Ghost World
Encyclopedia
Ghost World is a comic book
written and illustrated by Daniel Clowes
. It was originally serial
ized in issues #11 through #18 (June 1993 to March 1997) of Clowes's comic book
series Eightball
, and was first published in book form in 1997 by Fantagraphics Books
. A commercial and critical success, it was very popular with teenage audiences on its initial release and developed into a cult classic
. The book has been reprinted in multiple editions and was the basis for the 2001 feature film
of the same name
.
Ghost World follows the day-to-day lives of best friends Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer, two cynical, pseudo-intellectual and intermittently wit
ty teenage girls recently graduated from high school
in the early 1990s. They spend their days wandering aimlessly around their unnamed American
town, criticizing popular culture
and the people they encounter while wondering what they will do for the rest of their days. As the comic progresses and Enid and Rebecca make the transition into adulthood, the two develop tensions and drift apart.
A darkly written comic, with intermittently sombre explorations of friendship and modern life, Ghost World has become renowned for its frank treatment of adolescence. The comic's success led to a movie adaptation of the same name
, released in 2001 to critical acclaim and numerous nominations, including an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
, written by Clowes.
s, fast food
restaurants, and urban sprawl
. The town plays a key part in the narrative, as it is constantly mocked and criticized by Enid and Rebecca. As the story progresses, the background changes dramatically. The phrase
"Ghost World" is seen by the characters several times, painted or graffiti
ed on garage doors, signs, and billboards for an undeclared reason. The term can also apply to the way in which both Enid and Becky, but especially Enid, are haunted by the past. In the special features of the film adaptation, it is said to refer to the fact that the town's individuality is being encroached upon by franchises that are seen everywhere.
Critical response to Ghost World was extensive: many critics praised it for its analysis of teenage life, relationships, and the decay of today’s society, while others criticized it for being disconnected and morbid. Some reviews even drew comparisons to J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1950). The Village Voice
stated that “Clowes spells out the realities of teen angst as powerfully and authentically as Salinger did in Catcher in the Rye for an earlier generation.” The Guardian
praised the strip's illustrations and visuals, saying “it is beautifully drawn, with subtle and convincing storylines. A classic portrait of teenage life” and Time
magazine called it an “instant classic”.
A section in the middle of the story features Clowes (referred to as David Clowes) in a cameo, as a cartoonist that Enid admires and with whom she is infatuated, but finds creepy and a "perv" when she actually sees him. The comic ends with Enid and Rebecca separating; while they speak half-heartedly of "getting together sometime", the easy intimacy they once knew is long gone. Rebecca is now in a relationship with Josh and seems on her way to settling into a "normal" life, while Enid, having failed to get into college, is as much of a misfit as ever and finally leaves town alone to start a new life.
, with best friend Rebecca Doppelmeyer. Enid takes an interest in playing pranks on other people, purely for her own benefit, especially a classmate named Josh who may be Enid’s love interest. Enid also enjoys anything morbid, forcing Josh to take her to a pornographic store, saying “...Becky and I are dying to go in there, but we can't get any boys to take us...” Clowes said of Enid’s character “When I started out I thought of her as this id creature . . . Then I realized halfway through that she was just more vocal than I was, but she has the same kind of confusion, self-doubts and identity issues that I still have -- even though she's 18 and I'm 39!".
Enid’s eventual fate in Ghost World is not explicitly shown; however, she does pack her bags and leave the city on a bus
after her relationship with Rebecca ends. Some readers interpret this final section as a metaphor for suicide
. This interpretation can be supported by a few subtle indications in the text: ‘Norman’ at the bus stop, the cemetery pictured in the table of contents, Enid’s hearse for sale, and a panel depicting Enid’s father and Carol looking very mournfully at an object not pictured. However, interpretation and significance is ultimately left up to each individual reader. One extratextual factor militating against this interpretation is that Enid (as well as Rebecca) makes a cameo appearance as an old lady in Clowes's Dan Pussey collection of comics. Pussey is a self-important, nerdy superhero comics artist, and the book ends in the future as Pussey dies alone and unloved, with Rebecca and Enid as two bitter crones in his rest home going through his possessions. When they discover his stash of "silly books" (comic books), they wonder, "What would a grown man want with such foolishness?"
