Daniel Clowes: From Eightball to Monica – Genius or Overhyped Weirdo?

Written by Matheus

Filmmaker by day, Wishlistmaker by night. Kamala Khan’s unofficial PR team since 2014.

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Eightball is an alternative comic book series written and illustrated by Daniel Clowes, first published in 1989 by Fantagraphics. It ran for 23 issues until 2004, evolving from a compilation of shorter strips, satirical shorts, and surrealist goofs into a home for longer, more substantial graphic novellas. Several of Clowes' most critically acclaimed works debuted in Eightball, including Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Ghost World, and David Boring.

The early issues are a spiky, acidic stew of underground comix energy mixed with post-Reagan, pre-internet disaffection. It's raw, punk, and soaked in references to 90s pop culture America. Funny, for sure – but not funny just to be funny. As the series progressed, Clowes’ storytelling became tighter, colder, and more psychologically intense. You can see his transformation from a snarky alt-comix guy into a precise dissector of American alienation.

It’s one of the most important works in the alt-comics canon.

Cut the Bullshit

Eightball is that weird thing your friend’s cooler older brother kept in a plastic bag next to his more carefully packaged copy of Playboy. It’s the kind of thing you find way too young and think, “Wow, maybe I don’t understand this now, but someday I will. And I will be so f***ing smart.” Then you try reading it ten years later and think, “This is so f***ing silly. I was a stupid idiot. Wait. Should I think this is genius? Oh God. Is stupid all I’m gonna be? I’m gonna order food tonight.”

It’s so American it hurts. Like very much precise, but annoyingly precise in the way only another “way inserted into its own buttlocks” American could be. (I thought saying butt here would be rude, and Walt would be like, “Math, that is too much. I draw the line at butts,” so I said buttlocks because that’s gonna fix this.)

Ah, yeah yeah. It’s one of the most important works in the alt-comics canon.

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The first serialization in Eightball is a Lynch’s Eraserhead-inspired exercise in turning narrative into an eternal seeking game, until it devours itself in an anxiety-fueled look at the grotesque elements of American culture and imagery. It tells the story of a man obsessed with finding a woman he recognizes from an old porn movie he watches in a cinema. The journey dives deep into conspiracy theories – and then goes even further, like a knife-twist that draws far more blood than it should.

Clowes is a young artist who is completely unafraid, bold, and erratic – and that’s nothing short of freeing and refreshing. It’s a challenging read, but very much worth it, even if you’re not a fan of experimental art.

Cut the Bullshit

I can't understand a single word of this. Is this God’s punishment for finally landing the dream job of writing about comic books? Is this how it ends? I’ll write something stupid about the most famous guys in comics, and everyone at Walt's will realize I’m actually dumb.

(Then I stopped reading and pushed the Clowes article a month later in my schedule.)

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This is a satire of the comics industry told through a brutally honest cartoon about Dan Pussey – a young, rising star in the illustration world, with a name to match. It captures everything you’ve ever thought about the mass commercialization of art that the comic book industry has become, but with a very funny zinger attached. It acts like a love letter to the underpaid, underserved, and exhausted artists who built the industry, while also mocking and exposing the stupidity involved. It even points fingers at figures like Stan Lee or in-house names at Fantagraphics. This is 90s political cartooning at its peak.

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Would Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee fight over who pouches Pussey in the ’90s? If I never unwrap a copy of Battle Beast, will that make me rich in 2030? Oh, anyway. This is funny. (I swear to God, the obvious joke in this paragraph was accidental – and once I noticed, I just couldn't bring myself to erase it.)

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This is how Clowes becomes an essential writer. He captures the storm that happens in the brief and excruciating period between finishing high school and being ready to leave everything that has been delaying your life – and the moment you're forced to become an adult and realize the problem might be yourself. There's no amount of distance that will fix this for you automatically.

It follows two teenage friends at that exact blink of an eye. And it's annoying and painful, as it should be. Here, Clowes creates an identity for himself in the way he writes dialogue, finding hilarity between the rawness of sincerity and the theater of projecting. Then he takes an extra step, peeling back the curtain for his characters in simple, brief panels – a kindness that can feel a bit rude in its truthfulness, but that undeniably places Ghost World as the classic book of a whole generation.

Cut the Bullshit

We all saw the same Sofia Coppola movie, right? This feels like I'm scraping the leftovers of the Sundance Film Festival trash in 2002. But it doesn't matter how tired you are of this particular 21st-century annoying teenager trope – the execution of the last page and the ending will haunt your inner thoughts for however many hours you allow yourself to be this uncomfortable.

If I could jump through a comic and kill a character, I would, simply because of how annoying these girls are. Wait, was I like this? Sorry, Mom. (Maybe not Dad – he deserved it, right?)

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Clowes evolves his narrative style into big-structure storytelling with rhythmic precision and mature paneling. All the longings and anxieties that once screamed and burst through the pages of the early Eightball issues are now unafraid and unashamed to tell a complete story. The protagonist, with a name to match, becomes obsessed with a woman he sleeps with – a change that shakes his otherwise mundane life.

In his quest to find her (as in Velvet), the world responds to his lack of emotion with insanity and chaos, delivered through Clowes' polished genre work – in other words, a proper thriller. The themes here, such as a world always on the brink of an almost boring and expected apocalypse, will continue to follow the author into his more complex later works.

