Product Description: The bestselling author of Ghost World collects his acclaimed short stories from Eightball and Esquire in softcover for the first time.
The dramatic short stories included in this first softcover edition of Caricature have drawn comparisons to Nabokov for their complex naturalism and sense of humor. Anchored by the title story, considered the first great apotheosis of Clowes' seminal Eightball underground comic book series, Caricature also includes eight other stories, including "Green Eyeliner"—originally published in Esquire as the first work of comics to be featured in the magazine's fiction issue (and commissioned by then-editor Dave Eggers)—"Gynecology," "Blue Italian Sh*t," "The Gold Mommy," and more.
Clowes has been the most successful alternative cartoonist of his generation, and interest in Caricature should be significant. The film adaptation of Clowes' best-selling book, Ghost World, directed by Terry (Crumb) Zwigoff and starring Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi, will be released in summer 2001 by MGM/UA and has garnered advance critical praise. A new edition of the Ghost World graphic novel and the screenplay of the film—written by Clowes and Zwigoff—are both being published by Fantagraphics in conjunction with the film, while Clowes' last novel, Pantheon's David Boring (2000), was heavily promoted in 2000 with a national tour.
Amazon.com Review: Dan Clowes follows his amazing graphic novel, Ghost World, with an equally stunning collection of nine short comics stories. His characters drift through the world in detached desperation, and they seem all the more real for it. Take the caricature artist, Mal Rosen, of the first story. His encounter with a young girl at an art festival plays out like a series of small self-discoveries, leaving him hollow and empty like a fresh exhalation. In this same sad, insightful way, all of these tales are coming-of-age stories--there's the boy who is too old for trick-or-treating ("Immortal, Invisible"), the 18-year-old virgin trying to create a new tough-guy persona ("Blue Italian Sh*t"), and the image-obsessed Mona Beadle from "Green Eyeliner," which originally appeared in Esquire. --Jim Pascoe
Best collection of Clowes shorts To sum it up, this is my favorite collection of Clowes in short form. However, if you've never read Clowes before, i wouldn't recommend this. Go start with Ghostworld, which was turned into an Oscar-nominee movie.
Clowes is cynical, humorous and sad. His drawing are fairly ugly but his human faces are very expressive.
The best! Caricature is my favorite book published by Dan Clowes. (Do you like to be called Dan?) His stuff strikes a chord with me and I love his stuff because it's funny, cynical, beautiful, crazy, weird, depressing, sad, lonely, quirky, optimistic, and a lot of other adjectives that I don't feel like listing. His artwork is genious, but the stories he tells and the characters he creates are equally brilliant. I could go on and on about how great he is, but I'll shut up and let you figure it out for yourself. This is a good place to start.
I hope to run into Dan at Comic Relief one day. It's my dream! I don't know how I'd react but...I want to shake this mans hand, or give him a high-five.
Worth Checking Out -- But I Won't Be Back For Another Visit to Planet Clowes I'm not hugely into comics or alt-comics, or whatever the right term is, although I do like Adrian Tomine, try to get to SPX every year, and will at least browse through the latest from D&Q, Fantagraphics, etc. In any event, I'd never picked up anything by Clowes before, and spotting this at the library, figured it was time I did. The book is a collection of nine pieces that were originally published from 1994-98. They are billed as "stories" which implies that some kind of narrative is present, which isn't generally the case -- they're more like eight character sketches (one protagonist features in two separate pieces).
I generally find Clowes' artwork to be pretty compelling -- he's got his personal style and sticks to it, or better or worse. What I didn't find nearly as compelling are his characters, which generally strike me as almost pathological variations on the same theme. It's an almost endless parade of bitter, self-isolated, self-absorbed, and predictably depressed loners. Never has alienation been quite as unattractive as it is in this collection of first-person monologues that often go nowhere.
The stories can be roughly divided into five featuring adults, two featuring children, and two that are surreal. The latter are just that: In "The Gold Mommy" a man leaves a barbershop shoeless and travels into his past only to drown in it. "Black Nylon" is a kind of noirish glimpse at a sad sack, over-the-hill superhero who confronts his younger, more powerful competition. As examples of surrealism they are kind of interesting, they have the same tone as some of Jonathan Lethem's short stories, and like them, they are somewhat challenging and frustrating.
But not nearly as frustrating and annoying as the more realistic stories with adult protagonists. For example, "MCMLXVI" features an incredibly annoying hateful (and hate-filled) hipster who is obsessed with pop culture circa 1966 ("it represents the peak of American culture") and basically wanders through life sneering at everyone he meets because they don't get it. "Green Eyeliner" is about a pretty 20something woman who encounters a former classmate who is now a smalltime TV actor. "Blue Italian Sh*t" is the first time we meet Rodger Young, an annoying 20something hipster poseur in early '80s New York enduring a series of bizarre roommates and his own virginity."Gynecology" is a weird story about an emotionally dead hipster artist, the affair he's having with a gynecologist, and an unstable woman who threatens to reveal their secret. Probably the best of the lot is the titular "Caricature," which drops in on a middle-aged artist who makes a living on the festival/fair/circus circuit cranking out caricatures at a couple bucks a pop. The story follows him over the course of a weird weekend in which an unstable teenage hipster chick latches on to him.
More successful are the two stories about adolescents, which are a bit more straightforward and palatable. This may be because weirdness and obsession is more expected of teens, and somehow less desperate and annoying. Rodger Young reappears as a 13-year-old in "Like a Weed, Joe," which recounts a summer spent with in the country with his grandparents. It reads like a solid, well-crafted, coming of age short story. Similarly, "Immortal, Invisible" is an interesting story of a 14-year-old kid wandering around on his own on Halloween and getting into strange situations.
On the whole, I'm glad I finally sampled Clowes, but I can't say that I'll be returning any time soon. Too often, his pieces don't lead anywhere, and too often, his protagonists are simply too annoying to spend time with. I do like his style, both black and white, and color, so I may give him another whirl, especially if there's a more extended story available (maybe "Ghost World"?).
Some of his best stuff; a great intro to Clowes for a newbie Like the above title says...if you are already into Clowes, you should definitely get this. If you don't know who he is, this book is a great place to start finding out.
Nobody captures the feeling of alienation better then Clowes The brilliance of Clowes comic strips can be found in his unique ability to capture that lonely, empty feeling of alienation that his characters so often convey drifting in and out of vapid 'Ghost Worlds.' Make no mistake about it, this book is brilliant and should be rated 5 stars if it weren't for the last 1/5 of it where we're offered 2 stories that suffer from a lack of narrative cohesion. The first 4/5's though, demonstrate Clowes at his finest by way of his beautiful artwork and razor-sharp writing filled with pathos, humour and cutting observation.
Not to be missed by fans of Clowes not to mention newcomers interested in getting a taste of his work.
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