Eightball (comics)

Last updated
Eightball
EightballCover.jpg
Cover of Eightball #8.
Publication information
Publisher Fantagraphics
ScheduleIrregular
Format Ongoing series
Genre Alternative comics
Publication dateOctober 1989 – June 2004
No. of issues23
Creative team
Created byDaniel Clowes
Written by Daniel Clowes

Eightball is a comic book by Daniel Clowes and published by Fantagraphics Books. It ran from 1989 to 2004. The first issue appeared soon after the end of Clowes's previous comic book, Lloyd Llewellyn . Eightball has been among the best-selling series in alternative comics.

Contents

Early issues of Eightball feature a mixture of very short, often crudely humorous comics ("Zubrick and Pogeybait", "The Sensual Santa"), topical rants and satires ("Art School Confidential", "On Sports"), longer, more reflective self-contained stories ("Caricature", "Immortal Invisible"), and serialized works. The first extended story serialized in Eightball was Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron , which ran in issues #1–10. Glove was followed by Ghost World (issues #11–18). Beginning with #19 each issue of Eightball has been devoted to a single storyline, as opposed to the more eclectic format of the earlier issues. Issues #19–21 serialized the graphic novel David Boring , while issues #22 and 23 each consisted of a collection of short, fragmentary stories in diverse styles and formats that meshed into a unified narrative ("Ice Haven" and "The Death Ray"). The issues of Eightball beginning with #19 have been published in full color in a larger magazine-sized format. Eightball #18 included a bound-in copy of Clowes's pamphlet Modern Cartoonist .

Single issues

Issue #1st Print DateStoriesNotes
1Oct - 89Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Devil Doll, The Laffin' Spittin' Man, Young Dan Pussey, What is the Most Important Invention of the Twentieth Century?'Devil Doll' is a parody of several religious tracts by Jack Chick
2Feb - 90Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, The Truth, I Hate You Deeply (Lloyd Llewellyn), What Do You Think George Washington's Voice Sounded Like?
3Jun- 90Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, The Stroll, The Young Manhood of Dan Pussey, What Can Robots Do?
4Oct - 90Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, I Love You Tenderly (Lloyd Llewellyn), The Future, Dan Pussey's Masturbation Fantasy, Sexual Frustration, What Do You Do for a Cold?
5Oct - 90Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Just Another Day, Playful Obsession, Paranoid
6Jun - 91Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, The Dr. Infinity Story (Dan Pussey), Marooned
7Nov - 91Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Art School Confidential, ChicagoArt School Confidential inspired the 2006 film of the same name. It was directed by Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes wrote the screenplay.
8Mar - 92Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Ugly Girls, Grist for the Mill, Dan Pussey Presents Komic Kollector's Korner, Nature Boy, Give it Up, My Suicide, Dialogues from Duplex Planet'Ugly Girls' contains a prototype of Enid from Ghost World
9Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
10Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (conclusion)
11Jun - 93Velvet Glove, Ghost World, The Party, The Fairy Frog, The Happy Fisherman, Why I Hate Christians, Ectomorph"Velvet Glove" is a parody of bad film adaptations, using the just-completed Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron as its source, with behind-the-scenes segments showing an increasingly anxious Clowes in talks with a clueless Hollywood producer, and scenes from the resulting movie, in which Clay is a tough, sarcastic police detective who plays by his own rules and makes pithy remarks (such as "what are you lookin' at?") before shooting his enemies. Tina is recast as a space alien who gives "Clay" a ring of power.
12Nov - 93Ghost World, Hippypants and Peace Bear, The Origin of Dan Pussey, Glue Destiny
13Apr - 94Ghost World, Buddy Bradley in 'Who Would You Rather Fuck: Ginger or Mary Ann?', Blue Italian Shit, Cool Your Jets, Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineThe Buddy Bradley story is based on characters by Peter Bagge.
14no indiciaGhost World, The Goldmommy, On Sports, The Death of Dan Pussey, The Sensual Santa
15Apr - 95Ghost World, Caricature, FeldmanThe Feldman character makes an appearance in the film 'Ghost World'
16Nov - 95Ghost World, Squirrel Girl and Candy Pants, Like a Weed, Joe, MCMLXVI, Immortal Invisible
17Aug - 96Ghost World, Gynecology
18Mar - 97Ghost World, Black Nylon, Latch-Key Kid, Modern CartoonistModern Cartoonist is a pamphlet included with the comic
19May - 98David Boring, Act I
20Feb - 99David Boring, Act 2
21Feb - 00David Boring, Act 3
22Oct - 01Ice Haven
23Jun - 04Death Ray