Cut the Bullshit

Holy shit, do I actually love this guy? I feel like he’s telling me similar things to the craziness in the Eightball issues, but letting me follow instead of calling me a moron every five panels. Thank fucking God, man. Jesus Christ. Hell yeaaaaaaah, I get it now.

Oh my God, should I go back and try Velvet again? I’ll do that. After catching up on Batman tho. Wait… maybe I am a moron.

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These articles are more than just a way to sell you stuff. I have a creative liberty in writing them that’s extremely rare, and I want the articles to be as complete as possible – a way to say thank you for this incredible space. And I’m sure they’ll be back in print soon.

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I read them before I saw they were out of print, so now I’m going to write about them so I don’t feel like I wasted time. And give me a break – it’s my article, dude. Jesus, stop asking me stuff using my inner voice. F*ck off.

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Like in Ice Haven, Clowes uses the classic cartoon format and the freedom of varied penciling styles to tell a story in short, punchline-at-the-end kind of zines that bounce in and out of Wilson’s life – the most annoyingly identifiable asshole you’ll ever meet. It frames middle-aged, resentful men, using the machinations of their own anxiety-fueled thoughts as exposition for a truth they either don’t see or painfully can’t unsee: that they are the problem.

The format is one thing that makes this interesting, for sure. But it’s Clowes’ tendency to allow complexity in his characters that makes this stand above the average. He gives them a way out – and it’s their responsibility to take it or not. In this case, Wilson discovers that his former girlfriend didn’t have an abortion 17 years ago. Instead, she gave the kid up for adoption. So the most annoying asshole is a father.

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If you think the girls from Ghost World are annoying, this time Clowes hits you with the one thing we'd all rather walk than sit next to on public transport: middle-aged American men.

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If Pussey is Clowes’ commentary on the comic industry, this is his take on the superhero phenomenon and its tropes. He distorts the down-on-his-luck Peter Parker figure into a more realistic boy-in-America who suddenly gains power. And of course, it’s creepy and prone to banal violence. The hit is so precise it can hurt a little.

The relationship between heroes and fascism is a path that's impossible not to question. It often becomes clear in the uncomfortable connection between the fast-growing hate factories the internet has become and how mainstream superheroes dominated the last decade – and the role they might play in that whole ordeal. It's not a connection we, as comic book fans, like to make, but one we can’t afford to keep ignoring.

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Runs crying “Mom!!!!!! Dan said boys who like Spider-Man should grow up, but he's the dumb one, right? I'm 1.75!!”

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His most visually ambitious, narratively dynamic, and engaging work to date. A neon-lit, genre-bending sci-fi tragedy. The story of Jack, a desperate man trying to prevent a life-ending event. It keeps you guessing at every turn and then hits you right in the face. The story zigs when you think it’s going to zag – and then zags anyway (is "zags it" a thing?) – but in a better form than you imagined in the first place. And that’s something only a now-seasoned artist can do, without losing the freshness that once defined him.

The whole thing is Clowes at his most sincere. Beneath the temporal chaos and trippy visuals, he writes a grief novel – a portrait of a man so warped by loss and guilt that he can’t help but destroy reality to resolve it. There’s an emotional bluntness here that feels new. Unlike the ironies of Ghost World or the cold spirals of David Boring, this one is nothing but raw, obsessive love that alternates between prophecy and delusion.

It would be fair to call this his magnum opus – if he didn’t then follow it with Monica. Among all the complexity, Patience reminds me that Clowes was always good at translating humanity, whether through unbearable sarcasm or the simple act of allowing love to be the bridge.

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Oh cool, time travel. That old reliable. Let’s get in the DeLorean and beep-boop through 180 pages and be sarcastic about the genre. Math loves that stuff, right Clowes??? Good old cold ’n’ bitter Clowes would never be this not-sarcastically sincere in a comic...

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Then, a career seems to reach its culmination in this absolutely brilliant and striking graphic novel. If Clowes’ comics are a long look into the psychic toll of post-war America – a century haunted by advertising jingles, failed fathers, and the quiet dread of living in a body – Monica is the book where all of it condenses. The ironic 90s rage, the generational fallout, the lingering sense that something apocalyptic is always happening just off-panel… it’s all here. That horror that never explodes, never announces itself, but just is – circulating in the background.

Clowes’ character work, and the strange kindness he often extends to the people he also mocks, finds its most complete expression in Monica. A woman shaped by the psychedelic debris of 20th-century America and the emotional absences of everyone who was supposed to show up for her – parents, lovers, gods. And she’s on a quest (yep, that word again) to fill those missing gaps.

This is also everything Clowes has learned about longform comics – the rhythm, the pacing, the structure. Monica hops through styles and formats with precision: war comics, 50s romance, 70s cult zines, evangelical pamphlets, Cold War paranoia, ghost stories, Lynchian tangents – all part of the same tapestry.

It works beautifully.

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The last panel of this will never leave me, I think. Clowes’ comics can make you stare around and feel both out of place and embarrassingly present at the same time. Like the feeling when you put on glasses after years of seeing things kinda blurred. And then you remember you have shit to do and move on. Until one weird day, you're folding laundry, and that ending hits you again.

After Monica, I stared around a bit, kinda scared to be honest. Of what, I don’t know. Then I remembered I had shit to do.