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Sep 19, 2011

Sam rated it:

Wilson is a fifty-something who lives alone with his puppy, striking up conversations with strangers and then insulting them. One day he goes looking for his ex-wife, finds out they have a daughter, kidnap the teenage girl, goes to prison, and gets out to pick up his life where he left off - alone, minus the dog.

For a book that's full of sadness and pathos, Wilson is surprisingly funny mostly because Clowes makes Wilson say remarkably insensitive things to people. A woman is telling More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 07, 2010

Loyd rated it:

Daniel Clowes has a misanthrope's spirit trapped in a young man's brain. His books are difficult to attach "stars" to, only pros and cons. Pros: exquisite art and book production; unique sensibility and approach; expert use of the comic medium. Cons: sour, nihilistic characters self-deluded that they are truth-seekers; the occasional obvious, smart-aleck, gross-out punch-line; a sad, morbid view of relationships bordering on the pathological.

Wilson is a sorry, wandering sou More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 17, 2010

Sharon rated it:

Daniel Clowes is a genius, period. He captures a particular voice so well, the voice of the misanthrope longing to make a connection, yet turned off by what society has become at every juncture. In his newest work, Wilson, he nails this again with a character nearing middle age and pondering the universal questions of family, what his life meant, what to do for a living, etc. Of course, Clowes' twist on this makes the material both exceedingly depressing and funny, often both at the same time. T More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 25, 2010

Matt rated it:

I'm not really much of a "comic book reader." In fact, I eschew almost all graphic novels and comics, but I picked this up on recommendation from a friend who said "That new graphic novel by Daniel Clowes isn't very good, but you might like it. Here--check it out. [tosses the book on my desk:] You liked Synechdoche, NY, right?"

It's the story of a sad, lonely, extroverted man who can't seem to get a handle on why everything around him turns to shit. Each page is s More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 30, 2010

Greg rated it:

Wilson is that kind of person. The person who has no problem while you're sitting and reading to come up and start his own conversation with you. The not very lovable stranger who asks quasi-personal questions and then editorializes about your life. The sad asshole type who just can't help but engage strangers and obliviously feel like these strangers really give a fuck about what he thinks.

Part of the character of Wilson is self-incrimination of what I imagine More...

19 comments like (22 people liked it)

Apr 29, 2010

Tom rated it:

Dysthymiac misanthrope Wilson is the hero of Clowes's latest work, simultaneously funny and abrasive. For me, the best aspect of "Wilson" is telling the story of 20 years or so in a man's life in a serious of single-page sequences that both capture the fundamental contradictions of Wilson's persona and key aspects of his relationships with other people. The other technical challenge Clowes set for himself was to draw each page in a different style, which affects the interpretive mood o More...

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Oct 15, 2011

Joyce rated it:

Summary: Meet Wilson, an opinionated middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. In an ongoing quest to find human connection, he badgers friend and stranger alike into a series of onesided conversations, punctuating his own lofty discursions with a brutally honest, self-negating sense of humor. After his father dies, Wilson, now irrevocably alone, sets out to find his ex-wife with the hope of rekindling their long-dead relationship, and discovers he has a teenage daughte More...

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Jul 01, 2010

Shawn rated it:

I've been a fan of Daniel Clowes since I bought the first issue of LLOYD LLEWELLYN off the stands (so 24 years then, yeesh!). A new Clowes work is always something to get exited about (I quite liked the recent Ice Haven), and yet, when I'd gotten about 1/3 of the way into WILSON, I felt sure it was going to be my least favorite Clowes work (although I'd probably have to re-read Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and David Boring before I was sure). But as the book neared its quarter mark, and I More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 04, 2010

Jamie rated it:

Wilson was great fun - exactly what you'd expect from a Daniel Clowes story, but with extra bonus belly laughs! Creepy loner figure with arms by his sides wandering in a bewildered fashion through a slightly '50s-toned suburban setting - check! Triple helpings of misanthropy - check! Ugly, awkward sex - check! The twist this time is the story is laid out newspaper-strip style with a punchline at the end of each page, each page working on its own but also adding up to a full tale. And these punch More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 19, 2010

John rated it:

The antihero Wilson is a not unfamiliar Clowes character. He’s a cynical loner type reflecting on a life of failed relationships, both familial and romantic.

But where it gets interesting for me is in the cartooning itself.

