The Complete Eightball 1-18

There was a time (the early '90s, specifically) when there were few things more exciting than seeing a new issue of Eightball on the racks at Fallout Records & Comics. There were lots of artists reinventing comics then (Chris Ware, Julie Doucet, Charles Burns, etc.) but Dan Clowes was the one whose work I looked forward to most, and the one whose sourly hilarious but somehow humane grotesqueries are still burrowed under my skin the deepest. If you've never read him before, you may not want to invest in this $119.95 deluxe boxed set, which reprints the first dozen and a half Eightball pamphlets, including the full runs of his serials Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Dan Pussey, and, of course, the great Ghost World, along with dozens of brilliant one-off gags and tales, even though we're selling it for a mere $99.95. (You should probably start with Ghost World.) But for my fellow Clowes fanatics (I know you're out there) it might be your favorite thing all year.