Patience

Dan Clowes is one of the most respected graphic novelists in the US, with such past successes as Ghost World, Wilson, and Mr. Wonderful. Clowes' many works tend to focus on disaffected, curmudgeonly, misanthropic, intelligent, and intensely introspective loners, as does his newest work Patience. The difference is that the protagonist Jack Barlow fell in love with a woman named Patience. The rub is that he loses her under tragic circumstances, but instead of merely being eaten up by his sorrow an opportunity opens up. He discovers a person who has discovered the secret to time travel, and so Barlow steals it and goes back to prevent the tragedy from happening.

Of course, nothing goes smoothly, and his interference causes all kinds of ripples in the time stream, and affects Barlow's memories and experiences. Also, he ends up going to different points in time, and he learns things about Patience and himself that perhaps would be better left unknown. Instead of turning into a fantastic sci-fi yarn, the book instead becomes a cerebral exploration of love, relationships, and the lengths that people will go to protect their loved ones. This book has all the potential to be something out of a Ditko Dr. Strange story or a James Cameron movie, but the narrative ends of being mundane and weirdly grounded. Still, this is a complex work that demonstrates a masterful grasp on artistry and storytelling, a well made book, but not one of my favorites by Clowes.

All of the reviews of this book I have read comment on its complexity, maturity, and evocative narrative. Etelka Lehoczky was very pleased with the fact that "Clowes does create another lonely, obsessed male character here, but instead of brooding endlessly over the woman he's lost, Jack does something to help her." Jacob Brogan called it "a surprisingly calm work, probably Clowes’ most confident and clear-headed book to date." Kathleen Rooney wrote, "The book's self-awareness and sympathy make it more than just an exercise in the mixing of genres, but it's in this unabashed mixing that Clowes creates a story that is as transcendent as it is upsetting — and affirming."

Clowes speaks about his inspirations and work on this book in this interview.

Patience was published by Fantagraphics Books, and they have a preview and much more here.

The Death Ray

Watchmen started a trend with imagining what realistic superheroes would be like. More recently, books and movies like Kick Ass and Super took the idea a little farther in terms of the violence and insanity. The Death Ray is a different take on this superhero trope. As stories go, it is a slow burn, as many of Dan Clowes's tales are. More an exploration of the moral and social outcomes that would come with great power, it is a bleak portrait of a lonely, unsatisfied man and his unfulfilled existence.

The Death Ray follows the life of Andy, a pretty ordinary and unremarkable teenager who has had his share of disappointment. He is an orphan who lives with his increasingly deteriorating grandfather. His sole bright spots are writing occasionally to a girl he once dated whom he insists he still loves and hanging out with Louie, his one friend from school. The boys get picked on and called names, but things change once Andy stumbles upon the fact that he has amazing strength and powers. Instead of becoming some ostentatious figure, Andy instead leads a quieter life gaining revenge and dispatching those he and Louie consider evil. As time goes on, his deeds begins to weigh more and more on him.

This story was originally published as a stand-alone issue of Dan Clowes's Eightball. The series was a highwater mark of 1990s alternative comics, and it established Clowes as a major talent in comics. He has gone on to do much prominent work that has appeared in magazines like Esquire, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He has produced a number of well renowned works such as Ghost World, Wilson, and Ice Haven. He has also written screenplays for his works that have been turned into movies, Ghost World and Art School Confidential.

Like many of Clowes's works, this book has been well received and reviewed. The Washington Post's Aaron Leitko called it "a clever tweak on a well-worn series of cliches." Paul Di Filippo wrote that "Clowes masterfully depicts the lives of characters who are both average and yet as majestically tragic as any Greek or Shakespearean stumblebum." NPR's Dan Kois praised the book for its unsettling take on superheroes, adding "Clowes takes his conceit seriously, and so do his characters, exploring the knotty and discomfiting intersection of teen angst and unexpected power." The Death Ray was also nominated for a 2012 Eisner Award.

For those more interested in the book, there is a great discussion about various aspects and interpretations at The Comics Journal. A preview is provided here from the book's publisher Drawn & Quarterly.

Happy 51st Birthday, Daniel Clowes!

