One of the best-selling and critically-acclaimed graphic novels of all-time telling the story of two supremely ironic, above-it-all teenagers facing the thrilling uncertainty of life after high school. As they attempt to carry their life-long friendship into a new era, the careful dynamics of their inseparable bond are jolted, and what seemed like a future of endless possibilities looks more like an encroaching reality of strip malls, low-paying service jobs and fading memories.

Already one of the most heavily-publicized graphic novels in history, this new edition (featuring new covers by Clowes) should make the book more popular than ever. With lengthy write-ups in Time, Newsweek, Publisher's Weekly, Details, Vogue, Jane, and many others, press interest in the book and film promises to be higher than ever this spring.

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


From the Hardcover edition.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Daniel Clowes's first book remains a modern classic 15 years after its debut in Eightball #1, the comic book title that made Clowes a household name in comics circles. This surreal graphic novel is couched within a noir-ish detective structure and rich with recurring psychosexual motifs and imagery. The story follows a deadpan Candide named Clay Loudermilk, on a search for a former lover through a landscape that several critics have favorably compared to the works of David Lynch, Fellini, and Luis Buñuel, with elements of Dragnet and Russ Meyer films added for good measure. Clowes rigorously employs a dream logic as Clay spirals down a spare, unsettling wasteland, meeting three-eyed prostitutes, mutant waitresses, angry men with hair plugs, and orifice-less dogs with secret messages tattooed on their skin. As Clay attempts to untangle the vast conspiracy he finds himself a part of, <I>Velvet Glove becomes a vivid and fantastic examination of futility, self-loathing and paranoia, and a masterpiece of postmodern fairy-telling,

Like A Velvet Glove returns in 2005 as Clowes and film director Terry Zwigoff put the finishing touches on <I>Art School Confidential, the follow-up to their 2001 Academy Award-nominated film, <I>Ghost World (based on the bestselling comic book of the same name). To be released in the late summer of 2005, <I>Art School Confidential is sure to introduce an entirely new audience to Clowes's work, just as the Ghost World film did (pushing sales of the Ghost World graphic novel over 150,000 to date).

At long last: Daniel Clowes is back at Pantheon, with a brilliant new graphic novel already hailed by Time as “another of his hilariously slightly off-center worlds that have a vague sense of dread about them. Kind of like where you live.”

Welcome to Ice Haven! “It’s not as cold here as it sounds,” declares Random Wilder, our reluctant guide to this sleepy Midwestern town. He’s also its would-be poet laureate. Would-be, that is, were it not for the "Florid banalities” of his archrival, Ida Wentz, published ad nauseam in the Ice Haven Daily Progress. Among Wilder’s other fellow Ice Havians are the lovelorn Violet Van der Plazt and Vida Wentz; the detective team of Mr. and Mrs. Ames; the adorable interracial moppets Carmichael and Paula; disaffected stationery salesgirl Julie Patheticstein; the Blue Bunny, newly sprung from prison and the bitterest rabbit in town; and poor little David Goldberg, missing for more than a week now…

While Dan Clowes has gotten a nod from the mainstream — an Oscar nomination for the screen adaptation of Ghost World - his work remains wonderfully idiosyncratic and imaginative. The lives of the men and women of Ice Haven are woven into a multi-layered tale that, while it owes a debt to <i>Our Town, is ultimately based on and inspired by… Leopold and Loeb. No kidding.

Only Daniel Clowes could do it and, luckily for us, he has.

The creator of <I>Ghost World eviscerates American culture. <P>Before the Ghost World graphic novel and film propelled Daniel Clowes to international superstardom as the preeminent cartoonist of his generation, his ongoing comic book <I>Eightball was already the most talked-about series of the 1990s. Renowned for its gleefully incisive social satire and riotous absurdity, Entertainment Weekly proclaimed it "the year's best regularly published comic book" upon its debut in 1989. The Village Voice proclaimed it "brilliant," and Art Spiegelman called it "curdlingly good." Simpsons creator Matt Groening has repeatedly called it his favorite comic book.

20th Century Eightball collects the very best humor strips from Eightball, written and drawn between 1988 and 1996. Included within are such seminal strips/rants as "I Hate You Deeply," "Sexual Frustration," "Ugly Girls," "Why I Hate Christians," "Message to the People of the Future," "Paranoid," "My Suicide," "Chicago," and over three dozen more. Other favorites include "Art School Confidential," one of Clowes' most popular strips of all-time: it was recently optioned as a major motion picture by Drew Barrymore, with a screenplay by Ghost World's Clowes and Terry Zwigoff. Also included is Clowes' hilariously Freudian deconstruction of professional athletes, "On Sports," which caused a stir in San Antonio last year when reprinted in the city's most popular weekly paper, prompting an advertising boycott and demands for the paper to be destroyed by local sports fans. Noted comics historian Roger Sabin, author of Phaidon's <I>Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels, calls <I>20th Century Eightball a "corrosively satirical vision of an America cracking apart, and confirms Clowes as a worthy successor to the underground greats of the 1960s." 40 pages in color, fully illustrated.

<strong>This hilarious classic is a brutal, scathing peek into the insular, pathetic world of the comics industry. If you think Comic Book Guy on <em>The Simpsons is pathetic (and hilarious), wait 'til you meet Dan Pussey! A vicious satire of pop culture and the commerce of art in a new edition, with a new cover and intro by Clowes! This hilarious classic from Dan Clowes is a brutal and scathing peek into the insular, pathetic world of the comic book industry, as seen through the eyes of antihero Dan Pussey (pronounced "Pooh-say"), creator of the smash superhero comic "Nauseator." From cradle to grave, Clowes presents the complete saga of Young Dan Pussey, mercilessly skewering the business and medium of comics, bouncing from art to commerce to culture high and low. Clowes not only parodies the superhero genre (notably Stan "The Man" Lee), but also his own peers, from his publishers and fellow authors at Fantagraphics to artistic heavyweights like Art Spiegelman (seen here as "Gummo Bubbleman"). Through it all, Pussey dreams endlessly about having sex with a woman, but even those fantasies degenerate into superhero scenarios. 64 pages of black-and-white comics.

The bestselling author of <I>Ghost World collects his acclaimed short stories from Eightball and <I>Esquire in softcover for the first time.

The dramatic short stories included in this first softcover edition of <I>Caricature have drawn comparisons to Nabokov for their complex naturalism and sense of humor. Anchored by the title story, considered the first great apotheosis of Clowes' seminal <I>Eightball underground comic book series, Caricature also includes eight other stories, including "Green Eyeliner"—originally published in Esquire as the first work of comics to be featured in the magazine's fiction issue (and commissioned by then-editor Dave Eggers)—"Gynecology," "Blue Italian Shit," "The Gold Mommy," and more. <P>Clowes has been the most successful alternative cartoonist of his generation, and interest in Caricature should be significant. The film adaptation of Clowes' best-selling book, Ghost World, directed by Terry (Crumb) Zwigoff and starring Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi, will be released in summer 2001 by MGM/UA and has garnered advance critical praise. A new edition of the Ghost World graphic novel and the screenplay of the film—written by Clowes and Zwigoff—are both being published by Fantagraphics in conjunction with the film, while Clowes' last novel, Pantheon's <I>David Boring (2000), was heavily promoted in 2000 with a national tour.