The second book by Daniel Clowes that I had the pleasure of reading, David Boring (2000) has some of the same witty characters and close friendships of its predecessor Ghost World, but the story gets much stranger and surreal as it goes on.
David Boring is split into three acts, the first act being set in a city where the protagonist, David, meets the girl who fits all of his fetishised fantasies. The second act takes a bizarre turn when David gets shot in the middle of the forehead, and gets taken to a remote island house where all the tropes of a good TV drama occur amongst the inhabitants. The final act concludes with his obsessive hunt for the girl from the first act, turning into a surreal dream of incestuous love, apocalyptic premonitions and good ol’ film noir detective work.
David is a character who is so unattached to and unaffected by the world, he seems to not care about anything besides piecing together his messed up past symbolised by the comics his unknown father left behind. His sexual obsessions and root of his fantasies makes him out to be a bit of a creep, all in all not a character you love from the start. The ending of David Boring made me feel strange and almost happy for the characters, but in a guilty, repulsed way.
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