Ice Haven
by Dan Clowes
Pantheon

It takes a lot of guts to do your own autopsy.

But cartoonist Daniel Clowes has done it over and over throughout his career. And he's done it again with "Ice Haven," wherein he slices apart various aspects of his own personality with the pitiless precision of a surgeon.

Clowes, best known for creating the comic that inspired Ghost World, uses the multifaceted narrative of "Ice Haven" to explore the worlds of amateur art, murder, childhood angst and his own genre's much hacked-at status as the bastard child of literature and visual art. As he does so, he simultaneously constructs and deconstructs his own work, inoculating himself against analysis by beating would-be critics to the punch. When he succeeds, the self-reflective moments of "Ice Haven" are clever and provocative. Consider this luminous snippet from a monologue by "Harry Naybors, Comic Book Critic":

Are comics a valid form of expression? The jury's still out, I'm afraid. There exists for some an uncomfortable impurity in the combination of two forms of picture-writing (i.e. pictographic cartoon symbols vs. the letter shapes that form "words") while to others it's not that big a deal.

Alleged awkwardness aside, perhaps in that schism lies the underpinning of what gives "comics" its endurance as a vital form: While prose tends toward pure "interiority," coming to life in the reader's mind, and cinema gravitates toward the "exteriority" of experiential spectacle, perhaps "comics," in its embrace of both the interiority of the written word and the physicality of image, more closely replicates the true nature of human consciousness and the struggle between private self-definition and corporeal "reality."

Think that's a load of crap? Well, Clowes has these words emerge from the mouth of a pale, bespectacled, tighty-whitey-clad self-appointed comic critic eating a bowl of breakfast cereal. He's saved you the trouble of taking him down a peg.

Agree with the thesis, or at least with the premise that it's worth considering? Well, Clowes bothered to write, illustrate and publish it in the first place. That should tell you something.

He wins either way.

At its worst, however, the self-absorption of "Ice Haven" is distracting, and comes at the expense of a series of engaging short illustrated vignettes, monologues and conversations comprising its criss-crossing plots. There's real meat on the bones of "Ice Haven" — the disappearance of an awkward, friendless child rivets the Midwestern town (is it a murder?), a failed artist (the book's narrator) attempts suicide, a marriage founders and a girl loses her virginity and gains a bitter new sense of self-respect. There's a lot going on in "Ice Haven"; within the pages of an 89-page pint-sized book, Clowes dips his dagger into:

- the relationship between art and criticism;

- the alienation of being locked out of a small, closed community;

- the history and psychology of the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder;

- the pathos of failing as an aspiring artist;

- the explosive mix of lust, ignorance and idealized passion that fuels childhood obsessions;

- the public obsession with child murder and kidnapping cases;

- and the interpersonal dynamic that drives marital infidelity;

to name just a selection of the book's most obvious subjects. Why spend panel after panel commenting upon writers, readers, critics and artistic process when there's so much other good stuff — non process-related stuff — to pursue?

Well, it's partly that Clowes finds the meaning of art itself to be elusive and worth pursuing. And it's partly that some of Clowes's most interesting characters are bound up in the act of creation. But for the most past, it seems to be that Clowes can't simply say something intelligent; by reflex, he must also step outside of himself and comment acidly upon it.

The self-criticism can be good or bad; either way, it's an inextricable part of Clowes's style, and the arc of "Ice Haven." If there's any clear charge that could be leveled against "Ice Haven," it's that the author too often fails to take full advantage of his chosen medium. A merely good cartoonist (like Clowes throughout most of "Ice Haven," for example) combines words and images so that they have mutually supportive power. The art boosts the writing, but the writing, in particular, could stand alone. The combination of art and words is useful, but not explosive.

But "Ice Haven" at its best rises to the level of some of the genre's best artists (Bill Watterson of "Calvin and Hobbes," or Chris Ware, for example) — it has a few sweet panels where the images and words are truly inextricable. In "Ice Haven" episodes such as the melancholy and touching "Violet in Love" or the chilling "Mosquito," Clowes mints pairings of text and image that are completely shaped by their mutual proximity. They become exponentially stronger as a result.

"Ice Haven," for all its penetrating intelligence and narrative skill, has too few of these moments to be indispensible, but enough smart writing, memorable characters and irresistable hooks to be well worth the effort.

In its embrace of both the interiority of the written word and the physicality of image, "Ice Haven" trumps traditional literature and more closely replicates the true nature of human consciousness and the struggle between private self-definition and corporeal "reality."

Heh. Critics.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)