The story is made up of individual standalone one-page gags, each reminiscent of a large Sunday comic strip, but telling a larger story when stitched together. This sense of reading the Sunday funnies is compounded by Clowes’s decision to draw these page More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2011

Dan rated it:

This was an extraordinary graphic novel. Told in seventy-seven pages, each of which contained six or seven panels, this was economy perfected. The novel tells the story of Wilson, a late middle-aged man without a job, whose affected pseudo-intellectualism and pseudo-liberalism as well as his vastly self-centered nature have prevented him from making any genuine connections in life.

Each page is itself an amazing journey towards a final moment of perfect callous irony, of which Wilson More...

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Feb 10, 2011

Felipe rated it:

Daniel Clowes é badalado por ser o criador de "Ghost World". Porém, a amplitude de seus trabalhos e de sua crítica à sociedade americana é muito maior. Aqui, temos o desprazer de acompanhar Wilson, um sujeitinho sabichão, solitário e hipócrita, que entra em crise com a morte de seu pai e decide ir atrás do que ainda lhe resta de família. A obra se desvela por tiras de uma página, com estética e títulos próprios, formando pequenos contos que poderiam ser lidos independentemente uns dos More...

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May 07, 2010

Sam rated it:

Wow. I haven't read anything from Clowes since 'Ice Haven' and, although it was pretty cool for the most part, I thought he'd kind of lost it there. But 'Wilson' is one of those comic stories that plays with artistic style as well as narrative.

Each page looks to be a multi-paneled grid that follows vignettes of Wilson and the highs and lows of his day-to-day life. At first, it looks like 'Peanuts'-style delivery with a final panel payoff at the end of each page, but as you go from on More...

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Jun 05, 2010

Erik rated it:

After a several year absence, Clowes is back with probably his greatest character creation since Enid and Rebecca. Wilson, an aged slacker-turned-misanthrope, goes on a mid-life quest to meet up with his ex-wife after learning that she gave birth to their daughter shortly after their divorce many years before. (Unbeknownst to him at the time, of course.) What makes this simple-sounding tale so effortlessly brilliant is the way Clowes makes Wilson so unabashedly awful. Nowhere in the realm of gra More...

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Aug 06, 2010

Jason rated it:

I heard in a radio interview that Dan Clowes decided to write Wilson after reading The Complete Peanuts, and the funny thing is I actually did see some parallels between the two (mostly in the rhythm of each strip, but sometimes in the tone as well).

Each page is self-contained, with a punchline at the end, but the individual strips add up to a narrative over time. And Clowes handles this structure brilliantly -- he'll skip years ahead in the course of 1 page, but does it in a way wh More...

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Oct 11, 2010

Benjamin rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jul 01, 2010

Andy rated it:

I had a high school friend who grew a beard and got reflective and waxed sufferingly philosophical about all matters, no matter how big or small. Underneath his deep thoughts was the most self-serving twaddle I've ever heard. Wilson’s basically that guy, only he’s an insensitive dolt with a head full o’ puke. He asks people questions and annoyingly comments on them before they’re done answering him, which sounds like a lot of people I meet every day. There were times when this book made me lau More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 25, 2011

Andrea rated it:

As one reviewer claims below, it's hard to assign stars to Clowes's books. It's not so much that I like them or dislike them -- they make me cringe if I'm not laughing, or laughing-while-cringing. And if I'm cringing, technically, I hate that feeling, but I like that his simple drawing and situation or character can make me feel that way, usually just within one panel. Nevertheless, this fell somewhere between "I liked it" and "I really liked it." Typical to many of Clowes's More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 07, 2012

Jayme rated it:

This is a short story about a douche bag! And that about sums it up.

Clowes actually tries some different styles in his artwork for this. The story is told almost in serial form. Each page has a different art style and story, almost like a daily comic strip. It was cool!

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 23, 2010

Evan rated it:

I can't say that I disliked it, but Wilson makes me want to knock a few stars off everything Clowes did between this and Ghost World. Wilson is better than all of that (David Boring, Caricature, Pussey!) but doesn't approach Ghost World or Like a Velvet Glove...

The strips are 2X4. Wilson is a pessimistic, lazy misanthrope. He yammers like a retarded Woody Allen through 6 panels, stares through 1 panel of awkward silence, and finishes with a verbal venom bomb, that is dark dark as you More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Russell added it

I enjoyed this, partly because I tend to enjoy everything Clowes does. I however did not love this. Being that it's his first fully realized graphic novel, and advertised as such, it still felt like a collection of cartoons from "Eightball" since the story is told by a series of one page strips. The strips are pretty great, and as a whole they do tell the story, it's jsut that with the varying art styles and what not, it doesn't feel like a cohesive whole.

