The Complete Eightball 1-18: Issues 1-18

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One of my favorite single panels of all time, from one of my favorite comics: Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron) One of those important works that almost comes across as unassuming in the earliest issues. Clowes starts out as kind of the usual angry underground comic artist that was so common in the era. Lots of rants and spite thrown out at various targets. There's also the very strange Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron to balance that out, where it's mainly weird atmosphere that never quite tips over into straight horror but has a nightmare-ish dream-like feeling to it. Maybe in the vein of a David Lynch film. It's interesting to see that in a comic, even if it doesn't seem to have a real point or conclusion, just an excuse to be kinda strange. Clowes offset cynicism with sympathy as he cast an outsider's eye on members of society some might classify as 'the dregs.' As the anthology developed, Clowes proved himself a master of the short story in comics form…" — Jake Austen - Chicago Tribune In one of Glove’s rare off-key asides, the revolutionaries take over the White House, where they get annoyed by a freshly divorced, foulmouthed Bill Clinton. Clowes drew the panels in July 1992, months before the election, and almost chose to depict Ross Perot in the Oval Office instead. ↩ 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'.

Five more issues appeared from 1998 to 2004. These later numbers concentrated on single, long-form narratives ( David Boring, Ice Haven, and The Death Ray, all later published as graphic novels) and are not included in this volume. ↩Daniel Clowes writes either the funniest sad comics or the saddest funny comics in the world.--Sam Thielman Well, now the work certainly seems to reflect a very cohesive world view. But, yes, some things did shift. At the time, I was trying to figure out what I felt about things, but also say what I knew about the world; all my little pronouncements, which I was doing facetiously. I knew that I didn’t really know anything, but on some level I felt like I did. And then, over a certain amount of time, I realized I truly didn’t know anything, and at a certain point I realized I didn’t even want to go out on that limb and make any kind of statement—just look at questions and not deliver any answers.

Ice Haven (Pantheon, 2005, ISBN 978-0-375-42332-1) – A reformatted version of the contents of Eightball #22Once you finish your current project—the one you said you didn’t want to discuss—is there anything you’re looking forward to doing? Do you have some wish like, “I want to go play the kazoo in a band,” for example? Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, The Truth, I Hate You Deeply (Lloyd Llewellyn), What Do You Think George Washington's Voice Sounded Like? but I was sure that he was right and that I’d been crazy all along…. To read that many in a row, this overwhelming tidal wave of Christianity coming at you—it’s an amazing experience. Here was this comic dealing with life and death. The absolute most important thing. I mean, he was pulling out all the stops, there was no soft-pedaling, he was just ramming it down your throat. Never before had I been affected like that by comics.

The cornerstone stories of Eightball are, of course, the eerie, oddball comics noir of “Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron” (running from issue #1 to #10) and the “best friends” story of “Ghost World.” The former is a dark-hued tale of paranoia, religious cults, sexual fetishism and, ultimately, bloodless violence. The story’s protagonist, Clay, is ostensibly searching for his lost wife after catching a glimpse of her in a porno film, and his sojourn drops him into a disturbing wonderland of adventure and perils inspired by Clowes’ dreams. Velvet Glove" is a parody of bad film adaptations, using the just-completed Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron as its source, with behind-the-scenes segments showing an increasingly anxious Clowes in talks with a clueless Hollywood producer, and scenes from the resulting movie, in which Clay is a tough, sarcastic police detective who plays by his own rules and makes pithy remarks (such as "what are you lookin' at?") before shooting his enemies. Tina is recast as a space alien who gives "Clay" a ring of power.Eightball is a comic book by Daniel Clowes and published by Fantagraphics Books. It ran from 1989 to 2004. The first issue appeared soon after the end of Clowes's previous comic book, Lloyd Llewellyn. Eightball has been among the best-selling series in alternative comics. This is a two-volume, slipcased facsimile edition of the Daniel Clowes comics anthology; it contains the original installments of Ghost World, the short that the film Art School Confidential was based on, and much more. Edward Gorey devised suitably Victorian-sounding pseudonyms for his morbidly wry stories from the letters of his own name (Ogdred Weary, Regera Dowdy, et al.). Vladimir Nabokov inserted Vivian Darkbloom into some of his books for an enigmatic, anagrammatic cameo. For Ghost World, Daniel Clowes, a serial employer of pen names, rearranged himself, lending his most enduring and endearing heroine his letters. By the end of the book, Enid Coleslaw’s destiny is unclear, but she’s equipped with all the wisdom and love her creator has to offer. 7 4. 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. The stories you were doing in “Eightball” cross many genres, use different drawing styles, and are of varying length. Was it your intention to try out different approaches each time?

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. Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, I Love You Tenderly (Lloyd Llewellyn), The Future, Dan Pussey's Masturbation Fantasy, Sexual Frustration, What Do You Do for a Cold? 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.

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." Once the Ghost World stories start to pop up though, there is a noticeable shift. There's still the anger but it's more cast inward. The barely concealed self-insert characters that Clowes is so fond of grow more introspective. The stories have a sadness to them, a melancholy that gets into your bones. The first Ghost World strip may have a lot in common with the earlier rants but the ending of it does not. I don't think you can see the growth of Clowes' work if you were to read the stories in a format not in the original serialization. Hell, you can see the growth just in the covers as the issue numbers get higher. Clowes is a genius storyteller and artist, but his gifts include design as well [As with every other aspect of comic-crafting, however, Chris Ware has long since surpassed -- in terms of popularity -- his friend and laissez-faire mentor as a book designer. In 2000, when David Boring and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth were released simultaneously by Pantheon, Ware was a still just a distant rumble on the horizon, and Clowes was in the ascendant. Ghost World was being filmed by Clowes and Terry Zwigoff, and his (in my opinion) masterpiece was being published as a beautiful hardcover. Along with Ghost World, Caricature, and the book that would immediately it, Ice haven, David Boring represented the peak of Clowes' creative output to date. Within a few months, Ware's Jimmy Corrigan was being hailed as one of the greatest examples of sequential art ever created, and David Boring was largely overshadowed].