But he's also an everyman figure: there's a bit of him in all of us, and this makes him funny. In some ways, Wilson is a wholly unsympathetic character, saying aloud the things others might only think. The next morning, he titters just as boyishly when we talk about his new book, Wilson, the story of a lonely, middle-aged, egotistical loner who simply cannot get on with other people, no matter how hard he tries. In the theatre, I wonder if this tic is down to nerves. I love a man who laughs at his own jokes. Until, that is, he opens his mouth, at which point you crack up. Clowes, meanwhile, is long of leg and bald of head, and, curled in his chair, looks like the angst-ridden star of an indie movie – one set in Brooklyn, probably, with a plotline involving therapists and unattainable women. Ware, who looks like Frasier Crane, only with an even bigger "brainiac" forehead, has a devastating line in self-deprecation. But the real surprise is that, beneath the lights, Clowes and Ware make for such a hilarious double act. To say this is a hot gig is a wild understatement – it's the comic equivalent of seeing the Smiths and the Stone Roses on the same bill – and the place is packed with groovy young things in architectural spectacles and patterned, thrift-store shirts. T he night before I meet Daniel Clowes, comic-book writer extraordinaire, I go to see him on stage with Chris Ware, author of the prize-winning graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid On Earth.
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