Lout Rampage!

by Daniel Clowes

Lout Rampage! is a collection of comics by Daniel Clowes. This 1991 paperback includes stories from Eightball #1-6, along with strips Clowes created for alternative comics anthologies Blab!, Young Lust, and Weirdo. It includes several of the cartoonist’s one-page collaborations with The Duplex Planet creator David Greenberger and two of his most well-known comic-strip rants: “I Hate You Deeply” and “I Love You Tenderly.”

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comix

95 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

About the author

Daniel Clowes is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter whose work helped define the landscape of alternative comics and bring the medium into mainstream literary conversation. Rising to prominence through his long-running anthology Eightball, he used its pages to blend acidic humor, social observation, surrealism, and character-driven storytelling, producing serials that later became acclaimed graphic novels including Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Ghost World, David Boring, Ice Haven, and Patience. His illustrations have appeared in major publications such as The New Yorker, Vogue, and The Village Voice, while his collaborations with filmmaker Terry Zwigoff resulted in the films Ghost World and Art School Confidential, the former earning widespread praise and an Academy Award nomination for its screenplay. Clowes began honing his voice in the 1980s with contributions to Cracked and with his Lloyd Llewellyn stories for Fantagraphics, but it was Eightball, launched in 1989, that showcased the full range of his interests, from deadpan satire to psychological drama. Known for blending kitsch, grotesquerie, and a deep love of mid-century American pop culture, he helped shape the sensibilities of a generation of cartoonists and became a central figure in the shift toward graphic novels being treated as serious literature. His post-Eightball books continued this evolution, with works like Wilson, Mister Wonderful, The Death-Ray, and the recent Monica exploring aging, identity, longing, and the complexities of relationships, often through inventive visual structures that echo the history of newspaper comics. Clowes has also been active in music and design, creating artwork for Sub Pop bands, the Ramones, and other artists, and contributing to film posters, New Yorker covers, and Criterion Collection releases. His work has earned dozens of honors, including multiple Harvey and Eisner Awards, a Pen Award for Outstanding Body of Work in Graphic Literature, an Inkpot Award, and the prestigious Fauve d’Or at Angoulême. Exhibitions of his original art have appeared across the United States and internationally, with a major retrospective, Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes, touring museums beginning in 2012. His screenplay work extended beyond Ghost World to projects like Art School Confidential and Wilson, and he has long been a touchstone for discussions about Generation X culture, alternative comics, and the shifting boundaries between the literary and graphic arts.

Reviews

[Rich Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book introduced me to the work of independent cartoonist Daniel Clowes , responsible for Ghost World and the legendary comic book Eightball. This work reprints stories from the first seven issues of that mag.

Clowes work has a surreal edge to it, but most of his stories are actually quite grounded in reality; they often emphasize the mundane to an almost absurd degree. Beyond that proviso, I think it is just better to experience his work on its own merits.

Highly recommended.

[Batmark · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://morethansuperhumans.blogspot.c...

Lout Rampage! contains 29 brief stories from the early issues of Clowes's Eightball comic book series. Although these nihilistic stories are definitely not for the faint of heart, they are not quite as sexually charged as the stories in Orgy Bound.

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished Lout Rampage! and honestly felt rattled in a way I couldn't shake for a day. Daniel Clowes writes a young mother who slowly starts to suspect her new neighborhood is a little too perfect, and the scene where every house on the block turns its porch light off at the exact same second made the back of my neck prickle. It's tense, it's eerie, and it never needs a monster. The ending explains too much and the dread leaks out of it. Who this is for: readers who like suburban creepiness. Who should pass: anybody who wants gore and fast action.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cynical, frequently self-deprecating, funny and sympathetic.

[ComicNerdSam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Already read half this book thanks to the Twentieth Century Eightball collection, but the new stories were decent fun.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some repeats from Twentieth Century Eightball, but I liked them better the second time around. Taking a break between that book and this one to read Caricature made me remember how much I like his storytelling, and that made me like reading these gag strips more. Yay I'm liking Mr. Clowes more and more every day!

[Shoshanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, very funny! Funnier and more biting than most of Clowes' longer works. A great look into the bridge between underground and independent comics. Don't bother seeking it out though. Basically everything in it is on 20th Century Eightball, which has a little more too!

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

anything of this sort is in a state of perpetual re-reading. A kid can learn a lot from a book like this!

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is my fav Clowes collection.

[Alex Firer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot I haven't read here and any Clowes unseen is a revelation!

[Mills College Library]

741.5973 C648L 1991