This time last year I put together a list of my favourite discoveries from 2009, and this year I’m going to do the same.  As with last year’s list these are things that were new to me in 2010, not necessarily new releases during the year.  They are also listed in no particular order – it would be impossible to choose a favourite. 

The first entry in the list, however, is from 2010.  Wilson, by Daniel Clowes, was published in April.  Like everything I have ever read by Clowes it is a true work of art.  He is an absolute master of subtext and has the same level of control over the medium of the comic book as Jimi Hendrix had over an electric guitar.

In brief – and I have to be brief because this book is so perfectly crafted that to elaborate would spoil so much – the book is about the titular Wilson, who we follow over the course of his early to late middle age.  Wilson is a slave to pessimism and self-hatred.  During the book he tries to get his derailed life back on track, but ends up sabotaging all of his own efforts.  Michel Faber wrote an eloquent review for the Guardian which you can read here, but he is also at pains to stress that reading this with as little knowledge of the plot as possible can only strengthen the experience.

I love the way Clowes structures his comics.  The size of each panel, the number of panels per page, the angle of the speech bubbles, each of these basic building blocks is used by him as precisely as a scalpel used by a surgeon.  In Wilson we get seventy chapters, each of which is withheld to a single page containing a single episode from Wilson’s life.  In the hands of a lesser artist this structure could have become bitty and episodic, but Clowes times everything to perfection.  I found myself speeding engrossed through the pages, then going back to admire them once I had completed the comic.  Many pages show mundane moments from Wilson’s day-to-day routine, but every now and then something appalling happens and Wilson responds with his customary cynicism, which only serves to make matters worse.  There is space and room for desolate contemplation in every chapter.

Then there’s the way Clowes draws.  Master of multiple styles, the default here is his trademark line drawing filled with pastel shades.  I had a sense that this style – the artist at his most realistic – was itself tormenting Wilson.  It records, for example, his gradual hair-loss in exquisite and unflattering detail.  During other chapters Clowes switches to a more caricatured, cartoonish style and draws Wilson as a sort of adult baby, curled up or covering his face with his hands.

Like Clowes’ previous comics, Wilson takes the reader to a dark and fraught emotional place.  But, just as with previous comics, it’s hilarious when you get there.  There’s a laugh on almost every page, albeit a sad laugh that’s one part pity and one part scorn.  In true tragicomic tradition it’s terribly clear that Wilson’s own failings are the principal force behind his raw deal in life.  It’s hard to know whether to love him or loathe him come the end.  One thing’s for certain, it’s not hard to know whether to love or loathe Wilson the comic book.  This was one of the best things I read all year.

Here’s a sample page, but I recommend that you click on it to be taken to Drawn & Quarterly’s pdf preview – three pages in glorious high res!