Meet David Boring: a nineteen-year-old security guard with a tortured inner 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 humankind will come inexorably to the fore. For those interested in comic art's potential, Clowes's work offers exciting literary possibilities. Boring is Anything but. -Time Dan Clowes 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. [+]

The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn (1986-1988), one of the earliest works of Eightball author Daniel Clowes, anticipated the 1990s rediscovery of lounge culture. The 31 stories collected here combine Dragnet with The Twilight Zone with Tales from the Crypt in a world filled with aliens, good-time girls, and cocktail-bar nihilism. The stories are hip and funny, with a good dose of wacky 1950s paranoia and the kind of tongue-in-cheek morality that characterized the old E. C. horror comics. The Lloyd Llewellyn stories also trace the development of Clowes's style as a comic artist, from the angular early pieces that show the influence of 1950s advertising style to the grotesque Robert Crumb-inspired style of the more recent work in Eightball. Clowes is one of the most gifted comic-book artists around, and the retro-chic world of Lloyd Llewellyn deserves to be seen by a new generation of readers.

A graphic novel, which tells of the adventures of Enid Coleslaw and Beck Doppelmeyer, two bored, supremely ironic teenage girls. They pass the time complaining about the guys they know and fantasising about strange men they see in the local diner. Dan Clowes described the story in Ghost World as the examination of "the lives of two recent high school graduates from the advantaged perch of a constant and (mostly) undetectable eavesdropper, with the shaky detachment of a scientist who has grown fond of the prize microbes in his petri dish. " From this perch comes a revelation about adolescence that is both subtle and coolly beautiful. Critics have pointed out Clowes's cynicism and vicious social commentary, but if you concentrate on those aspects, you'll miss the exquisite whole that Clowes has captured. Each chapter ends with melancholia that builds towards the amazing, detached, ghostlike ending.

Orgy Bound is a collection of stories from Clowes's Eightball comic, and it's a revoltingly funny book. It begins with a short piece about a boy with a romantic attachment to insects. Still, Clowes isn't just looking for cheap laughs; the stories are funny, but they have a bleakness that emphasizes the emptiness of the characters' lives. There is little room for beauty in Clowes's world. In one of the most revealing strips, three stereotypical members of Generation X sit in an apartment and casually deconstruct their whole lifestyle. There are harsh truths hidden within the many jokes, and Clowes makes sure we know it.