Wilson [Hardcover]

Daniel Clowes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2010

AN ORIGINAL GRAPHIC NOVEL FROM THE OSCAR-NOMINATED SCREENWRITER AND AWARD-WINNING CARTOONIST

Meet Wilson, an opinionated middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. In an ongoing quest to find human connection, he badgers friend and stranger alike into a series of onesided conversations, punctuating his own lofty discursions with a brutally honest, self-negating sense of humor. After his father dies, Wilson, now irrevocably alone, sets out to find his ex-wife with the hope of rekindling their long-dead relationship, and discovers he has a teenage daughter, born after the marriage ended and given up for adoption.Wilson eventually forces all three to reconnect as a family—a doomed mission that will surely, inevitably backfire.

In the first all-new graphic novel from one of the leading cartoonists of our time, Daniel Clowes creates a thoroughly engaging, complex, and fascinating portrait of the modern egoist—outspoken and oblivious to the world around him.Working in a single-page-gag format and drawing in a spectrumof styles, the cartoonist of GhostWorld, Ice Haven, and David Boring gives us his funniest and most deeply affecting novel to date.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2010: Wilson is billed as Daniel Clowes's "first original graphic novel," which sounds a little funny, since he's the author of Ghost World, one of the instant classics of that young genre, as well as the lesser-known but strangely wonderful David Boring, among others. But his other books first appeared serialized in his Eightball comics series, while Wilson comes to us all at once, in a beautiful oversized package. Wilson tells a single, complete story (of the bitterly lonely man named in the title), but it does so in tiny bites. Each page is a stand-alone vignette, in the familiar newspaper comics rhythm of setup, setup, setup, punch line: like Garfield, say, if Jon were a foul-mouthed incipient felon (and drawn with the tenderly grotesque genius of Clowes). The gags are the sort that stick in your throat rather than go down easy, and together they add up to a life that's just barely open to the possibility of wresting oneself out of the repetitions of hostility and failure. It's an intriguing addition to the most thrilling career in comics. --Tom Nissley

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Clowes (Ghost World) takes his particular brand of misanthropic misery to new levels of brilliance in this book, a series of one-page gags that show the divorced and lonely main character repeatedly attempting to engage with life, and then falling back into his hell of pessimism. Clowes uses a variety of drawing styles to depict Wilson and his world; sometimes he's highly realistic, other times he's an Andy Capp–style cartoon, but he's always the same downbeat guy. In one sketch titled FL 1282, Wilson asks the kid seated next to him on a plane about his line of work. When the kid answers that he does I.T. stuff, Wilson comes back at him with a mockingly satirical description of his own supposed work, using only initials. The last panel shows Wilson looking at a Spirit magazine and asking, Christ, do you realize how ridiculous you sound? Clearly, the comment is directed as much at himself as to the I.T. kid. This attitude of solipsistic despair is expressed incisively and cleverly, taking Wilson through a search for his ex-wife, Pippi, who has become a prostitute since leaving him, and their daughter, put up for adoption years earlier. Clowes offers another beautifully drawn slice of piercing social commentary. (Apr.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly; 1 edition (April 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1770460071
• ISBN-13: 978-1770460072
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 8.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Drawn and Quarterly

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

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clowes proves himself a master of the comics form, April 27, 2010

By 

Michael Tolento (Santa Barbara, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wilson (Hardcover)

What a fun read! Each page of this slim oversize book is designed as a self contained comic strip. The effect is an episodic revelation of Wilson's story in phases like the peeling of an onion. Once Clowes has defined Wilson's irrepressible personality, the vignettes evolve from the slice-of-life non sequitur of the opening pages, and begin to relate to one another in development of the plot. Clowes varies his drawing style from one strip to the next. The art goes from Schultz-esque cartoon abstractions to representational warts-and-all realism in service of the narrative.

This is Clowes most mature and emotionally satisfying work to date, yet his dark acerbic humor remains, manifesting itself in the cranky eccentric voice of the title character. Wilson is a brilliant graphic novel, sure to be cited as one of the best in the same breath as Ware's Jimmy Corrigan or Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp. It is a celebration of the sort of storytelling one can only experience through the misunderstood medium of comics.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An epic in miniature, April 27, 2010

By 

Tim Idsole (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wilson (Hardcover)

Daniel Clowes assigned himself an unusual formal constraint in this book; it consists of a sequence of seventy full-page comics, each with six or seven frames, each a complete vignette, most with the familiar rhythm and concluding punchline of a Sunday newspaper gag cartoon like "Nancy" or "Peanuts." (Be forewarned, though, the tone of the writing has little in common with those strips, and Wilson's "punchlines" often traffic in cruelty and humiliation.) Each page is recognizably in the hand of Clowes, but the styles differ from one strip to the next, from big-nose cartoons to quite naturalistic renderings, with many different color schemes. Every page features the musings and adventures of Wilson, a self-defeating, socially inept and exceedingly unlikeable protagonist. We get glimpses of Wilson's dialogues with himself and his interaction with others, including his father, his ex-wife and his beloved dog Pepper, across a considerable span of years. Rather astonishingly, through the accumulation of single-page strips that if taken independently may seem glib, slight or superficial, Clowes builds up a moving book that lingers in the mind as much more than the sum of its parts. It gives rise to thoughts about the need for human interaction, the nature of memory and the possibility of wisdom. The most resonant contents of the book emerge from the relationships between the individual strips, much the way action can be implied by the blank "gutter" between the panels of a comic strip. Easy to read, but I'm sure there's much I missed the first time through: I expect to enjoy reading this several times.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Phoned In, May 23, 2010

By 

Kafkarama (United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wilson (Hardcover)

Long time Clowes fan. My issue here is not that this isn't funny, plenty of his best stuff is more drama (like the story Caricature in Eightball).

My problem is that Wilson is just not surprising or that rich. This territory is already well trod in David Boring, Ghostworld, Ray Gun, Ice Haven and this doesn't bring much new to the party.

I feel like Clowes is trying to hold himself back because he thinks it is subtle and literary, but instead it is coming off slight. He needs to write his heart out.