We adore embarrassment, so long as it is not our own. Those who make us uncomfortable, whose misfortunes are so overwhelming as to inspire laughter instead of tears, are beacons of hope to anyone with anything left to lose. But it takes a consummate artist to create losers we love.
Daniel Clowes has proven time and again that he is just such an artist—a graphic artist whose unique stories combine a seemingly simple visual style with a sophisticated psychological understanding. In his latest work, divorced 40-something Marshall is set up on a blind date. What could go wrong? The result lives up to the title, Mister Wonderful, a pitch-perfect combination of poignant and painful.
Like most brilliant writers, Clowes makes it all look very easy, so easy the reader must slow down to understand all the complicated effects that go into the story. Visually, his cartooning style is very simple, but the details are telling and powerful. He manages, with a few brief strokes, to use an abbreviated technique that creates a hyper-realistic texture. The reader feels right at home in his bars, diners and city streets. When he adopts a more impressionistic feel, the results are powerful.
But narrative is king in Clowes’ work. Marshall is a powerfully realized character precisely because the story that unfolds is so everyday, so lose-lose. From the very first frame, the tension is high as we wonder if Marshall’s date will show, or worse, if she will show up and be unpalatable even to Marshall. What follows is a comedy of small-scale urban terrors, the kind of things we’re all scared will happen to us precisely because we know we can and will live through them.
Mister Wonderful is expanded from a serial that originally ran in the New York Times Magazine, but the appeal of Clowes’ characters is universal. We all think we know somebody like Marshall—but nobody believes themselves to be Marshall. When you hit the bottom of the barrel, hope springs eternal that there is always something worse underneath.
DANIEL CLOWES reads from ‘Mister Wonderful’ on Tuesday, April 19 at 7:30pm at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. Free.
