A Ministerial Enquiry: Examining David Boring
I have a friend who considers Eightball the antithesis of comic books. He finds it distant, cold, pseudo-intellectual, and boring. That last is kind of ironic.
David Boring is the recently-completed graphic novel by Dan Clowes. The story was serialized in three parts in Eightball #19-21, and it represents perhaps the best work Clowes has done so far.
I don't put a whole lot of stock in that friend's opinion; his favourite artist is Todd McFarlane, his favourite character is Venom (he even has a tattoo of him on his ankle--Venom, not Todd) and his exotic-dancing ex-girlfriend (who dumped him hard) only read one comic book--Eightball.
Eightball has evolved over the years, beginning as an anthology that balanced continuing series (Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron; Ghost World) with shorter, often hilarious pieces.
Clowes has matured as an artist and writer over the 21 issues of Eightball, leaning toward longer, more thoughtful (though not always less obscure) narratives. David Boring is a complex tale that fulfills the promise of the earlier Velvet Glove story, which I found compelling but unsatisfyingly distant. In this current piece, Clowes allows us full and complete access to his protagonist's inner life, while maintaining the vaguely disturbing, nonlinear tone of Velvet Glove. In the world of Dan Clowes, there always seems to be a reason for the events that transpire, but the characters for one reason or another are unable or unwilling to examine the world, and the people, around them. Consequently, everything seems disjointed and disconnected, yet Clowes shows the reader there are connections everywhere. It makes the most basic, common parts of life (having a girlfriend, keeping a scrapbook) seem creepy and somehow perverse.
Of course, David Boring declares himself a pervert in his eponymous narrative, so it's no insult to either Boring or Clowes himself. Most of his characters seem to feel they are deviant in some way or another, mirroring the self-doubt and self-loathing most young people (if not most people in general) are plagued by.Act One of David Boring begins with David having sexual intercourse with a young woman. From the very first words of the story, Clowes shows us what a distant life Boring is leading, acting out his expected life but far removed from any sort of emotional connection to the events he takes part in:
"Here, by some miracle of circumstance, I was, naked, about to have sexual intercourse with what the consensus of the day would have held as a perfectly beautiful woman. Her skin was smooth and elastic, dappled with girlish yellow fuzz, her trim athletic figure was blah blah, etc., etc...."
David Boring, then, is bored. Those blah blahs were Boring's words, not mine. Why does he go through the motions he goes through, then, if they are so boring? Is he trying to prove something? To himself, to someone else?David returns to his apartment, which he shares with a girl ("roughly my age") named Dot. Dot is passing the time flipping through David's scrapbook of naked women. Dot tells David she'll never understand his taste in women.
David's taste in women, we will learn, is part of a dual obsession that haunts his consciousness and prevents him from connecting with anything in his current life. In Act Two we discover David's childhood flirtation with his cousin Pamela, who becomes the standard by which he judges every woman in his life, except Dot, his only real friend.
In addition to Pamela, David is consumed with questions about his father, who abandoned his family years ago. The senior Boring was a comics artist (although not, we are told, the one who illustrated "S------n in the '50s.") who David has only one connection to: a single issue of "The Yellow Streak," which Clowes shows us glimpses of throughout the narrative.
Clowes uses the kitschy, ridiculous panels of the generic superhero comic to comment on the empty, vacuous existence David leads. Eventually, as David's choices in life narrow down to fewer and fewer, the comic book also is reduced to a few panels that managed to survive a destructive tantrum of David's mother. The comic and David are both reduced to shreds by circumstance, and by his cold, angry, distant mother.David Eventually finds happiness, after a fashion, and it's a happiness that will resonate with many readers. He regains a little bit of what he lost from his youth, while managing to hold on, in a way, the only true friend he ever had. David Boring is not an easy story to wrap your brain around--I've read it twice all the way through and still feel there are layers yet to be peeled back. That's a rare treat these days, but no real surprise coming from the mind of Dan Clowes.
Discuss this interview on the Feature Fiends Forum!