As an artist, Clowes primarily works in a cartoony mode here: showing traces of EC greats like Bernie Krigstein and Wally Wood (also appearing as a character in a new strip in the back of the book), parodying artists like religious tractster Jack T. Chick or the Harvey Comics bullpen. Clowes' flair for facial caricature frequently recalls Chester Gould (another Chicago boy!) Though where the "Dick Tracy" artist elevated grotesqueness to define villainy, Clowes is more interested in the way these "flaws" reflect his figures' humanity (c.f., his only half-ironic paean to "Ugly Girls").

Between the rants, Clowes also includes a series of one-three page stories featuring a variety of unappealing types: agoraphobic Zubrick and his underwear-clad roomie, Pogeybait; teenfreak wannabe Hippypants; and the Happy Fisherman (who walks around with a frozen fish over his dick). Packed with crass behavior and barely concerned with story, these entries read like the free-flowing displays of stonery that characterized the underground press in its heyday. (No, I don't know or care if Clowes has indulged in any pharmaceuticals - but in one early strip he does characterize what he's doing as "underground.") While not as strong as the cartoon diatribes, they can be laff-provoking if you're in a dark enough mood.

On the book's back cover, our artist hero gives us a fanciful version of this collection's genesis. After speaking to a mustachioed Fantagraphics publisher (who tells him the company wants "a book which elicits not morose empathy but applies to our wounded collective soul the soothing balm of laughter"), Clowes considers his early work. "As I recall," he says to himself, "I occasionally used to include amusing material in my old comics!" Yes, you did, Dan - and some snottily bilious stuff, too.

It's all on display for our divertissement in Twentieth Century Eightball.

(Reprinted from Pop Culture Gadabout.)