
Shortlisted in the 2012 Angoulême Official Selection
Meet Marshall. Sitting alone in the local coffee place. He's been set up by his friend Tim on a blind date with someone named Natalie, and now he's just feeling set up. She's nine minutes late and counting. Who was he kidding anyway? Divorced, middle-aged, newly unemployed, with next to no prospects, Marshall isn't exactly what you'd call a catch. Twenty minutes pass. A half hour. Marshall orders a scotch. (He wasn't going to drink!) Forty minutes. Then, after nearly an hour, when he's long since given up hope, Natalie appears - breathless, apologising profusely that she went to the wrong place. She takes a seat, to Marshall's utter amazement.
She's too good to be true: attractive, young, intelligent, and she seems to be seriously engaged with what Marshall has to say. There has to be a catch. And, of course, there is.
During the extremely long night that follows, Marshall and Natalie are emotionally tested in ways that two people who just met really should not be. Not, at least, if they want the prospect of a second date. A captivating, bittersweet, and hilarious look at the potential for human connection in an increasingly hopeless world, Mister Wonderful more than lives up to its name.
Clowes was born in Chicago, Illinois, to an auto mechanic mother and a furniture craftsman father. His mother was Jewish, whereas his father was from a "reserved WASPish Pennsylvania" family; Clowes's upbringing was not religious. In 1979, he finished high school at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he earned a BFA in 1984. It was at Pratt that he met and befriended fellow cartoonist Rick Altergott, with whom he started the small-press comics publisher Look Mom Comics. According to Clowes scholar, Ken Parille, the cartoonist had an early response to a "graphic" comic when, at age four, he burst into tears and began hitting his head against a wall after seeing a cover of a Strange Adventures comic book that depicted a family dying of heat. Later, he received "piles of 1950s and 1960s classic titles like Archie and The Fantastic Four" from his older brother, who also introduced him to the work of legendary cartoonist R. Crumb. [Wikipedia]

Shortlisted in the 2012 Angoulême Official Selection
Meet Marshall. Sitting alone in the local coffee place. He's been set up by his friend Tim on a blind date with someone named Natalie, and now he's just feeling set up. She's nine minutes late and counting. Who was he kidding anyway? Divorced, middle-aged, newly unemployed, with next to no prospects, Marshall isn't exactly what you'd call a catch. Twenty minutes pass. A half hour. Marshall orders a scotch. (He wasn't going to drink!) Forty minutes. Then, after nearly an hour, when he's long since given up hope, Natalie appears - breathless, apologising profusely that she went to the wrong place. She takes a seat, to Marshall's utter amazement.
She's too good to be true: attractive, young, intelligent, and she seems to be seriously engaged with what Marshall has to say. There has to be a catch. And, of course, there is.
During the extremely long night that follows, Marshall and Natalie are emotionally tested in ways that two people who just met really should not be. Not, at least, if they want the prospect of a second date. A captivating, bittersweet, and hilarious look at the potential for human connection in an increasingly hopeless world, Mister Wonderful more than lives up to its name.
Clowes was born in Chicago, Illinois, to an auto mechanic mother and a furniture craftsman father. His mother was Jewish, whereas his father was from a "reserved WASPish Pennsylvania" family; Clowes's upbringing was not religious. In 1979, he finished high school at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he earned a BFA in 1984. It was at Pratt that he met and befriended fellow cartoonist Rick Altergott, with whom he started the small-press comics publisher Look Mom Comics. According to Clowes scholar, Ken Parille, the cartoonist had an early response to a "graphic" comic when, at age four, he burst into tears and began hitting his head against a wall after seeing a cover of a Strange Adventures comic book that depicted a family dying of heat. Later, he received "piles of 1950s and 1960s classic titles like Archie and The Fantastic Four" from his older brother, who also introduced him to the work of legendary cartoonist R. Crumb. [Wikipedia]