Clowes is never going to force a ‘happy ever after’ ending, but given Marshall’s starting point, it’s fairly upbeat.Ĭlowes is a capable if unspectacular artist. A cast of oddball supporting characters is supplied as foils for the leads. It might all end there, but an impromptu act of heroism on Marshall’s part keeps him in the game. Things seem to be going well until Natalie is called away to something else: an emotional challenge she needs to face. These effects work more elegantly in a comic than in novels or films. At times this drowns out actual conversations: he can’t hear her over his inner voice, and the captions literally obscure the dialogue balloons. He makes good use here of Marshall’s interior voice, which gives us an anxious running commentary on the night’s events. Clowes’ strength as a writer is his characters. It’s all told from Marshall’s viewpoint, except for a two-page interlude of the couple who set up the date discussing how they think it will go.

It’s an understated story of an evening and the next morning. Marshall, the protagonist of Mister Wonderful (it’s ironic), is similar except that he is a middle aged man sitting in a cafe wondering if his date will show up. In a mean prank they respond to a lonely hearts ad from a middle-aged man and sit in the cafe watching his discomfort and disappointment. Ghost World relates how Enid and Rebecca, teenaged, slightly alienated outsiders with a wry critique of the world around them, face a turning point in their lives. The original pages as laid out for the magazine have been split into two of the book’s landscape format pages, with extra pages added.Ĭlowes is most famous for Ghost World, subsequently a successful film, and Mister Wonderful is almost a companion piece. It was originally published in the prestigious New York Times Sunday Magazine, where it won an Eisner award for Best Short Story, but has been reworked and expanded for this volume. Mister Wonderful was described by its creator Daniel Clowes as a ‘midlife romance’.

Mister wonderful daniel clowes