It's because they're so used to being fed that in the movies. People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever. I guess there's a certain kind of person who can't relate to him in any way. But he doesn't go into it thinking: look at this jerk! He has a naive faith in humanity. He thinks he's going to make a connection with people, that they'll be on his wavelength, and then gets frustrated when they aren't. But I don't think of Wilson as misanthropic. It's a better default setting than over-optimism. 'I know lots of misanthropic types,' he says. Personally, he thinks those who have Wilson down as a misanthrope are entirely wrong. 'You're going to be lying on your death bed in 30 years thinking: 'Where did it all go? What did I do with those precious days?' Some shit-work for the oligarchs, is that it?'Ĭlowes is mildly surprised by the reaction to Wilson so far: though the book is selling faster than any other he has written, the responses to it have been 'all over the map'. 'Listen to me, brother,' he finally explodes. 'Jesus,' says Wilson, increasingly exasperated by his mumbo jumbo. When the man starts to explain – he's in senior management at an equity firm – Wilson waves a finger across his own frozen facial features, and says: 'Glaze!' The man continues. In one scene, in an airport lounge, he strikes up a conversation with a business traveller. But he's also an everyman figure: there's a bit of him in all of us, and this makes him funny. In some ways, Wilson is a wholly unsympathetic character, saying aloud the things others might only think.

The next morning, he titters just as boyishly when we talk about his new book, Wilson, the story of a lonely, middle-aged, egotistical loner who simply cannot get on with other people, no matter how hard he tries. In the theatre, I wonder if this tic is down to nerves.

I love a man who laughs at his own jokes. Until, that is, he opens his mouth, at which point you crack up. Clowes, meanwhile, is long of leg and bald of head, and, curled in his chair, looks like the angst-ridden star of an indie movie – one set in Brooklyn, probably, with a plotline involving therapists and unattainable women. Ware, who looks like Frasier Crane, only with an even bigger 'brainiac' forehead, has a devastating line in self-deprecation. But the real surprise is that, beneath the lights, Clowes and Ware make for such a hilarious double act. To say this is a hot gig is a wild understatement – it's the comic equivalent of seeing the Smiths and the Stone Roses on the same bill – and the place is packed with groovy young things in architectural spectacles and patterned, thrift-store shirts. T he night before I meet Daniel Clowes, comic-book writer extraordinaire, I go to see him on stage with Chris Ware, author of the prize-winning graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid On Earth.

Wilson by daniel clowes