Wilson

Wilson is billed as Daniel Clowes's "first original graphic novel," which sounds a little funny, since he's the author of Ghost World, one of the instant classics of that young genre, as well as the lesser-known but strangely wonderful David Boring, among others. But his other books first appeared serialized in his Eightball comics series, while Wilson comes to us all at once, in a beautiful oversized package. Wilson tells a single, complete story (of the bitterly lonely man named in the title), but it does so in tiny bites. Each page is a stand-alone vignette, in the familiar newspaper comics rhythm of setup, setup, setup, punch line: like Garfield, say, if Jon were a foul-mouthed incipient felon (and drawn with the tenderly grotesque genius of Clowes). The gags are the sort that stick in your throat rather than go down easy, and together they add up to a life that's just barely open to the possibility of wresting oneself out of the repetitions of hostility and failure. It's an intriguing addition to the most thrilling career in comics. --Tom Nissley