Enid Coleslaw is also an anagram
of "Daniel Clowes."
and naive character than Enid, as she has a more mainstream personality – while Enid enjoys more peculiar things in life, Rebecca enjoys things that most teenage girls of her age would take an interest in; for example, she reads a teen magazine (Sassy) that was popular among young women in the early to mid 1990s (Enid, while criticising Rebecca for owning the magazine, still peruses it), and is also sexually curious about men, having a crush on Josh. Rebecca spends much of the novel either following Enid, to whom she feels inferior, to places she has become fascinated with or listening to Enid talk about the various ins and outs of her life, usually responding in a uninterested and/or sarcastic manner—in fact, most of the time, her responses have nothing to do with what Enid is talking about. She has no particular aspiration in life, clinging to and obsessing over the past. In the end of the novel, Rebecca matures into a sensible young woman. It is made ambiguous whether she pursued a relationship with Josh.
to San Francisco, and he has said that the town in the story is a visual combination of both places. Most of the novel was not written in chronological order. Clowes began writing Ghost World on September 9, 1993, and stated that he created the first chapter without any plans to continue it.
Clowes also credits as having drawn some inspiration from the film The World of Henry Orient
, in which two curious young girls stalk a middle-aged man who is having an affair. In the book, Enid and Rebecca are obsessed with various strange people in the neighborhood, including “The Satanists" and a psychic named Bob Skeetes.
Many readers have tried to interpret where the title Ghost World comes from; Clowes has said it comes from something he saw scrawled on a building in his Chicago
neighborhood. Some of the references in the book (Sassy, etc.) date the book very specifically to the 1990s, which Clowes has said was intentional. He wanted to emulate the way that throwaway cultural references in The Catcher in the Rye
root the novel in a time and place.
The series was a major departure for Clowes, who had previously populated Eightball with considerably more outlandish material. Clowes has said in interviews that he chose two teenage girls for his protagonists partly because he could use them to express his more cynical opinions without readers taking the characters as author surrogates.
, when every house has a television on and the living rooms are bathed in a ghostly blue light. He also made various changes to the artwork between the original issues and the book collection, perhaps most notably changing Becky's face early in the story so it more closely matches her appearance at the end.
The character design also changed significantly during the original run of the story, with characters' faces becoming cleaner and less detailed, indicative of a shift in Clowes's changing aesthetic in all his comics, eschewing the minute facial details that had long been one of his trademarks, for more simplified designs. The character of John Ellis, for example, had significant shading and cross-hatching on his face in the original comics, where in the book he has a simpler, uncluttered design. Another striking example is a panel on the second page of the first chapter that shows Rebecca reading a magazine. In the original comic, her eyes and chin are shaded in, her hair reaches her shoulders, and she appears to be scowling. In the graphic novel, this panel was redrawn, softening and lightening Rebecca's features. Enid's appearance was also reworked in this panel, and in several others in the first chapter of the book.
The graphic novel includes five new drawings on the copyright, table of contents, acknowledgments, and other prefatory
pages. These new drawings are tableaux of events in the characters' lives that take place prior to the story, including their high school graduation, and a graveyard visit, presumably either for Rebecca's parents (who are never seen or mentioned in the story, though the girl lives with her grandmother) or Enid's mother (who is similarly absent). Interestingly, the graduation scene, which shows the two girls in caps and gowns, and Enid giving the finger
, was recreated in the film version
.
As with Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
, the chapters of the story were given names in the novel, and a table of contents was added to reflect this.
The book was made into a 2001 movie
, Ghost World
, directed by Terry Zwigoff
(also known for his award-winning documentary
about underground cartoonist Robert Crumb
). Thora Birch
played Enid, Scarlett Johansson
played Rebecca, and Steve Buscemi
played Seymour (a composite character, based on elements from the comic characters of Bob Skeetes and Bearded Windbreaker). Josh was played by Brad Renfro
.
10–35.
's song "Ghost World" on her album Bachelor No. 2
(2000).
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
written and illustrated by Daniel Clowes
Daniel Clowes
Daniel Gillespie Clowes is an American author, screenwriter and cartoonist of alternative comic books....
. It was originally serial
Serial (literature)
In literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical...
ized in issues #11 through #18 (June 1993 to March 1997) of Clowes's comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series Eightball
Eightball (comic book)
Eightball is an alternative comic book series written and drawn by Daniel Clowes. The first issue was published by Fantagraphics Books in 1989, soon after the end of Clowes's previous comic series, Lloyd Llewellyn...
