Monica

How to describe the work of Dan Clowes for those who haven't been reading him for thirty-odd years? Cranky, biting, hilarious, and tender: he often puts his jaw-dropping drafting skills in the service of detailing the most banal varieties of human grotesquerie, and he is both a more sturdily traditional storyteller than most of his fellow indie-comics visionaries and utterly willing to turn his story inside-out on a dime (e.g. the stunning but fully earned twist in this book's final frame). Monica is a mature work in the very best way, full of the perspective of lives lived and dreams found and dashed, and I would say it was the best in his wonderful career, if Ghost World wasn't such a stone-cold masterpiece.