Eightball is an alternative comic book series written and drawn by Daniel Clowes. The first issue was published by Fantagraphics Books in 1989. It has, since the 1990s, consistently been among the best selling independently authored comics. The term alternative comics is one of several labels applied to a range of comic books, graphic novels, and allied forms that have appeared since about 1980, in the wake of the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 70s. ... Daniel Clowes (sometimes credited as Dan Clowes) is a comics-author and cartoonist of alternative comic books, including Eightball and Lloyd Llewelyn. ... Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, underground comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, and graphic novels located in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. ... 1989 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Alienation is a recurring theme in the series. Clowes is also known for nuanced dialog and character delineation that is distinctly at odds with the broad approach stereotypically associated with comics. Alienation is estrangement or splitting apart. ...

The first extended piece serialized in Eightball was "Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron". This work featured a disjointed, surrealistic storyline. Subsequently, Eightball has featured fewer short comedic and surreal stories in favor of longer storylines with more focus on character and interpersonal relationships. Ghost World, released as a graphic novel after being serialized in Eightball, is an example of this later approach. Ghost World was adapted by Clowes into a full-length feature film; Clowes (with his collaborator, director Terry Zwigoff) was nominated for an Academy Award for screenplay writing. Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron is a graphic novel written by Daniel Clowes. ... Surrealism is a revolution, a cultural, artistic, and intellectual movement oriented toward the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind and the attainment of a state different from, more than, and ultimately truer than everyday reality: the sur-real, i. ... Book cover Ghost World is a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with comic book. ... Although he never won an Oscar for any of his movie performances, the comedian Bob Hope received two honorary Oscars for his contributions to cinema. ...

Clowes continues to issue Eightball sporadically, with the most recent issues (#22, 2002 and #23, 2004) each conceived as an artistically ambitious self-contained work, featuring oversized, all-color formats.

Characters

• Dan Pussey is the über-nerd protagonist of the story. Appearing periodically in Eightball, Pussey goes through the life of a professional superhero comic artist. His blitz career and artistic failure is humorously shown not as his own doing, but as that of a highly artificial world around him. Daniel Clowes criticizes not only a cliched superhero genre, but a pseudo-intellectual independent comic scene as well.