Mister Wonderful #[nn]

A quietly affecting graphic novel from Daniel Clowes, Mister Wonderful presents itself with understated wit right from the cover — a bespectacled, middle-aged man with a furrowed brow stands beneath a city marquee that reads "A Love Story," with Pantheon Books visible in the twilight skyline behind him. The image perfectly captures Clowes's gift for finding the melancholy and the comic in ordinary life, rendered in his characteristically precise, deadpan linework. Published by Jonathan Cape in 2011, this is the kind of intimate, human-scaled story that reminds you why the comics medium can be so quietly powerful.