Wilson (graphic novel)
"Wilson" is an original graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, published in 2010, marking his first full-length work independent of previous serialized comics. The story revolves around the titular character, a misanthropic middle-aged man who struggles with his relationships and seeks connections with his past, particularly after the death of his father. Through a series of introspective and often humorous encounters, Wilson reflects on his life, his failed marriage, and his estrangement from his daughter, leading to a poignant journey of self-discovery and existential questioning.
Clowes employs a diverse artistic style throughout the novel, using a mix of comic strip aesthetics and detailed illustrations, with each page serving as a self-contained chapter. The narrative is characterized by Wilson's blunt commentary, highlighting themes of human connection and the search for meaning in life, often framed within the context of his alienation from society. Critics have noted the novel's blend of bitter humor and underlying vulnerability, which invites readers to empathize with Wilson despite his often unlikable demeanor. "Wilson" has been well-received, featuring on numerous year-end best lists and contributing to the recognition of graphic novels as a mainstream literary form.
Wilson (graphic novel)
AUTHOR: Clowes, Daniel
ARTIST: Daniel Clowes (illustrator)
PUBLISHER: Drawn and Quarterly
FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2010
Publication History
Although Daniel Clowes has created several notable graphic novels from serialized comics, including Ghost World (1993-1997), Wilson is his first original full-length graphic novel. The stories that compose his other graphic novels initially appeared in serialized form in his series Eightball (1989-2004), and the stories were often slightly revised for publication in collected form. By contrast, Wilson arrived fully formed.
Clowes originally drew Wilson as a series of sketches while keeping vigil next to his father’s hospital deathbed. The stick-figure drawings generated hundreds of comic strips that were mostly composed of boxes and word balloons, but they all centered on the same character. Upon Clowes’s return to his drawing board, the bearded and bespectacled Wilson came to life. The character, originally envisioned as a younger version of Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace, and the novel, originally envisioned as a lost comic strip, soon both developed further into the story line of the finished work. Working without a publication contract, Clowes edited and refined Wilson to seventy-one full-page comic strips, leaving the reader to fill in the missing scenes implied in the narrative. Having years earlier promised Drawn and Quarterly a graphic novel, Clowes delivered Wilson to the publisher, which marked the author’s first comics novel (Clowes strongly dislikes the term graphic novel) and his first publication with Drawn and Quarterly after being with Fantagraphics Books since the 1980’s. Meeting Clowes’s request for the thickest covers available, Drawn and Quarterly released Wilson as an oversized hardcover in the spring of 2010.
Plot
In the first panel of the novel, Wilson greets readers by declaring his love for humanity, a love not often, if ever, returned because of the way the misanthropic Wilson alienates nearly everyone around him with his blunt commentary. He is spurned by the people he encounters on the street and in coffee shops, and his closest relationship appears to be with Pepper, his dog. Wilson reflects on such matters as the death of his mother; how he ended up living in Oakland, California; and the fact that his former wife, Pippi, left him sixteen years ago. Seeking connections with his past, he sends a box of dog feces to the family of his former wife’s sister and calls his father. Discovering that his father has cancer and is dying, Wilson leaves Pepper with Shelley, a dogsitter, and travels to Chicago to visit his father for the last time. Upon his father’s death, Wilson reflects further on the direction of his own life. While visiting his old neighborhood in Chicago, he decides to find Pippi. After a search that includes encounters with his former sister-in-law, a cab driver, and a prostitute, Wilson goes to a diner to eat and finds Pippi working there as a waitress.
Certain that Pippi is a former drug addict and prostitute, Wilson woos her by joking that he has inherited a fortune from his father, a jest that Pippi seems to believe is true. She informs Wilson that she was pregnant when she left him and gave the baby up for adoption, and Wilson hires a private detective to find the now-teenage girl. Wilson and Pippi reunite with their daughter, Claire Cassidy, in a shopping mall in the suburbs, and the three take a long road trip together after Claire lies to her adopted parents about where she is going. After a visit to Pippi’s sister’s house, Pippi calls the police and turns Wilson in for kidnapping.
Wilson is convicted when both Pippi and Claire testify against him, and he spends six years in prison. Learning of Pippi’s death from a drug overdose, Wilson returns to Oakland to retrieve Pepper and finds that she is also dead. With his last link to Pepper being Shelley, Wilson starts a seemingly loveless relationship with her, and the two move in together. Claire, who is now married and living in Alaska, contacts Wilson and informs him that he has a grandson, Jason. Though the relationship with Claire and her son appears to be superficial, Wilson seems elated to know that he has a legacy. Otherwise, he grinds his way through his days and continues to alienate those around him, including Shelley, with his caustic and blunt comments, while searching for a larger meaning in life, which he seemingly discovers on the last page.
Characters
•Wilson, the protagonist, is a balding, middle-aged white man with a mustache and a goatee who wears glasses and is talkative and blunt. Somehow subsisting without a job, he ages through the story as he tries to make sense of life, a quest that sends him looking into his past, which sets the plot into motion.
•Pepper is a small, white dog who is Wilson’s closest companion. Wilson leaves her with Shelley, a dogsitter, when he travels to Chicago. Wilson is sent to prison for six years and is unable to retrieve Pepper before she dies of an illness a year before Wilson returns home.
•Shelley is a thin, almost gaunt, blond-haired, middle-aged white woman who works as a dogsitter. When Wilson returns from prison years after leaving his dog with her, she has taken on a new career, presumably as a real-estate agent, but is having trouble making ends meet. Consequently, she agrees to marry Wilson, but the relationship is passionless.
•Pippi, Wilson’s former wife, is a chubby, middle-aged white woman who wears her long, blond hair in a ponytail. Thinking that Wilson has inherited money, she informs him that she was pregnant at the time she left and gave the daughter, Claire, up for adoption. She reunites with Wilson briefly to find Claire but ultimately turns him into the authorities for kidnapping. She later dies of a drug overdose.
•Claire Cassidy, Wilson and Pippi’s daughter, is a brown-haired white woman who ages from adolescence to middle age. Given up by Pippi for adoption, she is raised by the Cassidys, a well-to-do suburban family. She testifies against Wilson in his trial, but he later forgives her when he discovers that he is a grandfather.
Artistic Style
With the cover featuring Wilson gazing curiously and directly at the reader, the character dominates the graphic novel that bears his name from the beginning. Though Clowes shifts illustration styles consistently in the novel (some chapters even appear to be homages to fellow cartoonists such as Ivan Brunetti and Chris Ware), Wilson remains recognizable whether he is drawn in a simpler cartoon form or in a more detailed mode. In fact, despite the stylistic range, readers familiar with Clowes’s earlier work will find the illustration style in Wilson familiar.
Each page of the novel operates as a complete chapter and has a separate title at the top of the page. Within the six to eight panels of each page, Clowes utilizes the pacing of a classic Sunday newspaper comic strip. In the last panel of each chapter is a “payoff,” whether a gag punch line typical of humor strips or, less often, a dramatic cliffhanger or poignant moment typical of dramatic strips. Aside from the chapter titles, no narration is utilized, and the story is told through dialogue between characters and monologue when Wilson speaks to himself aloud (no thought balloons appear). Occasionally, a sound effect appears in the art.
Clowes uses a range of colors on most pages, but a few chapters, such as “Fireside Chat,” use only a single color over the black ink and white paper in a manner reminiscent of Clowes’s work in Ghost World. Visually, motifs repeat as some earlier and later chapters parallel one another: Wilson walking through the streets of Oakland, staring at water, traveling (the shift from airplane to bus represents his reduced economic circumstances), and hassling a fellow customer at a coffee shop.
Themes
The bitter, ironic humor showcased in Wilson can alienate some readers and Wilson the character is often unlikeable. However, with the revelation of his fears and vulnerabilities, Wilson becomes a more sympathetic figure. Two major themes emerge. The first is the desire for human connection. Wilson consistently reaches out to the people around him, calling strangers “brother,” “sister,” “friend,” and so forth, but, because of his unwillingness or inability to adhere to the unwritten rules of polite society, others avoid him. Ironically, many of the people avoiding Wilson hide behind technological devices such as telephones and computers, all of which are designed to communicate and certainly reduce the need for face-to-face contact.
The second major theme appears to be existential in Wilson’s attempts to find meaning in life. This quest is seen most in scenes in which Wilson, in a symbolic act of cleansing and renewal, observes water and attempts to form a spiritual connection with it. The two themes merge as Wilson seems to find meaning through connections with others, connections often linked with water. For example, he compares his mother’s absence after her death to never seeing the ocean again, and he seems happiest on the dock with his newfound family. It is significant that his relationship with Pippi disintegrates in front of an empty swimming pool. Once he has established a connection with something bigger than himself by having his family legacy continue through his grandson Jason, Wilson seems to live more in the present moment and has an epiphany late in life (and in the final chapter of Wilson) while staring at rain on a window. Whatever his epiphany, it is not shared with the reader, perhaps suggesting that each person must create her or his own meaning in life.
Impact
Wilson, well-received by critics and the public, landed on several year-end top-ten lists, including lists for general readers, which helped to verify graphic novels as commercially mainstream. Following Wilson’s success, Drawn and Quarterly summarily released another graphic novel by Clowes, The Death-Ray, in the fall of 2011. Clowes has also used Wilson the character in a short story, “Wilson in Day 16.412,” which was originally published in The New Yorker. Wilson and Clowes were also nominated for several Eisner Awards in 2011.
Further Reading
Bagge, Peter. Hate (1990-1998).
Clowes, Daniel. David Boring (2002).
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (2007).
Bibliography
Hajdu, David. Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2009.
Hignite, M. Todd. In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007.
Parille, Ken, and Isaac Cates, eds. Daniel Clowes: Conversations. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.