Ghost World's my favorite movie of all time. I actually enjoyed Art School Confidential too.

Bookwise, I love Ghost World too. I have the 20th Century Eightball collection and love it as well. Enjoyed David Boring.


Just picked up Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron yesterday and started it today. Completely bizarre. I have never have any idea where it's going. Just one sharp turn after another. I can't believe this is some of his earliest stuff, considering how linear his later stuff is compared to this. You'd expect it to be the opposite route with the standard author going experimental.

I haven't actually read anything by Robert Crumb but this is what I expect it to be like.

unbeknownst to me, i grew up on his earliest stuff.
he wrote "The Uggly Family" for Cracked.

I love Like a Velvet Glove. He captures that semi-nightmarish dream feeling in comic book form like David Lynch does in film.

Have you read Black Hole by Charles Burns? If not, you might want to look into that next.

Black Hole's on my reading list but I haven't found it at any library or on BookMooch and I'm always hesitant to shell out money for things unless I know I'll like it first.

I've got the first dozen or so issues of Eightball from way back. I should dig those out.

If you like Clowes, check out Adrienne Tomine. Tomine's art style rips off from Clowes, but I enjoy his stories. Check out Summer Blonde and Scrapbook.

i like Adrienne Tomine's drawing style more than Clowes, even if it might not exist without him.

Tomine's art is much more realistic in a way. Clowes's is much more characature-like. I probably like Tomine better, too, though.

On the subject of Clowes, anybody see the last issue of Nextwave where Immonen did "impressions" of the drawing styles of Paul Pope, Clowes, Mike Mignola and someone else I couldn't quite place? He mostly missed the mark with Clowes' style, but he did Paul Pope pretty well and was passable on Mignola. The sequences weren't really particularly good or funny or anything, but seeing as how Immonen's art is becoming the only reason I pick up that book (I don't think Warren Ellis is even trying), I thought it was kinda cool.

I love Ghost World; however, I was pretty disappointed in Art School Confidential, the movie, as it had so much potential.


I've not read any R. Crumb either but my elder siblings had lots of sex and pot-related Crumb cartoons scattered about in their rooms when I was growing up. I did see the documentary Crumb which I was going to recommend -- it is probably one of the best artist docs out there (imho).

From Immonen's blog, the 4 artists he was mimicing:

Paul Pope
Daniel Clowes
John Paul Leon
Mike Mignola

I really enjoy Immonen as well. I really glad he'll be doing Ultimate Spiderman. I never really liked Mark Bagley's art, but I did respect it. Bagley was always consistent and he can crank out pages like no one else. As much as I like Frank Quietly's art, I hate the fact that he can't do a monthly.

i'm not much of a comic fan, but i've found this really frustrating when i flip through issues while waiting for my chinese food:

if i love the cover art, chances are i won't like the art inside.

Yeah, I also want to see it because it's Terry Zwigoff and I loved both Clowes films and Bad Santa, as well.

I do love Tomine too. I've got 32 Stories and Sleepwalk.


I just finished Velvet Glove, by the way. And I'm not afraid to admit I don't get it. I suspect I'll have to reread it a couple of times more and read people's analyses online to try and understand it fully.

I wouldn't really say that I "got it", either, but that doesn't really matter to me. I'm not sure how interested I'd be in reading someone else's breakdown analysis of it, either.

I know. But I think there is a story there that I just didn't quite follow. Was the girl with the pipe, the mom who slept with the merman, and his ex-girlfriend all the same person? That's what it seemed to be hinting at but that makes no sense.