “Danielle”: No. 1, No. 2 [The Beat/PW]