- Hardcover: 104 pages
- Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; illustrated edition edition (December 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1560973293
- ISBN-13: 978-1560973294
- Product Dimensions: 26.6 x 18.3 x 1.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 499 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,733,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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 Shit"), and the image-obsessed Mona Beadle from "Green Eyeliner," which originally appeared in Esquire. --Jim Pascoe
From Publishers Weekly
These nine stories show Clowes (Ghost World) as a writer compelled to produce infinite variations on the inner monologues of articulate, geeky loners. His characters exude a stylish, contemporary misanthropy; they're self-isolated, bland and ordinary, straight from some small town or emotionally dead family; and admittedly and intensely self-involved. They invariably substitute a trendy obsession with media kitsch, porn, fashion, old folk music or with just looking bored for empathetic communication or even small talk with others. These personages seem depressed and are usually fed up with most people. Though saturated in this tone of mannered disdain, Clowes's pieces are rescued from cliche and repetition by his expressive, meticulously glum drawings (in b&w and color) and a constant undertone of oddball, mocking hilarity. In the title story, he provides a portrait of an itinerant, county fair caricaturist and the unstable hipster brat-chick who insinuates herself into his life. In "Blue Italian Shit," he relates the story of Rodger Young, secret virgin and pathetic poseur, and his journey through a succession of bad late-1970s New York City styles ("there were fifteen minutes on this earth when I had a John Travolta haircut") and peculiar roommates ("Nat... listened to Kansas, and walked around naked"). In the supremely weird "Gynecology," Clowes deftly generates his characteristic emotional anemia in a story featuring a singing gynecologist and racist iconography. Clowes is a strange master at creating entertaining scenarios about contemporary social vacuity.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
I GUESS I SHOULD START OFF BY INTRODUCING MYSELF - MY NAME IS MAL ROSEN - I SIGN MY DRAWINGS 'MAL' . . . I'M 39, DIVORCED, NO KIDS. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I GUESS I SHOULD START OFF BY INTRODUCING MYSELF - MY NAME IS MAL ROSEN - I SIGN MY DRAWINGS 'MAL' . . . I'M 39, DIVORCED, NO KIDS. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nobody captures the feeling of alienation better then Clowes,
By Sibelius (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Caricature softcover (Paperback)
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
aufgh,
By painthesunblack (Brooklyn, N.Y. United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Caricature softcover (Paperback)
To all the other reviewers: You can't expect all of Dan Clowes' work to be exactly like "Ghost World", I mean if you start out reading "Ghost World", and then expect all his comics to be exactly the same way, then it's not, and to say that something isn't as good because you keep comparing it to "Ghost World", then that's just stupid.Like all of Dan Clowes' work, this comics is what it is, it's cynical and has stories that absorb you, such as the first one, and most of the female characters have something weird and strange about them, it's just an awesome book collection of his comics, and if you're a real fan of his, you'll get, but if you're just some person who keeps comparing everything to "Ghost world", you should still get it, but stop comparing!! geez
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unreality,
By "giantsuper" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Caricature softcover (Paperback)
Clowes has always been an excellent storyteller, but the brilliance of his work is not in his stories (which are often mundane and uneventful) but the rich and poignant display of emotions that play underneath the narrative. This was certainly the case in "Ghost World" and "David Boring" in that the exploration of loneliness, adolescent angst and self-loathing took place in the nuances of facial expression and the subtext of spoken word, and not in the unfolding of the plot. "Caricature" is no different, but with the added advantage of Clowes working without the burden of having to tell a story. Being less constrained by the demands of a longer, more cohesive narrative format, Clowes in this collection of nine vignettes is able to explore his themes with greater freedom and whimsy. Thus, many of the stories here take on a dream-like quality and even the more grounded ones have a strong sense of unreality. And indeed, it is in the weird plane of reverie where the emotions he means to convey are best communicated. This is stream-of-consciousness in the form of the graphic novel and more than in any of his other work he communicates at the level of the subconscious. Needless to say there are moments in this book that are transcendental.
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