Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #115705 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 102 pages

Synopsis
Available now for the first time in paperback, CARICATURE is undoubtedly Clowe's finest work to date. Included is the title story, considered by many to be Clowes at his best, with its evocative depiction of a lonely fairground caricaturist attempting to reconcile his creative dreams with his less than creative reality. Also included are several full-colour shorts, including the only full-painted strip of Clowes' career MCMLXVI, as well as Green Eyeliner which in 1998 became the first non-prose work ever to appear in Esquire magazine's annual fiction issue.

Customer Reviews

Beautifully crafted short stories
This is a collection of short stories so I can't use the coy euphemism "graphic novel" - it's a comic, ladies and gentlemen! Daniel Clowes is probably best known as the author of Ghost World which was recently made into a film. As you might expect, this is not Marvel superheroes type material.
The collection is original and often haunting. The title story about a middle-aged caricaturist is a fairly conventional 'literary' narrative, but the other pieces include several chapters of what I guess to be semi-autobiography, a nightmarish dream-like story and an amusing Freudian take on the idea of superheroes. The title of the collection belies the fact that most of the stories create at least one believable, interesting character.
There is a lot of talk about comics as a "mature" medium, but Clowes is one of the few author/illustrators who really exemplifies this. These stories are more moving and better crafted than most literary fiction. My only complaint is that due to the nature of the medium, it is all over too quickly - however, it repays multiple readings.
I strongly recommend this to those who liked Ghost World or anyone who enjoys fiction.

Nice set of character studies
Caricatures bills itself as "nine stories", but in fact they are more extended character studies than actual narratives. I love the way Clowes takes us into his characters' worlds, and at the same time using the graphic medium, we can get an idea of how other people are reacting to them. Most of his viewpoint characters are male, though there is one sequence, "Green Eyeliner", with a female lead.

Almost all of the stories involve either experiencing or reliving an unhappy and isolated adolescence, and this could get old rather quickly, but I think he rings the changes on the theme with enough diversity to keep you engaged.

The one piece I found I had doubts about was the last, "Black Nylon", whose protagonist likes to dress up as a superhero; it wasn't obvious to me if he was a nutter in our world, where there are no costumed superheroes, or if he was a nutter in the standard comics setting where superheroes are a facet of daily life. I think it is probably the latter, in which case the piece jars with the naturalistic setting of the rest of the book. Playing such games with the reader is risky, but usually Clowes does pull it off, and the story (such as it is) often turns out to be about something different from what we first think it is going to be.

Beautifully crafted short stories
This is a collection of short stories so I can't use the coy euphemism "graphic novel" - it's a comic, ladies and gentlemen! Daniel Clowes is probably best known as the author of Ghost World which was recently made into a film. As you might expect, this is not Marvel superheroes type material.
The collection is original and often haunting. The title story about a middle-aged caricaturist is a fairly conventional 'literary' narrative, but the other pieces include several chapters of what I guess to be semi-autobiography, a nightmarish dream-like story and an amusing Freudian take on the idea of superheroes. The title of the collection belies the fact that most of the stories create at least one believable, interesting character.
There is a lot of talk about comics as a "mature" medium, but Clowes is one of the few author/illustrators who really exemplifies this. These stories are more moving and better crafted than most literary fiction. My only complaint is that due to the nature of the medium, it is all over too quickly - however, it repays multiple readings.
I strongly recommend this to those who liked Ghost World or anyone who enjoys fiction.