In Patience, a love story like many of Clowes’s novels, the incursion of sci-fi is at first delightfully surprising and thereafter modulated so effortlessly that you see behind the irony of that self-consciously purple-prose blurb to the truth it encapsulates. His most complex book, David Boring, places effortless forays into the surreal in the middle of what is essentially a psychosexual Hitchcockian narrative. So much has been withheld from us, and so many new twists now happen, that you’ll have to take these pages in one sitting then reread instantly.Ĭlowes does realism impeccably – think of the pitch-perfect depiction of adolescent ennui in Ghost World, or the psychological and emotional truthfulness of Mister Wonderful – but he is also fond of letting the irruption of the hyperreal or fantastical not so much shift gears as change the entire vehicle. The final section, set in 2012 again, adds information to the first 2012 section in a way that can only be called cinematic. Illustration: Courtesy of Daniel ClowesĪt certain points, the narrative may remind you of the film Looper, at other times, of that old counterfactual question, “If you could go back in time and kill Hitler’s mother, would you do it?” There is no strand or element in the tight weave that is superfluous or casual, but particularly crucial to the story is Jack’s encounter in 1985 with a suave scientist, Wolfe, who he thinks can manufacture more of the “juice” that is essential to time travel. So, if you want to find a place for yourself in this coming new world order, you are hereby advised to purchase and study this essential tome.‘Clowes does realism impeccably.’: a scene from Patience. By insinuating himself at the lowliest point in the media food chain, Clowes has, with this aptly named work, been able to surreptitiously release a virus of comics irony that will slowly but surely work its way up to the top, wherein it will catalyze a linguistically encoded polymerase chain reaction that will initiate a resequencing of heretofore normative power relations the end result of which will be a catapulting of comics to its rightful place at the center of the palace of wisdom, with Clowes himself firmly ensconced on the throne. This laminated, horizontally formatted hardcover just released by the industry leading Graphic Novel division of the eminent Pantheon imprint of the storied Knopf Doubleday publishing group of that pillar of publication, Random House, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG, is simply the next step in the inevitable domination of the globe by Daniel Gillespie Clowes. It's been so long since this was serialized in the New York Times, that we'll bet some of you had forgotten about it – but that's all part of the master plan.

Mister Wonderful by Daniel Clowes