In fiction - as in life - a self-deprecating sense of humor can be disarming, even endearing, if employed with a light touch. He attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., and now lives in Oakland, Calif.īut Clowes must strike a delicate balance.

But in that book, the main character often felt like a vehicle for the author's misanthropy here, Clowes has Marshall quickly turn his acerbic, judgmental eye inward, and the resulting self-appraisal comes off as much more empathetic and humane.ĭan Clowes is the author of Ghost World and a comic that formed the basis of the film Art School Confidential. As he does so, he judges his fellow customers harshly, in much the same fashion as the sneering title character of his previous book, Wilson. He opens the book with Marshall sitting alone in the coffee shop, fearfully imagining how the evening will go. As we turn each page, we feel Marshall's mounting worry that any misstep - a bad joke, an ill-timed observation, a too-nakedly needy question - will determine whether he builds a life together with a woman he has decided is perfect, or dies alone.Ĭlowes' humor in Mister Wonderful, as it was in books like Ghost World, Ice Haven and Wilson, is often biting, but here it's tempered by an unusual sweetness. But the tension Clowes creates is the intimate, familiar tension of budding romance, fraught with peril at every turn those stakes are high indeed. If Clowes weren't so deft at capturing Marshall's anxiety, the whole thing might seem slight. Mister Wonderful, which was originally serialized in The New York Times Magazine, is the story of where this one blind date takes these two lonely characters.

The tension Clowes creates is the intimate, familiar tension of budding romance, fraught with peril at every turn those stakes are high indeed.

It must be kind of awful.'Ĭlowes characterizes his hero's nervous self-involvement by deliberately placing that bit of inner monologue, and many others, over Natalie's word balloons, so that Marshall's paranoid fears and fantasies literally block us from hearing her. 'Most beautiful women turn so bitter when the realities of aging set in,' he thinks. Marshall, for his part, decided the second she walked into the coffee shop that Natalie is much too attractive a woman to tolerate his odious presence, so the fact that she is still sitting there, laughing at his jokes, means there must be something wrong with her. As their evening together wears on, the ruthlessly self-deprecating Marshall will provide Natalie with plenty of opportunities to change her mind on that score. She certainly doesn't appear to, although it should be noted that the poor woman has only just sat down.

'Dear God,' thinks Marshall, the hero of Daniel Clowes' new graphic novel, as he gazes across the table at his blind date Natalie, 'could it be? Does she actually not loathe me?'

Mister Wonderful by Daniel Clowes