, and was first published in book form in 1997 by Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...
. A commercial and critical success, it was very popular with teenage audiences on its initial release and developed into a cult classic
Cult Classic
Cult Classic is a Blue Öyster Cult studio recording released in 1994, containing remakes of many of the band's previous hits.-Track listing:# " The Reaper" - 5:05# "E.T.I...
. The book has been reprinted in multiple editions and was the basis for the 2001 feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
of the same name
Ghost World (film)
Ghost World is a 2001 comedy-drama film directed by Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic book of the same name and screenplay by Daniel Clowes...
.
Ghost World follows the day-to-day lives of best friends Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer, two cynical, pseudo-intellectual and intermittently wit
Wit
Wit is a form of intellectual humour, and a wit is someone skilled in making witty remarks. Forms of wit include the quip and repartee.-Forms of wit:...
ty teenage girls recently graduated from high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
in the early 1990s. They spend their days wandering aimlessly around their unnamed American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
town, criticizing popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
and the people they encounter while wondering what they will do for the rest of their days. As the comic progresses and Enid and Rebecca make the transition into adulthood, the two develop tensions and drift apart.
A darkly written comic, with intermittently sombre explorations of friendship and modern life, Ghost World has become renowned for its frank treatment of adolescence. The comic's success led to a movie adaptation of the same name
Ghost World (film)
Ghost World is a 2001 comedy-drama film directed by Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic book of the same name and screenplay by Daniel Clowes...
, released in 2001 to critical acclaim and numerous nominations, including an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
The Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source...
, written by Clowes.
Overview
Ghost World takes place in an unnamed town filled with shopping mallShopping mall
A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...
s, fast food
Fast food
Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...
restaurants, and urban sprawl
Urban sprawl
Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...
. The town plays a key part in the narrative, as it is constantly mocked and criticized by Enid and Rebecca. As the story progresses, the background changes dramatically. The phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
"Ghost World" is seen by the characters several times, painted or graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
ed on garage doors, signs, and billboards for an undeclared reason. The term can also apply to the way in which both Enid and Becky, but especially Enid, are haunted by the past. In the special features of the film adaptation, it is said to refer to the fact that the town's individuality is being encroached upon by franchises that are seen everywhere.
Critical response to Ghost World was extensive: many critics praised it for its analysis of teenage life, relationships, and the decay of today’s society, while others criticized it for being disconnected and morbid. Some reviews even drew comparisons to J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1950). The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
stated that “Clowes spells out the realities of teen angst as powerfully and authentically as Salinger did in Catcher in the Rye for an earlier generation.” The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
praised the strip's illustrations and visuals, saying “it is beautifully drawn, with subtle and convincing storylines. A classic portrait of teenage life” and Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine called it an “instant classic”.
Synopsis
Enid Coleslaw (her father had their surname legally changed from "Cohn" before she was born) and Rebecca (Becky) Doppelmeyer are two cynical, intelligent teenage girls who are best friends in the 1990s. They have recently graduated from high school and spend their days wandering around their unnamed town criticizing pop culture and the people they encounter while wondering what they're going to do with the rest of their lives. They are attracted to boys, in theory, but also unhappily entertain the possibility that they might be lesbians. Their friendship is very close, but as the book goes on tensions between them build, especially over Enid's plans to move away to college. They also have a quiet friend named Josh; throughout the book the two girls enjoy teasing him, but they are also attracted to him and eventually a romantic triangle of sorts forms.A section in the middle of the story features Clowes (referred to as David Clowes) in a cameo, as a cartoonist that Enid admires and with whom she is infatuated, but finds creepy and a "perv" when she actually sees him. The comic ends with Enid and Rebecca separating; while they speak half-heartedly of "getting together sometime", the easy intimacy they once knew is long gone. Rebecca is now in a relationship with Josh and seems on her way to settling into a "normal" life, while Enid, having failed to get into college, is as much of a misfit as ever and finally leaves town alone to start a new life.