More...

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Nov 13, 2011

John rated it:

This is the second Daniel Clowes book I've read, and I can only wonder when he may sit down across from me in a coffee shop and ask, ""you working?" or "you married?" or "What's your line, brother?" Is Wilson Clowes, or just the person Clowes sometims whishes he could be, able to say "Hey, shithead - I'm talking to you!" to that uninviting person in the coffee shop.

A graphic novel written in one-page segments, almost as if it had been seria More...

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Aug 25, 2011

Anne rated it:

Daniel Clowes may be the best fiction graphic novelist there is. With every book, you can see his keen attention to the art, the craft of the narrative, the psychology of the characters, and his knowledge of the genre. Additionally, you never expect the same-old, same-old from Clowes, every book experiments with something different, and the payoff of the risks is large. Wilson is written in a series of graphic narrative vignettes that build the neurotic life of the character. He uses differen More...

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Feb 25, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

This wasn't my favorite graphic novel, in large part because I felt like the whimsical character on the book's front didn't at all match (in terms of tone) the one depicted on the inside. Wilson is your classic misanthrope (with some autistic traits thrown in for good measure). While some of his commentary on the world is biting and caustic, its accumulation was less trenchant and more tiresome. That said, I enjoyed the aesthetic of the drawings themselves and how Wilson, himself, looked differe More...

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Jul 03, 2010

Jacob rated it:

Teresa of Avila: "It seems to me that the garden may be watered in four ways: by water taken out of a well, which is very laborious; or with water raised by means of an engine and buckets, drawn by a windlass--I have drawn it this way sometimes--it is a less troublesome way than the first, and gives more water; or by a stream or brook, whereby the garden is watered in a much better way--for the soil is more thoroughly saturated, and there is no necessity to water it so often, and the labour More...

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Aug 25, 2010

Glenn rated it:

Maybe it's just because Harvey Pekar just died, but I kept thinking of American Splendor as I read Wilson. It's really not the same--Clowes clearly has a character and a story he is creating here, not embellishing from his ordinary life. But Wilson's misanthropy and bitter musings on life and family remind me a lot of Harvey. Unlike Ghost World and Ice Haven, the narrator here never varies. We've got Wilson in every panel from beginning to end. Sure, he is drawn differently sometimes, but h More...

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Jul 29, 2011

Brandy added it

It wasn't that this book pissed me off with horribleness; it's just that with every page I wondered "why is this supposed to be good" in a distanced way.

The only good page was 55. The guy is in prison and tells the prison chaplain how great he thinks it is that the chaplain has god. "If only my parents had given me that when I was young, maybe I'd have something to keep me going in times like this... Once you hit a certain age, though, there's no way you're going to buy into all t More...

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Dec 02, 2010

Edwin rated it:

Now, that's what I'm talking about! Over the course of less than 80 pages, Clowes delivers a satisfying tale of an opinionated misfit who's adorable and cringeworthy from page one. Wilson's story of reconnecting with a seemingly unattainable past is told through page-long vignettes that play out like crude but funny Sunday comic strips. Though it's a short and, thanks to the framing, extra quick read, there's still plenty of genuine dramedy, the likes of which Clowes proved so adept at depict More...

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Aug 09, 2011

Rita_book rated it:

It wouldn't be summer for me without a few graphic novels, and this one got a good review somewhere (NYT Book Review, I imagine). I really enjoyed it. Clowes has created a miserable, cynical character who nevertheless wants to connect with others and feel that he's not totally alone in the world.
The format is similar to a collection of newspaper comics compiled into a book, with each page an individual vignette that fits into the larger narrative.
This is my favorite kind of graphic n More...

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Jun 06, 2010

Chris rated it:

This was the midlife confession of a creator who has always wished he was a lot weirder than he really is. It was like reading Peanuts strips by a guy w/ a gun in his mouth. How can someone strive to be mundane and fail?
I think Clowes is a nice guy and a really good artist but he allays reads like he is creating out of his depth. The punchline was exactly what you thought it would be after you read the second page and realized this thing was going nowhere. Send your $20 to sea turtles and More...

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