Daniel Clowes

Cartoonist

Daniel Clowes is the writer and illustrator whose underground comics were made into the films Ghost World (2001) and Art School Confidential (2006). A graduate of New York's Pratt Institute, Clowes was for many years known only as a talented underground artist of comic books and graphic novels. As "alternative" media were pushed into the mainstream in the 1990s, Clowes became more famous, with his work appearing in Esquire, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His signature works are the long-running comic book series Eightball and the earlier Lloyd Llewellyn series. The graphic novel Ghost World was a hit as a comic book; the movie version, scripted by Clowes and directed by Terry Zwigoff, starred Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson. His funny short piece, "Art School Confidential," poked fun at his own background as an art student and became a movie by Clowes and Zwigoff that co-starred John Malkovich and Max Minghella.

Extra credit: Clowes's work is sometimes compared to that of underground comics legend R. Crumb... One of the characters in Ghost World is Enid Coleslaw, whose name is an anagram of Daniel Clowes... According to his Fantagraphics bio, Clowes was born "on Jayne Mansfield's 29th birthday."