Enid Coleslaw
Impulsive, cynical and bitter, the strip's lead character drifts through her life without care, criticizing almost everyone she meets. Enid Coleslaw is an 18-year-old teenager, who has recently graduated from her high schoolHigh school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, with best friend Rebecca Doppelmeyer. Enid takes an interest in playing pranks on other people, purely for her own benefit, especially a classmate named Josh who may be Enid’s love interest. Enid also enjoys anything morbid, forcing Josh to take her to a pornographic store, saying “...Becky and I are dying to go in there, but we can't get any boys to take us...” Clowes said of Enid’s character “When I started out I thought of her as this id creature . . . Then I realized halfway through that she was just more vocal than I was, but she has the same kind of confusion, self-doubts and identity issues that I still have -- even though she's 18 and I'm 39!".
Enid’s eventual fate in Ghost World is not explicitly shown; however, she does pack her bags and leave the city on a bus
Bus
A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...
after her relationship with Rebecca ends. Some readers interpret this final section as a metaphor for suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. This interpretation can be supported by a few subtle indications in the text: ‘Norman’ at the bus stop, the cemetery pictured in the table of contents, Enid’s hearse for sale, and a panel depicting Enid’s father and Carol looking very mournfully at an object not pictured. However, interpretation and significance is ultimately left up to each individual reader. One extratextual factor militating against this interpretation is that Enid (as well as Rebecca) makes a cameo appearance as an old lady in Clowes's Dan Pussey collection of comics. Pussey is a self-important, nerdy superhero comics artist, and the book ends in the future as Pussey dies alone and unloved, with Rebecca and Enid as two bitter crones in his rest home going through his possessions. When they discover his stash of "silly books" (comic books), they wonder, "What would a grown man want with such foolishness?"
Enid Coleslaw is also an anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
of "Daniel Clowes."
Rebecca Doppelmeyer
Rebecca Doppelmeyer, the secondary protagonist of Ghost World is a far more passivePassive
Passive may refer to:* "Passive" , by A Perfect Circle* Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages* Passive house, a standard for energy efficiency in buildings* Passive psi, psychic abilities involving cognition...
and naive character than Enid, as she has a more mainstream personality – while Enid enjoys more peculiar things in life, Rebecca enjoys things that most teenage girls of her age would take an interest in; for example, she reads a teen magazine (Sassy) that was popular among young women in the early to mid 1990s (Enid, while criticising Rebecca for owning the magazine, still peruses it), and is also sexually curious about men, having a crush on Josh. Rebecca spends much of the novel either following Enid, to whom she feels inferior, to places she has become fascinated with or listening to Enid talk about the various ins and outs of her life, usually responding in a uninterested and/or sarcastic manner—in fact, most of the time, her responses have nothing to do with what Enid is talking about. She has no particular aspiration in life, clinging to and obsessing over the past. In the end of the novel, Rebecca matures into a sensible young woman. It is made ambiguous whether she pursued a relationship with Josh.
Minor characters
Beyond Enid and Rebecca, there are many minor and recurring characters in the comic strip:- Josh, a soft-spoken employee at a self-service convenience storeConvenience storeA convenience store, corner store, corner shop, commonly called a bodega in Spanish-speaking areas of the United States, is a small store or shop in a built up area that stocks a range of everyday items such as groceries, toiletries, alcoholic and soft drinks, and may also offer money order and...
. Both Enid and Rebecca are infatuated with him at different points in the story. - Melorra, an overachieving, perky and popular classmate of Enid and Rebecca who seems to unexpectedly appear out of the blue wherever Enid and Rebecca may be.
- Bob Skeetes, an astrologer that early in the book is referred to as the “creepy Don KnottsDon KnottsJesse Donald "Don" Knotts was an American comedic actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, a role which earned him five Emmy Awards...
guy.” - Oomi, Rebecca’s fragile old grandmother, with whom Rebecca lives.
- Norman, an old man who waits on a bench for a bus that never comes.
- Enid’s somewhat effeminate father and his girlfriend Carol, who resurfaces from Enid's past.
- Allen, or "Weird Al", the waiter at the fake 1950s dinerDinerA diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...
called Hubba Hubba (the name is changed to Wowsville in the filmGhost World (film)Ghost World is a 2001 comedy-drama film directed by Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic book of the same name and screenplay by Daniel Clowes...
). - John Ellis, an acquaintance of Enid and Becky's, who often associates with them despite their dislike of him. John Ellis is obsessed with stereotypically "morbid" and "offensive" things, such as Nazis, serial killerSerial killerA serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
s, child pornographyChild pornographyChild pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...