Book collections

Film adaptations

Ghost World was adapted by Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff into a 2001 feature film of the same name, for which Clowes and Zwigoff were nominated for an Academy Award for screenplay writing. Additionally, the 2006 Clowes/Zwigoff film Art School Confidential was loosely based on a short story of the same name which appeared in Eightball #7.

Controversy

The comic generated controversy when a high school teacher in Guilford, Connecticut gave Eightball #22 ( Ice Haven ) to a student as a make-up summer reading assignment. The parents of the student had concerns about the book's appropriateness. The superintendent of Guilford High School said the book was inappropriate for 13-year-olds and placed the teacher on leave. The teacher resigned before the matter was fully investigated. [1] The Guilford school district and principal were criticized for getting police involved and trying the issue in a "kangaroo court". [2]

Related Research Articles

A graphic novel is a long-form work of sequential art. The term graphic novel is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics scholars and industry professionals. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term comic book, which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fantagraphics</span> American publisher

Fantagraphics is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and (formerly) the erotic Eros Comix imprint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Bagge</span> American cartoonist (born 1957)

Peter Bagge is an American cartoonist whose best-known work includes the comics Neat Stuff and Hate. His stories often use black humor and exaggerated cartooning to dramatize the reduced expectations of middle-class American youth. He won two Harvey Awards in 1991, one for best cartoonist and one for his work on Hate. In recent decades Bagge has done more fact-based comics, everything from biographies to history to comics journalism. Publishers of Bagge's articles, illustrations, and comics include suck.com, MAD Magazine, toonlet, Discover, and the Weekly World News, with the comic strip Adventures of Batboy. He has expressed his libertarian views in features for Reason.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Clowes</span> American cartoonist and writer

Daniel Gillespie Clowes is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in Eightball, a solo anthology comic book series. An Eightball issue typically contained several short pieces and a chapter of a longer narrative that was later collected and published as a graphic novel, such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993), Ghost World (1997), David Boring (2000) and Patience (2016). Clowes's illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Vogue, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. With filmmaker Terry Zwigoff, Clowes adapted Ghost World into a 2001 film and another Eightball story into the 2006 film, Art School Confidential. Clowes's comics, graphic novels, and films have received numerous awards, including a Pen Award for Outstanding Work in Graphic Literature, over a dozen Harvey and Eisner Awards, and an Academy Award nomination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Burns (cartoonist)</span> American cartoonist and illustrator

Charles Burns is an American cartoonist and illustrator. His early work was published in a Sub Pop fanzine, and he achieved prominence in the early issues of RAW. His graphic novel Black Hole won the Harvey Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Sacco</span> Maltese–American cartoonist (born 1960)

Joe Sacco is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books Palestine (1996) and Footnotes in Gaza (2009), on Israeli–Palestinian relations; and Safe Area Goražde (2000) and The Fixer (2003) on the Bosnian War. In 2020, Sacco released Paying the Land, published by Henry Holt and Company.

<i>Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron</i> 1993 graphic novel by Dan Clowes

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The book follows a fantastic and paranoid plot, differing in tone from the stark realism of Clowes' later more widely known Ghost World. It contains nightmarish imagery, including dismemberment, deformed people and animals, and sexual fetishism.

<i>Lloyd Llewellyn</i> Comic book by Daniel Clowes

Lloyd Llewellyn is a comic book by Daniel Clowes. The black-and-white series, published by Fantagraphics Books, ran for six issues from April 1986 to June 1987. A final "special" issue was published in December 1988.

