Description: Andy, a miserable high-schooler in 1970s Chicago, has only one friend, an angry fellow outcast named Louie. He's desperately in love with a girl he met in California who won't return his letters and he's filled with shame at the constant taunts of his classmates. When he achieves super strength from smoking cigarettes he uses it for neither good nor evil but in a brutal playground showdown.
Review Quotes: "Daniel Clowes continues to plot a lofty, lonely course through the subconscious of popular culture with this hilariously bleak graphic novel." --TIME Best of 2011
"48 pages densely packed with art, dialogue and ideas, The Death-Ray [is] supersaturated, a story delivered directly into your imagination..." --NPR "Clowes once again shows he is a master of current-day absurdity -- with heart." --USA Today "The Death-Ray reads as a cautionary parable and an acidic rumination on the travails of adolescence . . . Clowes demonstrates what the comic book can do and literary fiction can't." --The Observer