Daniel Clowes' alternative comic, Wilson, is a portrait of a modern egoist.
Wilson is an opinionated loner who nags strangers in a series of one-sided conversations. But after his father's death, the middle-aged misanthrope tries to reconnect with his family and live a more meaningful life.
Wilson's story is told in a series of one-page chapters, each drawn in a different style. Clowes says he was inspired while reading The Complete Peanuts boxed set, released by Fantagraphics Books.
"To read them in sequence," Clowes tells NPR's Neal Conan, "felt like a new way to tell a story." Though Charles Schulz created the Peanuts comics to be read one per day, to Clowes, reading them in sequence "felt like it was replicating the way that you remember the passage of time in memory," wherein highs and lows stick out, and the rest fades.
He wanted Wilson's story to feel that same way.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.