The Complete Eightball – 1-18

The Complete Eightball – 1-18 by Daniel Clowes (2022) When I heard that Daniel Clowes had a new book coming out (this fall) I decided to read and re-read all of his stuff and maybe even rank them (because I’m a nerd—see, “Listz-O-Mania!” on this website) before the new one comes out. Entirely for fun, of course. But, however, I decided to skip some of the ones I don’t have—mostly the earlier books like Pussey! and the two Lloyd Llewellyn collections, Orgy Bound, and Lout Rampage! I do plan to get to the rest, but we’ll see. There is some overlap with some of his books and this collection, of course, but seeing how all of his stuff if worth re-reading, I’m all for it. You can read this cinderblock of comics from cover to cover (I did)—including the letters (letters!) printed in original issues. Also, a couple of sections of notes by the author—worth reading! It’s fun seeing the serials Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and Ghost World in their original context—maybe even better to read them spaced with other stuff in between. I also really like the ongoing Dan Pussey! saga. But the most truly weird, sometimes, and often funniest stuff are the short comics, often one-offs, that might go a few pages, or maybe just one, or half a page—sometimes a single panel. My favorites include: “Nature Boy” (three pages, most of it some striking, dark, complex jungle images, with a kid exploring, and then the final couple frames, truly weird), “Zubrick and Pogeybiat,” “Dickie—Disgusting Old Acne Fetishist” (really gross), “A Message to the People of the Future,” “Grip Glutz and Shamrock Squid” (made me laugh harder than anything), “Ectomorph,” “Glue Destiny,” “Cool Your Jets” (Stew and Lew), “On Sports,” “Hippypants and Peace Bear,” and many many more, really no bad ones. It’s interesting to see when different things came out, and next to what, and in what issue. Offhand, I’d say my favorite ever issue of Eightball would be Number Eleven (which came out 1993). It starts with “The Party,” which is one of the more realist and seemingly autobiographical ones I can think of… and the issue ends with the first installment of “Ghost World.” Then there’s the “Hollywood adaption” of Velvet Glove—really funny. But in the middle are two of the more twisted comics, in my opinion. One is called “The Fairy Frog,” which he says is an Irish Folktale—and it reads like it—weird, scary, and not totally adding up—but there’s something about the way he illustrates it that makes it even more disturbing, and also very funny. And then there’s “The Happy Fisherman”—that could be a small-town morning paper comic done by R. Crumb—about a fisherman with no pants and a frozen carp stuck to his crotch—his companion a talking worm, a piece of bait hanging from his fishing pole. They meet the deranged Smitty the Dowser, some drug dealers (who Smitty executes), and “Furburger,” and… well, he never reaches the ol’ fishin’ hole. It might sound like I’m making that up, but no, it was Clowes, in 1993.

6.28.23