Dan Clowes follows his amazing graphic novel, Ghost World, with an equally stunning collection of nine short comics stories. His characters drift through the world in detached desperation, and they seem all the more real for it. Take the caricature artist, Mal Rosen, of the first story. His encounter with a young girl at an art festival plays out like a series of small self-discoveries, leaving him hollow and empty like a fresh exhalation. In this same sad, insightful way, all of these tales are coming-of-age stories--there"s the boy who is too old for trick-or-treating ("Immortal, Invisible"), the 18-year-old virgin trying to create a new tough-guy persona ("Blue Italian Shit"), and the image-obsessed Mona Beadle from "Green Eyeliner," which originally appeared in Esquire. --Jim Pascoe