Dan Clowes is perhaps the most visible and successful of the alternative comics artists that burst on to the scene in the 1980s. His work has been seen on major soda brands, the covers of major magazines, and record/CD covers. He even appeared as himself in an episode of The Simpsons.

Clowes's initial efforts appeared in Cracked, Mad magazine's major competitor. At first his work drew heavily from 1950s/1960s retro-hip features. He drew Uggly Family comics that followed the exploits of a ghoulish, Addams Family type clan. His next main character, Lloyd Llewellyn, appeared in various publications from Fantagraphics. Llewellyn was a hard boiled detective type who worked in a world full of beatniks, aliens, monsters, beautiful women, time travelers, and cocktails.

Afterward, Clowes started a solo anthology comic in the 1990s called Eightball. This series allowed him to draw a number of stories, including autobiographical and opinionated pieces like "I Hate You Deeply" and its sequel "I Love you Tenderly," serials such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and Ghost World, and experimental work like Ice Haven. As years went on, the series began to be published less frequently and become less an anthology than a series of issues that focused on specific self-contained stories like David Boring and The Death Ray.

More recently, Clowes has forgone serial publication for the most part (an exception: his Mister Wonderful series appeared first in The New York Times Magazine) to publish graphic novels like Wilson. Additionally, all of his series and anthology stories have been collected into individual graphic novel versions.

He adapted his Ghost World series into an Oscar nominated (for Best Adapted Screenplay) motion picture in 2001 directed by Terry Zwigoff and starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, and Steve Buscemi. Following the success of this film Clowes adapted another of his Eightball stories, "Art School Confidential," into a movie, but it was less than well received.

Clowes has won many  prestigious awards for his graphic novel work, including the 2011 PEN Literary Prize for Graphic Literature as well as the Harvey, Eisner and Ignatz Comics Awards. He continues to be a prolific, vital artist and creator in a variety of media. He talks about his recent projects in this interview with Publishers Weekly.

Wilson

I have been struggling with ways to describe this book. Charlie Brown all grown up and even more disillusioned? Garfield meets Sartre? A Larry David comic strip without all the celebrity trappings? A Swiftian misanthropic parody of a daily comic strip? It's not quite any of these things, but what I can say is that I felt simultaneously repulsed and compelled to read this book in one sitting.

Daniel Clowes, author of acclaimed works such as Ghostworld and Ice Haven, created this series of 4-panel comic strips in slightly different styles. In them he follows the exploits of Wilson, who does little and is critical of everything. In time, we see him deal with the loss of his ex-wife, the death of his college professor father, the search for a daughter he didn't know he had, and periodically we sort of feel sorry for him. But Clowes punctuates all these moments with a reminder that Wilson is an egotistic jerk who cannot empathize with others. In many ways, his life reads like a stereotypical talk show participant, only he is supremely intellectual and self-important, and the result is a strange mix of humor and dread.

Clowes has making comics for the better part of three decades now, with most of his work appearing in independent anthologies and series such as his seminal Eightball. Wilson is his first original graphic novel to appear first in non-serialized form. Clowes has garnered many accolades for his work, winning multiple Harvey Awards for writing, artwork, and individual stories. Two of his works, Ghostworld and Art School Confidential, have been adapted into movies, and he has been working on at least two other screenplays since.

Reviews on the book have been somewhat mixed, though they all point to Clowes's skills as a storyteller. NPR's Glen Weldon comments on how Clowes grapples with "bleak truths" and self-laceration but also sheds life on the pomposity and humor of these situations. The Hooded Utilitarian's Ng Suat Tong wrote a very detailed and pointed analysis, ultimately criticizing the book and Wilson's "disjointed urban misanthropy" as "vintage Clowes made simple and unrelenting." Along with multiple spoilers he posts a good number of links to other discussions of the book. Sam Lipsyte reviewed the book for The New York Times and found it a mix of "tragedy and farce" that marks the lead character as a workable symbol for humanity, even if not in a universal manner.

As for me, I found the book alternately funny, horrifying, and unsettling, but I also found myself thinking about it days and weeks after I read it. I wouldn't call it a pleasant read but an evocative and thought-provoking one.

Tom Spurgeon has a large, in-depth interview with Clowes here.

A pdf preview is available here from publisher Drawn & Quarterly.