Robert Crumb, Woody Allen, Kurt Cobain… What do these artists have in common? They are all magnificent losers! We are not the bleak kind here at Sixpack, yet we can’t help but feel a special fondness for these neurotic, depressed and worn down characters who transform, through art, their defeats into victories.
Which is why we pounced on Wilson, the latest comic book by Daniel Clowes, another great expert on anti-heroism.
Let us recall the characters of Eight Ball, the periodic comic book that brought Clowes to light in the early 90’s. David Boring, the Art School Confidential students, but mostly Enid and Rebecca, the two post-teenagers from Ghost World (later portrayed by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson on screen), their icy humor and their unforgiving and sarcastic outlook on society. Through them all, Clowes has never ceased manhandling the myth of the winner, that persistent diktat of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed well-being, overthrowing accepted values. Clowes has set his slightly sociopathic to outright misanthropic characters as new models of coolness. A tribute to “haters”. Normalized happiness made outdated and tacky. Post-adolescent disenchantment as the new esthetic, long before the birth of grunge culture and its subsequent digestion by pop culture.
Tick tock tick tock. Years go by. Like his creator, Wilson, previously unpublished character, has just hit 40 and all the hassle that goes with it. Death of the father, return to the dreary hometown - Oakland - and ensuing reassessment. The midlife crisis in all its glory. Wilson’s bitterness is heightened by a world whose meaning decidedly eludes him. When some suit he meets explains that he makes his living “implementing managerial strategies”, Wilson simply retorts: “Oh God, it’s so terrible the way people live!”
But Clowes’ genius resides in his ability to sidestep hopeless cynicism. He has instead developed and mastered the art of sarcasm and irony. His intelligence and humor change venom into a delicate nectar, drama into black comedy. Transforming shit into gold: an essential quality of the magnificent loser!
In spite of life’s difficulties, disillusionments and a stint in prison, Wilson remains this eternal tender-hearted optimist who relentlessly reaches out to people and hopes for the best in every situation. Cynicism as his desperate declaration of love. Or, like Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote: “The misanthrope only hates men at first the better to love them later”.
What if the true modern-day hero was that depressive guy from around the corner?
Wilson, available on Amazon (Published by Drawn & Quarterly)
French version soon available from Editions Cornélius