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A review by unladylike
Patience by Daniel Clowes
1.0
I felt like I needed a shower after reading this. Instead, I noted to myself my main impressions from it from start to finish, and then slept nearly 14 hours.
I'm not going to read all the hype and positive reviews for this book, because I don't want to be socially swayed into giving it more credit than it deserves. All I knew was that it was Daniel Clowes's new book and reportedly another whiny dude story that Fantagraphics had prioritized in their marketing this year above all sorts of great projects by lesser-known creators.
Here are the reasons I'm not even giving this 2 stars:
1. The protagonist is a despicable, pathetic man with no redeeming qualities. Not even some hardass jerk antihero like John Constantine or Punisher or something. He's just horrible from beginning to end, and there's no one else to really root for as his opposition!
2. Yes, it's essentially another whiny dude story. I realized a few pages in it was that, but THEN it also became a story of a pregnant young wife who gets *fridged* in order to set her husband on a selfish quest of vengeance. Those are NOT among my favourite stories, for so many good reasons. And THEN it becomes a *time travel* story, which gives Clowes chances to play with sci-fi, surrealist art, and a less straight-forward-than-linear narrative sequence. All of which he wastes.
3. The art is really nothing special or great. It's like a Silver Age cartoonist was able to briefly look INTO THE FUTURE and see glimpses of Charles Burns's and Los Bros Hernandez's great, weird tales in mundane settings, and decided to paste some of those styles on top of his own. But then the book wasn't published until well after those other greats had already done their things much better, so it glides purely on the power of coming from The Cartoonist Who Saw The Future!
There are a couple of interesting ideas and well-laid panels in Patience, but they're muddied by the whole rest of the book's story and character arc.
I'm not going to read all the hype and positive reviews for this book, because I don't want to be socially swayed into giving it more credit than it deserves. All I knew was that it was Daniel Clowes's new book and reportedly another whiny dude story that Fantagraphics had prioritized in their marketing this year above all sorts of great projects by lesser-known creators.
Here are the reasons I'm not even giving this 2 stars:
1. The protagonist is a despicable, pathetic man with no redeeming qualities. Not even some hardass jerk antihero like John Constantine or Punisher or something. He's just horrible from beginning to end, and there's no one else to really root for as his opposition!
2. Yes, it's essentially another whiny dude story. I realized a few pages in it was that, but THEN it also became a story of a pregnant young wife who gets *fridged* in order to set her husband on a selfish quest of vengeance. Those are NOT among my favourite stories, for so many good reasons. And THEN it becomes a *time travel* story, which gives Clowes chances to play with sci-fi, surrealist art, and a less straight-forward-than-linear narrative sequence. All of which he wastes.
3. The art is really nothing special or great. It's like a Silver Age cartoonist was able to briefly look INTO THE FUTURE and see glimpses of Charles Burns's and Los Bros Hernandez's great, weird tales in mundane settings, and decided to paste some of those styles on top of his own. But then the book wasn't published until well after those other greats had already done their things much better, so it glides purely on the power of coming from The Cartoonist Who Saw The Future!
There are a couple of interesting ideas and well-laid panels in Patience, but they're muddied by the whole rest of the book's story and character arc.