David Boring [Hardcover]

Daniel Clowes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2000

Meet David Boring: a nineteen-year-old security guard with a tortured innner life and an obsessive nature. When he meets the girl of his dreams, things begin to go awry: what seems too good to be true apparently is. And what seems truest in Boring's life is that, given the right set of circumstances (in this case, an orgiastic cascade of vengeance, humiliation and murder) the primal nature of humandkind will come inexorably to the fore.

"Boring finds love with a mysterious woman named Wanda, loses her and sort of finds her again. He also gets shot in the head (twice) and stranded on an island with his brutish family. Meanwhile, the world may or may not be ending soon. And did I mention that much of this is hilariously funny?" -- Time

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's impossible to write about Daniel Clowes's work without using the word "ennui." But his is a joyous ennui, if such a thing is possible, one that relishes the boredom of everyday life with a Zen enthusiasm. The title David Boring reflects his self-aware humor and captures the essence of an ordinary man living through a larger-than-life story. The main character lives with his best friend, Dot, in a large city, each looking for love and meaning. David in particular is trying to understand his father, whom he knows only through an obscure comic book called "The Yellow Streak." Murder, obsession, sex, and war are all just distractions as he tries to construct a sensible portrait from the odd bits and pieces he finds in his travels. Clowes finds little miracles everywhere he looks--so many, in fact, that they seem hardly to interest him. This detachment perversely makes David Boring deeply compelling and worthy of serious attention from fans and newcomers alike. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

Critically lauded comics artist Clowes follows up his masterful Ghost World with this sometimes enticing, sometimes baffling, graphic novel about a postadolescent antihero. David Boring is one of Clowes's signature typesAaffectless, indifferent to his future and disdaining the small town he left behind. He shares an apartment in "the city" with Dot, a wisecracking lesbian friend, to whom he recounts his passionless, fetishistic sexual conquests; he falls in love with Wanda, a girl who's just his type, only to have her vanish. When Boring's visiting hometown acquaintance is murdered, he becomes the main suspect. Then Boring himself is shot in the head. Convalescing on the resort island where he spent part of his youth, Boring and the other vacationers find themselves stuck there indefinitely after terrorists' germ weapons render the mainland U.S. uninhabitable. One subplot concerns the Yellow Streak, a superhero comic that Boring's father drew long ago; another concerns the Eerie Boy, who keeps invading our antihero's dreams. Clowes (Eightball) alternates moving scenes of personal alienation and despair with bizarre transitions, portentous plot twists and an unconvincing mix'n'match of genres. Clowes's faux-na?f drawing style is as effective as ever, and his fans will certainly enjoy it. The same fans may feel the ambitious narrative tries to do too many things at once. This is, however, serious and innovative work; and it's never boring. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (September 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375406921
• ISBN-13: 978-0375406928
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #906,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Daniel Clowes was born in Chicago in 1961. He is the creator of the comic book Eight-Ball, twenty-one issues of which have been published to date. His work has appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, Vogue, Time, and Newsweek, among others. A feature film based on his 1998 book, Ghost World, starring Thora Birch, was released in 2001 by MGM. He lives a childless, petless life in California with his beloved wife.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love & Fetishism, February 16, 2005

By 

Jason Preu "He Who Puts the 'Boom!' in www.ba... (Kansas City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: David Boring (Hardcover)

Clowes artwork on David Boring is, as usual, immaculate and he consistently manages to draw characters whose faces emote a sense of ennui yet manage to evoke in me a feeling of compassion that borders on pity. This interplay intrigues me in that it serves to both endear and distance me to almost every major player in the book. Whether or not that feature of Clowes' art best serves the narrative, and whether it should, remains left to the individual. For me, the result is a positive and heightens the slightly surreal nature of Boring's world.

Stripped down, David Boring is a love story. Artfully dressed up by Clowes' craftsmanship, however, the standard love story is complicated by all manner of fixation, fetishism and obsessiveness in addition to the possible end of the world.

As a character, David Boring's only remarkable traits are his fetish for fat-bottomed girls and the single issue of his father's comic that he happens to own. This sexual fetish leads to expected relationship problems as David constantly risks letting his obsession for the physical overshadow any and all other aspects of his relationships with women. David's fetish for his father's comic, and subsequent obsession to learn about the man from the remaining scraps of his work, leads to one to speculate about the triadic, feedback-loop-like relationship between creator, creation and reader.

And so this theme of destructive fetishism runs rampant through David Boring as Clowes explores various characters, their fetishes and the nuanced situations that result from such behavior. Clowes fetishists include: Boring, Boring's best friend Dot (whose obsession is saved for a graceful and quiet denouement), Boring's girlfriend Wanda, Wanda's lover, the Professor, Boring's mother and possibly Boring's father (although I haven't looked too closely at this possibility).

The plot is set against a backdrop of impending world destruction by terrorists. Nice, huh? Come to think of it, terrorist activity may be viewed as a type of destructive fetishism whose idealistic single-mindedness overlooks the complexities of the world. This backdrop, though, allows Clowes a surreal, albeit convenient, way in which to resolve his story while pardoning any remaining social mores his characters may breech during the resolution process.

Clowes always delivers quality art and story. If you're already a fan of comix, you know this. If you've yet to sample the delights of graphic novels you'd do well to jump in right away with David Boring.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Thrilling world of Boring, September 12, 2000

By 

Chris Cilla (Portland,Oregon,U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: David Boring (Hardcover)

Daniel Clowes has outdone himself in this volume,collecting and improving upon the three part story David Boring.This is a challenging saga of a young man's attempt to organize his reality into a sort of personal movie,with himself as the protagonist.He deals obsessively with love and lust,and other human relationships with confusion.The focus on David and his love life is framed with a description of a violent and unpredictable world,complete with murder,intrigue,and war.The meticulous drawings merit close scrutiny for the detail they contain.This is a comic that tells as much without words as it does with them.The improvements in this book (it was previously serialized in pamphlet form) include the addition of color in certain panels,and overall an excellently designed package,including dust cover,spine,endpapers,and chapter headings.This is a book that will stand up to the many readings you're sure to want to give it.If you have any doubts as to the richness and depth available in the comics medium,this book with put them to rest.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not boring, December 12, 2002

By 

Pumpkin King - See all my reviews

This review is from: David Boring (Hardcover)

Although Daniel Clowes' GHOST WORLD wasn't that appealing to me, DAVID BORING was surprisingly engaging. Like Chris Ware's JIMMY CORRIGAN, it begins by introducing the reader to reminders of traditional comic book superheros, and although the rest of the book is anything but a stereotypical comic, it retains various aspects of superhero comic books. It's wonderfully dramatic and fantastic, transitioning from a story situated in reality to one that's dominated by mysterious deaths, apocalyptic fears, and taboo relationships. With BORING, Clowes shows life as at once dreamy, vacuous, adventurous, and painful. He ends up with a moving tale that is deeply structured and well worth the hour or two it takes to read.