One sentence summary: A succinct, episodic story of growing up and the pain of failure, Ghost World lets itself drift from humor to tragedy so subtly you don't notice the journey.I haven't read a ton of Daniel Clowes, and pretty much everything I have read is very early stuff -- this and Velvet Glove Cast In Iron, along with a few old issues of Eightball -- but it's pretty easy to tell why he's considered one of the Big Names. His stuff is powerful and tightly-composed. Ghost World's often cited as his major work, and it clocks in at 80 pages.
Especially with comics that start as serials, I always wonder how much is planned in advance by the creator. I ask because I can see both pathways with Ghost World: it either began with Clowes knowing exactly where this was going and exactly the route there, or it was just him having a sardonic teen comment half-ironically half-desperately to a friend that he slowly realized he could turn into a deep story.
Ghost World also has that now-trope of having unlikable characters. Here it works, though; it keeps us detached, at least partially, from them so that we view their lives pitilessly. We know they're failures before they openly do.
Ultimately, that's what Ghost World is about: failure. And it's not the failure through hubris, or fate, it's just inevitable failure because these people are losers. It's a relentless examination of losers growing up into losers; a bildungsroman of a failure.
First we begin with the girls making fun of the world around them, the places they go, the people they see, and the TV they obsessively watch, and it is a pretty funny mockery (we begin to want to like them, but their overt flaws soon prevent that). Slowly this isn't enough, and they start creating situations for mockery's sake. Eventually the overly-critical eye glimpses each other and glimpses inward -- they see that not only is the other a loser, they themselves are.
I could go on and on about it. It's an interesting comic to dissect, and, in my opinion, the mere fact I could rant on about the details, about the characters, about even the color scheme, is the sign of a good work of art. It's not the most fun of reads, but, honestly, if that's the only reason you read something, grow up.
As an aside: I have a tangential rant I want to make, but it only was inspired by this comic and not really directly having to deal with it, so feel free to stop reading if all you wanted was the comic review.
While reading about it online (after I finish anything interesting, I like to look up information on it just to see) one thing struck me again and again, and that's the continual assumption that Enid is intelligent (or even pseudo-intellectual, which is also incorrect but a different argument). Being snarky does not make somebody intelligent, and, in fact, a major aspect of the story is that Enid isn't particularly intelligent.
Apparently, our society has gotten to the point where a person is considered intelligent if they are obsessively critical or opinionated. As somebody who strives to be intelligent and improve myself, I'm continually irritated when the mantle of "smart" is given to those who simply snipe at the world around them.
So, no, regardless of what wikipedia and who-knows-who else says, Ghost World is not about two intelligent/intellectual/pseudo-intellectual girls, and it's all the better for it. This would be an entirely different story if it were one of lost potential.
