Ice Haven

At long last, the paperback version of Daniel Clowes’s bril-liant graphic novel, hailed by Time as “another of his hilari-ously slightly off-center worlds that have a vague sense of dread about them. Kind of like where you live.”
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Welcome to Ice Haven! “It’s not as cold here as it sounds,” declares Random Wilder, our reluctant guide to this sleepy Midwestern town. He’s also its would-be poet laureate. Would-be, that is, were it not for the “florid banalities” of his archrival, Ida Wentz, pub-lished ad nauseam in the Ice Haven Daily Progress. Among Wilder’s other fellow Ice Havians are the love-lorn Violet Vanderplazt and Vida Wentz; the adorable interracial moppets Carmichael and Paula; the Blue Bunny, newly sprung from prison and the bitterest rabbit in town; and poor little David Goldberg, miss-ing for more than a week now. . . .
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The lives of the men and women of Ice Haven are woven into a multilayered tale that, while it owes a debt to Our Town, is ultimately based on and inspired by . . . Leopold and Loeb. No kidding.
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Only Daniel Clowes could do it and, luckily for us, he has.

DANIEL CLOWES is widely considered one of the best car­toonists of his generation; his adaptation of his own Ghost World graphic novel for the screen earned him an Oscar nomination. A regular contributor to The New Yorker, Mc­Sweeney’s, and The Best American Comics, he lives in Oak­land, California.