Comics Fetish: The Death-Ray

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

One needs to maintain a bit of decorum, right?

Especially when nearing the half-century mark,
one needs to calm way the hell down & start radiating
a bit of gravitas, to cease acting like, say, a teenage kid
who finds that an inhalation of nicotine imbues him
with super-strength – or something sufficiently similar –
and begins using that power, and a weird weapon
inherited from his father, for other than the greater good.

Really, now.

One should know better, probably.

But, no, when I opened the package recently sent by
Canadian graphic-novel powerhouse Drawn & Quarterly
& saw that it was an advance copy of Daniel Clowes'
The Death-Ray, finally in its own hardcover format
after having been released as the fancy comic book Eightball,
issue #23, seven years ago … when I kenned what I held
in my calloused journo hands, I was compelled –
Oh, lord!  By powers beyond my reckoning! –
to strut over to the desk of Chronicle proofreader-and-Sports-editor Mark Fagan
and wave the glossy-covered, full-color volume right in his face.

In his face!

As if I were some juvenile & gloating fanboy.

As if I were playing Rusty Brown to Fagan's Chalky White
(which is a different comic, by Chris Ware, but never mind) …

"Dude," said this Fagan, a strawberry blonde softball fiend
and music producer and comics aficionado in addition to his Chron persona.
"You already have a copy of the new Clowes?" he said. "Damn, Brenner,
that's amazing. I'd heard it was coming out soon, but … wow."

Or maybe he just said "Fuck you, man" and looked real sour.

In any case, here comes the new, improved version of a terrific work
from the man who just won the PEN Center USA Literary Award for
"Outstanding Body of Work in Graphic Literature."

Okay.

Maybe you know Clowes' creations only from the movie version
of his Ghost World? In which case I'll try to refrain –
decorum, decorum! – from thinking of you as That Benighted Fool,
 but will also wonder how you can be reading a blogpost
 by the unworthy likes of me when you'd be better off spending your time
 catching up on the rest of Clowes' growing oeuvre.

Tell you what: The Death-Ray would be a good place to start.

The Death-Ray is Daniel Clowes at his storytelling and drawing peak,
subverting the superhero schtick not by turning it in on itself
(as some might say that Alan Moore did with Watchmen)
but by planting the ancient seeds of that genre in the polluted soil
of this real, much duller world.

That world (you know the one) & its fucked-up but ordinary inhabitants
  are what this story – like most of Clowes' best work – is concerned with,
regardless of the powers that add a bit of homicidal spice to the, er, stew.

"It's like Holden Caulfield with his phaser set on kill. Phonies beware."
 Lev Grossman wrote that of The Death-Ray in Time magazine back in '04.

Okay, yeah: No reason to gild that lily of description.

So if you're not into the whole superhero thing, you can still revel in
 this complex, detailed story of teenage alienation and perverted morals
before moving on to Clowes' more recent (and thoroughly Genre-Free™)
triumphs, Wilson and Mister Wonderful.

And if you do enjoy a bit of the Spandex-flavored derring-do,
why, then this Death-Ray will provide just enough of a reminder
 of that sort of thing to assuage your ferocious mutant appetite.

It'll be released this October, in, yes, a glorious hardcover edition.

Just like the one I'm holding right now, Fagan.

It's mine.

Mine.