<i>"Omaha" the Cat Dancer</i> Erotic comic strip/book by Reed Waller and Kate Worley

"Omaha" the Cat Dancer is an erotic comic strip and later comic book created by artist Reed Waller and writer Kate Worley. Set in fictional Mipple City, Minnesota in a universe populated by anthropomorphic animal characters, the strip is a soap opera focusing on Omaha, a feline exotic dancer, and her lover, Chuck, the son of a business tycoon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Mazzucchelli</span> American comics artist and writer (born 1960)

David John Mazzucchelli is an American comics artist and writer, known for his work on seminal superhero comic book storylines Daredevil: Born Again and Batman: Year One, as well as for graphic novels in other genres, such as Asterios Polyp and City of Glass: The Graphic Novel. He is also an instructor who teaches comic book storytelling at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessica Abel</span> American cartoonist

Jessica Abel is an American comic book writer and artist, known as the creator of such works as Life Sucks, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, Soundtrack, La Perdida, Mirror, Window, Radio: An Illustrated Guide, and the omnibus series Artbabe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Griffith</span> American cartoonist (born 1944)

William Henry Jackson Griffith is an American cartoonist who signs his work Bill Griffith and Griffy. He is best known for his surreal daily comic strip Zippy. The catchphrase "Are we having fun yet?" is credited to Griffith.

<i>Ghost World</i> (comics) Graphic novel by Daniel Clowes

Ghost World is a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. It was serialized in issues #11–18 of Clowes's comic book series Eightball, and was published in book form in 1997 by Fantagraphics Books. It was a commercial and critical success and developed into a cult classic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terry LaBan</span> American cartoonist

Terry LaBan is an alternative/underground cartoonist and newspaper comic strip artist. He is known for his comic book series Cud, and his syndicated strip Edge City, created with his wife, Patty LaBan, a couples and family therapist.

<i>Ice Haven</i> 2005 graphic novel

Ice Haven is a 2005 graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. The book's contents were originally published as the comic book Eightball #22 and were subsequently reformatted to make the hardcover Ice Haven book.

<i>Caricature</i> (comics) Book by Daniel Clowes

Caricature is a book collection of nine comic short stories by Daniel Clowes. In contrast to earlier Clowes collections such as Lout Rampage! and Orgy Bound, Caricature concentrates on the more naturalistic, character-focused side of Clowes's output displayed in Ghost World. It includes some of his most admired short stories, including "Immortal, Invisible", "Gynecology" and the title story. All the material in the collection originally appeared in Clowes's comic book Eightball with the exception of "Green Eyeliner", which was published in Esquire.

<i>Ghost World</i> (film) 2001 black comedy film by Terry Zwigoff

Ghost World is a 2001 black comedy film co-written and directed by Terry Zwigoff. Based on the 1990s comic book Ghost World by Daniel Clowes, the story focuses on the lives of teenage outsiders Enid and Rebecca, who face a rift in their friendship as Enid takes an interest in an older man named Seymour, and becomes determined to help his romantic life.

<i>Pussey!</i>

Pussey! is a comics serial and graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. It was originally serialized across nine non-consecutive issues of Clowes's alternative comic book Eightball, and was later collected by Fantagraphics Books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Hensley</span> American cartoonist

Tim Hensley is an American alternative cartoonist. Hensley's most notable works are Wally Gropius published by Fantagraphics Books in 2010 and Sir Alfred No. 3 published by Pigeon Press in 2016. Hensley has been published in numerous anthologies, such as Smoke Signal, Dirty Stories, The Believer, Comic Art, Duplex Planet Illustrated, and special editions of The Comics Journal.

<i>Patience</i> (graphic novel) 2016 graphic novel by Daniel Clowes

Patience (2016) is a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, published by Fantagraphics. A science-fiction love story about time travel, it describes the misadventures of a man, Jack, after he finds his pregnant wife, Patience, murdered in their apartment. Many years later, when grief has destroyed his life, chance leads him to discover a time machine, which he plans to use to save Patience.

References

  1. Arnott, Christopher (2007-09-27). "Handling of teacher, comic issue riles parents". New Haven Advocate.
  2. "Nate Fisher: A Connecticut Teacher in a Kangaroo Court". odd time signatures. 30 September 2007.