Monday, August 16, 2004
Time.comix reviews Eightball #23 by Dan Clowes.
"Eightball" #23 (Fantagraphics Books; 40 pages; $7), continues Clowes' ever more remarkable maturation as an artist with the single-issue story, "The Death Ray." Two years ago, "Eightball" #22 gave us an Altman-esque fractured look at the strange residents of suburbia (see TIME.comix review). Like its predecessor, number 23 is divided into multiple vignettes, but this time it focuses exclusively on the life of one character. Clowes takes the traditional superhero motifs -- extraordinary powers, special gadgets, the sidekick, and the origin story -- but eliminates the "super" and the "hero." Instead we get Andy, AKA The Death Ray, a drip of a guy with a completely self-serving sense of morality who beats people up and zaps anything or anybody into non-existence. Through him, Clowes creates a darkly hilarious upending of the superhero myth of great powers inspiring great responsibility. In Clowes' world, such power would simply become an extension of the hopelessly flawed, dull and petty people we often are.
(Link via Bookslut.)
11:14:00 AM
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