This led to Fantagraphics subsequently publishing six magazine-sized B&W issues of Lloyd Lewellyn in 1986 and ’87, with all of Clowes’ LL stories later republished in graphic novel form in 1993 as The Official Lloyd Llewellyn Collection.Įightball was Clowes’ next project, a solo comics anthology that featured several serialized stories such the surreal “Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron,” “Ghost World,” “Pussey,” and “Art School Confidential” alongside cartoon strips and single-issue rants like “I Hate You Deeply” and “Why I Hate Christians,” as well as a handful of new Lloyd Lewellyn stories.Ĭlowes continued Eightball through 2004 and issue #23, but abandoned the anthology format with issue #19 to focus either on multi-issue stories like “David Boring” or a single-issue length story like “Ice Haven.” Clowes has a fluid but distinctive illustration style whereas the more realistic art he created for ongoing stories like “Ghost World” and “Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron” display what could come closest to being called a ‘trademark’ Clowes style, he’s equally adept at more cartoony, “funny animal” styled art as in the standalone story “Chicago,” a visual ode to his hometown, or the brilliant “Playful Obsession,” a tribute to–and parody of–the Harvey comics characters like Richie Rich that he grew up with. He sent his first Lewellyn story to Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth, and the Hernandez Brothers published it in their Love and Rockets magazine. During the same time period, Clowes drew the first comic to feature his recurring character Lloyd Lewellyn, a hard-boiled detective type who experiences humorous adventures in a 1950s-styled world influenced by Robert Williams’ “lowbrow” art style. Later issues, in a larger, magazine-sized format, sit outside of the anthology’s ‘continuum.’Ĭlowes began his professional career in 1985 with Cracked, the less-feted Mad magazine knock-off, contributing cartoons under a variety of pseudonyms, as well as his own name, until 1989. But writer and artist Daniel Clowes considers these eighteen issues, which Fantagraphics Books published from 1989 to 1997, as the comic’s true run. Fantagraphics has republished various stories from Eightball as stand-alone graphic novels through the years, and published a now out-of-print two-volume hardback collection of the series in 2015.

The recently-published The Complete Eightball 1-18 is a monster 528-page trade paperback collection that includes every page of the first eighteen issues of the ground-breaking and influential alternative comic with its original B&W and color artwork, as well as each issue’s letters page, product advertising, and often-enticing cover artwork.

Daniel clowes the complete eightball