How her hair comes out in clumps; the chemo, strips her down to essentials. In the chair with the straight back he picks at the liver spots on the back of his hands, the evening air rolling through the house with the queasy certainty of a coming storm.
Daniel Clowes is far from a household name, but in the world of alternative comics he’s a legend. Once you become familiar with Clowes’s distinctive artistic style it becomes easy to recognize everywhere—from covers of The New Yorker to the logo for Hollywood’s Meltdown Comics. For much of his career Clowes’s work appeared in Eightball, an independent comic written and drawn by Clowes himself, released by the Fantagraphics label.Eightball was an eclectic collection of gag comics, social parody, and longer stories broken up into chapters, all infused with Clowes’s deadpan wit and love of the graphic design of the 1960’s.
A young man walked down to the lake beside his house. He stood on the pier and looked out over the water, thinking about his problem. He wanted to marry his girl but he didn’t have enough money to give her a proper wedding. She deserved a beautiful wedding, she deserved a nice honeymoon.
The alarm went off with a sharp beep. Tim opened his eyes with a sigh. He pulled the blanket around his skinny body; he was shivering, even with all his clothes on. Grey light came in through the gap in the curtains and gave the room a sickly aura that complimented the feeling in Tim’s stomach. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and ran a hand through his greasy hair. He looked around the room. He could see condensation on the walls. This caravan was like an ice box. The walls were of thin plywood like a cheap coffin.
So take that, all you assholes that cringed when I sang off-key or hit wonky piano chords in my last two songs. I used to care. I used to stand by myself on stage with a harmonica and acoustic guitar and point an angry finger at the whole fucking establishment, but you know what? I just don’t care anymore. I’m seventy-one goddamn years old and everyone thinks I’m a prophet or a hero or something, so why get so uptight? I got God and I got time, so here I am. Applaud.
When she invited me to go upstairs, I followed. The only desire I felt was to get it over with, to lose the thing which set me aside from the others. She was a means to an end and I used her to get me there. She was a tunnel to the light at the other side.
It wasn’t the noise a man would make running, or an animal for that matter. It was…it was like a kind of scamper, a kind of noise that five or six legs would make.
No one cares about us. You think anyone gives a fuck that my old Man can’t stop beating the shit out of me? Or that Stevie’s Dad won’t get a job? You think anyone gives a fuck about Jimmy’s older brother selling pot down at the field? Or Michele’s Mom fucking around? No. No one fucking cares.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” she said. “I didn’t mean to put you in a bad spot, Mark. I just thought it would be better, easier, if we could still be friends.”
“Right. Friends,” I said and stopped myself from staring at her chest. Although I’d touched her breasts thousands of times, they now seemed as strange and new and exciting as a shuttle into space.