Daniel Clowes (sometimes credited as Dan Clowes) is a comics-author and cartoonist of alternative comic books, including Eightball, and Lloyd Llewelyn. He is best known by mainstream audiences for the movie Ghost World, which was an adaptation of one of his stories.

Biography

Clowes was born on April 14th, 1961 in Chicago. In 1979, he finished high school and attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. After gaining his BFA, he unsuccessfully attempted to find work in New York as an illustrator. From 1985 to 1989 he contributed both art and stories to Cracked magazine, working extensively on a feature called "The Uggly Family." In 1985 Clowes wrote his first Lloyd Llewellyn story, which he sent to Fantagraphics' Gary Groth and which soon appeared in issue 13 of the Hernandez Bros.'s Love & Rockets. Clowes's Lloyd Llewellyn comic ran for six issues, and in 1988 the last Lloyd Llewellyn title, The All-New Lloyd Llewellyn Special, appeared. Then in 1989 Fantagraphics published the first issue of Eightball, which, as of 2005, is at issue 23.

Eightball

The first extended piece serialized in Eightball was "Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron." Appearing in issues 1-10, this story featured a disjointed, surrealistic storyline. The first dozen or so issues of Eightball typically featured a numerber of short comedic stories, but later issues have tended to focus on longer narratives, characters, and interpersonal relationships. "Ghost World," released as a collection in 1997 after being serialized in Eightball (11-18), is an example of this later approach. "Ghost World" was adapted by Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff into a full-length feature film in 2001; both were nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay. Issues 19-21 serialized "David Boring" and were later collected and released as a graphic novel by Pantheon.

Clowes continues to issue Eightball sporadically, with the most recent issues ("Ice Haven" #22 [2002] and "The Death-Ray" #23 [2004]) each conceived as an artistically ambitious and self-contained work, featuring oversized, all-color formats.

Trivia

The main character of Ghost World is named Enid Coleslaw, which is an anagram for Daniel Clowes. Clowes's artwork can also be seen in the Ramones video for "I Don't Want to Grow Up".

Partial Bibliography

Comic books:

• Lloyd Llewelyn
• Eightball

Collections:

• Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
• Pussey!
• Orgy Bound
• Ghost World
• Caricature
• David Boring
• Twentieth Century Eightball

Work has also appeared in:

• Cracked
• National Lampoon

Commercial work:

• OK Soda - Clowes was one of the main illustrators for the OK Soda cans and print material, along with fellow Fantagraphics artist Charles Burns.

External links

• Daniel Clowes Bibliography: An extensive bibliography of Clowes's work, interviews, and features.
• Daniel Clowes at Fantagraphics: The publisher's page with biography.
• Daniel Clowes: Biography & discussion of different comics and characters