Salon kicks off a new regular column about funnybooks (!) with a great appreciation of Daniel Clowes.
Perhaps the most striking thing about "Ghost World" was how relentlessly Clowes refused to permit anything to exist in Enid's world that was as lovable, quirky and authentic as Enid herself. Enid wasn't just stuck in anonymous suburban strip-mall hell with dopey high school boys, bad fake blues bands, and no clear future to aspire toward. But even the traditional nests for losers and freaks and "artists" seemed to have been recycled past the point of redemption: Her "original punk rock" look was misinterpreted as "trendy" and the coffee houses were loaded with alterna-rock-boy poseurs. Meanwhile her best friend Becky was being seduced by Crate and Barrel and her neurotic, older-guy record-collector friend turned out to be susceptible to the charms of a peroxide-blond realtor. Even art school was out — the domain of solipsistic "performance artists" and those canny students who get brownie points for cynically regurgitating the zeitgeist on a platter.
"Ghost World," like just about every competent adolescent coming-of-age story, has been likened to "Catcher in the Rye." The comparison is apt in the sense that, to Enid, pretty much the whole world has become the kind of place where a beloved older brother has to switch from literary fiction to advertising copy as the cost of becoming an adult. In the graphic novel, Clowes even shows himself and his work as an object of Enid's ridicule; she shows up at one of his signings, only to find out that he is some pathetic old guy.
