COLAN, GENE 103
story featuring his character Lloyd Llewellyn to the Seattle publisher Fantagraphics,
which promptly ran it in issue #13 of the Hernandez’s Love and Rockets. Along with
Pantheon, the New York trade publisher, Fantagraphics remains Clowes’s primary
publisher. In addition to the stand-alone graphic novels, Fantagraphics has published
several collections of Clowes’s short format comics, including Pussey!, Orgy Bound, and
Twentieth Century Eightball. Given his broad cultural infl uence and high-profi le reputa-
tion in the comics industry, it seems likely that most of Clowes’s work will remain in
print for the indefi nite future.
Clowes’s best-known eff ort to date, both commercially and critically, is the existential
teen drama Ghost World, which centers on the troubled friendship of two teenage girls,
Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer. Of the two, Enid’s outlook is bleaker and
more despairing, and it seems likely that she serves as a stand-in for the author, who
nonetheless also briefl y appears in the story as a sad-looking middle-aged cartoonist at
a book signing. Th e Village Voice said that Clowes “spells out the realities of teen angst as
powerfully and authentically as Salinger did in Catcher in the Rye for an earlier genera-
tion,” while Time magazine described the graphic novel as an “instant classic.” As these
reviews suggest, Ghost World has become one of the fl agship titles of the contemporary
revitalization of comics. By combining deadpan humor, vividly realized characters, and
precise, super-clean linework, Clowes has helped bring comics into the contemporary
bookstore, in the guise of the graphic novel. While his output has slowed down in re-
cent years, he remains one of the most infl uential and closely watched cartoonists of his
generation.
Kent Worcester
COLAN, GENE (1926–). Born in the Bronx, New York, Colan was a prominent com-
ics illustrator who graduated from George Washington High School, which catered to
gifted art students, and studied at the prestigious Arts Students League of New York.
Just before joining the Army and becoming a member of the occupation forces stationed
in the Philippines, he got his comic book start at Fiction House. Th roughout the years
Colan did a considerable amount of freelance work and when he showed his samples to
Stan Lee at Timely Comics in 1946, he was hired that very day for 60 dollars a week.
Colan considered Timely art director Syd Shores the one person who helped him the
most in mastering his craft. When Timely was letting go of staff , Colan moved over
to DC Comics to work on Sea Devils and Hopalong Cassidy and various war stories.
Colan then returned to Marvel Comics to become an essential contributor to so-called
Marvel Age of the 1960s, working on Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, Captain
America, and Doctor Strange.
Colan’s work is as readily identifi able as it is highly praised. His use of pencils is
unique, bringing shadows and half-tones to such a level that his work was often chal-
lenging to ink (although Colan liked how Tom Palmer handled the chores). His highly
cinematic style is infl uenced by his life-long love of fi lm. Colan creates the eff ect of
various camera angles through slanted panels and even places a focus upon the unusual