, guns, circus freaks, torture, snuff films, and so forth. He is referred to as having a zineZineA zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
called Mayhem which runs stories on these topics. - Johnny Apeshit, a former punk rocker and heroin addict turned would-be businessman, who is famous among the girls for spray painting the word "anarchyAnarchyAnarchy , has more than one colloquial definition. In the United States, the term "anarchy" typically is meant to refer to a society which lacks publicly recognized government or violently enforced political authority...
" on Enid's dad's car. - Naomi, a classmate of Enid and Rebecca, called along with Melorra by Enid, "the junior JAPsJewish-American princessJewish-American Princess or JAP is a pejorative stereotype of a subtype of Jewish-American female. The term implies materialistic and selfish tendencies, attributed to a pampered or wealthy background.-Origins:...
of America". Enid tells Naomi the story of her first sexual experience and suggests that the two have a casual friendship. - Allen Weinstein, the boy with whom Enid had her first sexual experience. He smokes pot, listens to reggae and is interested in counter-culture as a way of rebelling against his wealthy parents.
- The Satanists, a middle-aged satanicSatanismSatanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
couple who eat at the dinerDinerA diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...
Enid frequents, Angel's. They may not actually be satanic, but rather appear that way in Enid’s imagination. Enid makes fun of their use of an umbrella in broad daylight (an umbrella can often be used as a sunshade).
History
Ghost World was first conceived in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Daniel Clowes, when he was a teenager. Much of the comic is partially inspired by Clowes's own life, for example, Clowes moved from Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
to San Francisco, and he has said that the town in the story is a visual combination of both places. Most of the novel was not written in chronological order. Clowes began writing Ghost World on September 9, 1993, and stated that he created the first chapter without any plans to continue it.
Clowes also credits as having drawn some inspiration from the film The World of Henry Orient
The World of Henry Orient
The World of Henry Orient is a 1964 American comedy film based on the novel of the same name by Nora Johnson. It was directed by George Roy Hill and stars Peter Sellers, Paula Prentiss, Angela Lansbury, Tippy Walker, Merrie Spaeth, Phyllis Thaxter, Bibi Osterwald, and Tom Bosley.Filming started in...
, in which two curious young girls stalk a middle-aged man who is having an affair. In the book, Enid and Rebecca are obsessed with various strange people in the neighborhood, including “The Satanists" and a psychic named Bob Skeetes.
Many readers have tried to interpret where the title Ghost World comes from; Clowes has said it comes from something he saw scrawled on a building in his Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
neighborhood. Some of the references in the book (Sassy, etc.) date the book very specifically to the 1990s, which Clowes has said was intentional. He wanted to emulate the way that throwaway cultural references in The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major...
root the novel in a time and place.
The series was a major departure for Clowes, who had previously populated Eightball with considerably more outlandish material. Clowes has said in interviews that he chose two teenage girls for his protagonists partly because he could use them to express his more cynical opinions without readers taking the characters as author surrogates.
Art work and illustration of Ghost World
Clowes has said he chose the pale blue coloring for the book because he wanted to reflect the experience of walking home in the twilightTwilight
Twilight is the time between dawn and sunrise or between sunset and dusk, during which sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere illuminates the lower atmosphere, and the surface of the earth is neither completely lit nor completely dark. The sun itself is not directly visible because it is below...
, when every house has a television on and the living rooms are bathed in a ghostly blue light. He also made various changes to the artwork between the original issues and the book collection, perhaps most notably changing Becky's face early in the story so it more closely matches her appearance at the end.
Differences between the comic book version and the graphic novel
With one exception, in which a small amount of yellow was included, the comics as they originally appeared in Eightball employed only two colors; the early chapters were in black and dark blue, then black and a lighter shade of blue later on, and black and light green for the final two chapters. The graphic novel reprint uses this light green and black color scheme throughout.The character design also changed significantly during the original run of the story, with characters' faces becoming cleaner and less detailed, indicative of a shift in Clowes's changing aesthetic in all his comics, eschewing the minute facial details that had long been one of his trademarks, for more simplified designs. The character of John Ellis, for example, had significant shading and cross-hatching on his face in the original comics, where in the book he has a simpler, uncluttered design. Another striking example is a panel on the second page of the first chapter that shows Rebecca reading a magazine. In the original comic, her eyes and chin are shaded in, her hair reaches her shoulders, and she appears to be scowling. In the graphic novel, this panel was redrawn, softening and lightening Rebecca's features. Enid's appearance was also reworked in this panel, and in several others in the first chapter of the book.
