Wilson

When it's just a series of vignettes, this graphic novel is absolutely great. It's almost like Daniel Clowes made his version of a mid-aged Charlie Brown reflecting on the ways his life didn't turn out so great. If you look at the main character Wilson from profile, he's got a big, fat round head with a tuft of hair at the front of his head that looks just like Charlie Brown. Wilson has a puppy dog that looks like a beagle. And when you see Wilson showing blissful affection for the baseball field where he played little league, there's no question that this is Clowes doing Peanuts without getting in trouble for copyright infringement! 

After I learned that Daniel Clowes' reading of a biography about Charles Schulz was part of the inspiration for this book, I think I hit the nail on the head. Another inspiration for Wilson was Clowes' experience of his father's terminal cancer. It's at the point that the story becomes less a series of one-pagers, that could be read separately, and now into a story about Wilson trying to find his ex-wife and his daughter that was given up for adoption. And here is where Wilson loses its charm.

I guess you could imagine that Wilson's ex-wife is Peppermint Patty or Lucy. However, as Wilson becomes more of a narrative, the mystique that this book is about an aging Charlie Brown diminishes. See the artwork changes with every page. Sometimes it's realistic. Sometimes it's a cartoon. When Wilson begins like we're seeing the different faces of the main character with each changing page. Having the story become more linear abolishes that innovative beginning. After Wilson's father dies, it feels like a totally different book and I just wasn't a fan of that second act.

The works of Daniel Clowes are like the films of Wes Anderson. It's stylized. Formulaic. The work of an auteur. It's also not everyone's cup of tea. To me, Daniel Clowes stuff is like bubble tea. I love the creamy, sweet top part, mixed with giant tapioca pearls. But once I am through with the liquid, there's all these extra pearls that I just get tired of. That's what happened to me by the time I got to the final 77th page of this Drawn & Quarterly published graphic novel. 

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars.