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Daniel Clowes’ Mister Wonderful, the fan-favorite Eisner Award-winning story, originally serialized in The New York Times Magazine, now collected and with forty pages of new material. Onsale from Pantheon Books April 12. You can view an excerpt on Publishers Weekly’s Panel Mania.
Look out for Clowes’ events this spring, including in NYC at the Strand on May 5.
Meet Marshall. Sitting alone in the local coffee place. He’s been set up by his friend Tim on a blind date with someone named Natalie, and now he’s just feeling set up. She’s nine minutes late and counting. Who was he kidding anyway? Divorced, middle-aged, newly unemployed, with next to no prospects, Marshall isn’t exactly what you’d call a catch. Twenty minutes pass.
A half hour. Marshall orders a scotch. (He wasn’t going to drink!) Forty minutes.
Then, after nearly an hour, when he’s long since given up hope, Natalie appears—breathless, apologizing profusely that she went to the wrong place. She takes a seat, to Marshall’s utter amazement.
She’s too good to be true: attractive, young, intelligent, and she seems to be seriously engaged with what Marshall has to say. There has to be a catch.
And, of course, there is.
During the extremely long night that follows, Marshall and Natalie are emotionally tested in ways that two people who just met really should not be. Not, at least, if they want the prospect of a second date.
A captivating, bittersweet, and hilarious look at the potential for human connection in an increasingly hopeless world, Mister Wonderful more than lives up to its name.