The graphic novel includes five new drawings on the copyright, table of contents, acknowledgments, and other prefatory
Preface
A preface is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a foreword and precedes an author's preface...
pages. These new drawings are tableaux of events in the characters' lives that take place prior to the story, including their high school graduation, and a graveyard visit, presumably either for Rebecca's parents (who are never seen or mentioned in the story, though the girl lives with her grandmother) or Enid's mother (who is similarly absent). Interestingly, the graduation scene, which shows the two girls in caps and gowns, and Enid giving the finger
Finger (gesture)
In Western culture, the finger , also known as the middle finger, is an obscene hand gesture, often meaning the phrases "fuck off" , "fuck you" or "up yours"...
, was recreated in the film version
Ghost World (film)
Ghost World is a 2001 comedy-drama film directed by Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic book of the same name and screenplay by Daniel Clowes...
.
As with Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The book follows a rather fantastic and paranoid plot, very different from the stark realism of Clowes' later more widely known Ghost World...
, the chapters of the story were given names in the novel, and a table of contents was added to reflect this.
Film adaptation
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, Ghost World
Ghost World (film)
Ghost World is a 2001 comedy-drama film directed by Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic book of the same name and screenplay by Daniel Clowes...
, directed by Terry Zwigoff
Terry Zwigoff
Terry Zwigoff is an American filmmaker whose work often deals with misfits, antiheros, and themes of alienation. His fiction films are the features Ghost World , Bad Santa , and Art School Confidential...
(also known for his award-winning documentary
Crumb (film)
Crumb is a 1994 documentary film about the noted underground comic artist Robert Crumb and his family. Directed by Terry Zwigoff and produced by Lynn O'Donnell and David Lynch, it won widespread acclaim, including both the Grand Jury Prize and best cinematography prize at the Sundance Film Festival...
about underground cartoonist Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
). Thora Birch
Thora Birch
Thora Birch is an American actress. She was a child actor in the 1990s, starring in movies such as All I Want for Christmas , Patriot Games , Hocus Pocus , Now and Then , and Alaska . She came to prominence in 1999 after earning worldwide attention and praise for her performance in American Beauty...
played Enid, Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson is an American actress, model and singer.Johansson made her film debut in North and was later nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for her performance in Manny & Lo . She rose to further prominence with her roles in The Horse Whisperer and Ghost World...
played Rebecca, and Steve Buscemi
Steve Buscemi
Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi is an American actor, writer and film director. An associate member of the renowned experimental theater company The Wooster Group, Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films including New York Stories, Mystery Train, Reservoir Dogs,...
played Seymour (a composite character, based on elements from the comic characters of Bob Skeetes and Bearded Windbreaker). Josh was played by Brad Renfro
Brad Renfro
Brad Barron Renfro was an American actor. He made his film debut in 1994 at age 12 in the lead role of Joel Schumacher's The Client, going on to star in 21 feature films, several short films, and two television episodes during his career. Much of his later career was marred by a pattern of...
.
Merchandise and spin-off material
A collection of merchandise and spin-off material for Ghost World has been sold since its release, some of it still available today. This includes a three alternate versions of dolls of Enid. One is available from Fantagraphics with artwork by Clowes depicting Enid having various adventures, and comes with objects featured in the comic (such as the mask she buys from the pornographic store), another "Little Enid" from the Eightball comic, and an Enid/Rebecca pairing with the likeness of voodoo dolls. The price ranges from US$United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
10–35.
Works influenced
The comic was the influence for Aimee MannAimee Mann
Aimee Mann is an American rock singer-songwriter, guitarist and bassist.-Early life:Aimee Mann grew up in Bon Air, Virginia, graduated from Open High School in 1978 and attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out to sing with her first punk rock band, the Young Snakes...
's song "Ghost World" on her album Bachelor No. 2
Bachelor No. 2
Bachelor No. 2 is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, released in 2000. Its full title is Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo. The album is notable for the fact that Mann was initially without a record company and sold the album through her website, but the...
(2000).
Collections
- Hardcover Edition: ISBN 1-56097-280-7 Fantagraphics Books (December 1, 1997)
- Paperback Edition: ISBN 1-56097-427-3 Fantagraphics Books; 4th edition (April 1, 2001)
- Paperback Edition: ISBN 1-56097-427-3 Fantagraphics Books; 13th edition (December, 2005)