The Complete Eightball 1-18: Issues 1-18

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Even though most if not all of the work has been collected in various editions over the years, the earliest issue of Eightball I've ever owned is 19, the first of three issues dedicated entirely to 'David Boring'. Great art, great writing, inventive stories, and very disturbing nightmares... Do I need to describe the indescribable to you? Suffice to say his stories have everything you could possibly want from comic books and a lot of things you don't. So much misanthropic joy! ...I can't imagine what sitting down with all of those issues compiled into one book could do to your brain... probably good things. If you like surrealism, humor, self-hatred, and living in the world with nothing making sense, then this is the book for you! If you don't like those things, you might like it even more.--Sonia Harris

These speculations are usually gloomy — but absurdly so. In Clowes' future, gender ambiguity will become so mainstream, regular guys will wear Doris Day wigs while watching sports bloopers. "There will be nostalgia for the nostalgia of previous generations" — which is actually one facet of The Complete Eightball's appeal. As for trends, "teenage boys will adopt the 'balding, paunchy, fortyish businessman' look." Before he rose to fame as a filmmaker and the author of the best-selling graphic novels Ghost World, David Boring, Ice Haven, and The Death Ray, Daniel Clowes made his name from 1989 to 1997 by producing 18 issues of the beloved comic book series Eightball, which is still widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential comic book titles of all time. Features new covers by Clowes, and ‘Behind the Eightball’: the author’s annotations for each issue, heavily illustrated with art and photos from his archives. It always depresses me to see the stuff that hipsters have on display in their apartments," he broods, surveying a collection of kitschy toys. "It always seems so childish and unoriginal, but it's really not much different from my stuff." He might as well be talking about psychic baggage. Clowes is as hard on himself as he is on everyone around him — or most people around him. The exceptions are bullies and people who buy into the American consumerist mythos.In May 2001, two months before Terry Zwigoff’s film Ghost World hit theaters, The Comics Journal ran a long interview with Clowes, whom it had similarly featured in 1992. This time, he got to do the cover. Rather than a single illustration of the kind he’s done on occasion since for The New Yorker, Clowes turned it into a mini graphic memoir. In panel 1, he’s invited to be the subject of an interview. (“Why did I agree to that?” he wonders in panel 3. “I hate The Comics Journal.”) Later, Clowes reads the results with dismay; yet by the last panel, he’s somehow agreed to do the cover illustration. “What’s wrong with me?” he says at his drawing board, composing the comic we’ve just read. Pussey!: The Complete Saga of Young Dan Pussey (Fantagraphics, 1995, ISBN 978-1-56097-183-2) – Stories featuring Clowes' character Dan Pussey Ice Haven (Pantheon, 2005, ISBN 978-0-375-42332-1) – A reformatted version of the contents of Eightball #22 This is a masterwork in its ability to stay with stories, telling them over years, or simply telling a fantastic story that touches on something in the reader's core. The stories within vary so much there's bound to be a gem in here that will capture your imagination.--David Brooke

In the interview, Clowes recalls the arduous process of using Rubylith sheets to get the distinctive color effects for Ghost World. It was a bespoke technique he learned at Pratt, and so comically cumbersome that he muses, “I might as well have spent four years learning how to fix a cotton gin.” The grumbling in both cases is tongue in cheek, because the labors he undertook worked. The Comics Journal cover—a Möbius comic strip—is a witty master class in the art form’s seductive charm and narrative flexibility, and Ghost World is what Clowes will be remembered for. I wavered between 4 and 5 stars for this one. Much of it IS 5 star material (especially the perfectly surreal and creepy Velvet Glove), but a lot of the satire in the shorter strips haven’t aged well, at least for me. Some of the humor just comes across as overly self righteous and mean-spirited, which I suppose is more digestible when you’re reading one issue every few months or so. But it becomes a bit exhausting when consuming the entire run in a short span of time. Still, this is essential for any fan of 80s/90s Clowes. And it was cool seeing his art style and unique brand of cynicism slowly evolve, as was seeing the occasional famous name (in the indie comics world, anyway) like Crumb and Woodring in the letters sections. Clay lodges across the street from his quarry: Interesting Productions, the secretive entity behind the tawdry film. Through binoculars, he spies a small, pipe-smoking girl at a desk, perpetually writing. (Going through her trash, he later discovers she’s simply drawing the same picture of a horse head, over and over.) When he gets inside, his fate is sealed. Some of the humor remains laugh-out-loud funny, but it perhaps isn’t surprising that some of it has not aged well at all, and will likely make today’s readers cringe. Sometimes it’s remarkably prescient, such as the prediction of a future in which nothing is new—it’s simply endless re-making and re-mixing of past entertainment.Enid and Rebecca share relationship woes as they roam about their unnamed hometown, ridiculing pop culture and musing on the lives of people they run across even while they question their own futures. Clowes fills the book with a colorful supporting cast, like the soft-spoken Josh, with whom both girls are romantically infatuated; former classmate Melorra; and antagonist John Ellis, a caricature of the 1990s-era zine publisher obsessed with serial killers, circus freaks, and firearms. “Ghost World” is an endearing and insightful look through the window of adolescence, sometimes overly dark and disconcerting as the characters explore the petty resentments of friendship and the paradoxes of modern life. The comic’s critical and commercial success led to a 2001 movie adaptation by filmmaker Terry Zwigoff with an Academy Award-nominated screenplay written with Clowes and starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, and Steve Buscemi. Do you feel like your work has become more personal over the years? As you built a persona as an artist, have you been able to push the line you were talking about—whether readers get it or not? Velvet Glove, Ghost World, The Party, The Fairy Frog, The Happy Fisherman, Why I Hate Christians, Ectomorph