“The comic book is the perfect medium — collaborative, visual, and verbal — to explore the power of art to connect people in spite / because of extenuating circumstances like mental illness. It’s magical to see Johnston’s art reverberate between Cavolo and McClanahan as they wrestle with these questions like (to choose a metaphor Johnston might appreciate) Jacob wrestling with God.”
—Lauren O’Neal, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Brilliant and tragic.”—Nathan Scott McNamara, Electric Literature
“Fans of Daniel Johnston and his lo-fi, enigmatic music will devour this retelling of Johnston’s humble beginnings, his rise to fame, and his personal demons. While the prose appears sparse it delves into the problematic mythologizing of troubled artists and how we are guilty of turning mental health conditions into clichés.”
—Maggy van Eijk, BuzzFeed
“A self-referential story that acknowledges the odd ways that society constructs culture and celebrity and how hard it can be to fully capture a life, especially when that person is famous, or “cult famous,” as the case may be. But as McClanahan and Cavolo struggle to show the heart of a man who himself struggles to make art and live his life, they show their hearts as well—big, red, and beating.”
—Laura Adamczyk, The A.V. Club
“This blend of music, biography, art, and mental illness belongs in collections with similar works such as Ellen Forney’s Marbles and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.”
—Library Journal
“Amazing… a perfect, intuitive blend of fellow fanatics with perspective. Both the writing and the artwork shine.”
—Simon Sweetman, STUFF
“The Incantations of Daniel Johnston bears some similarities to the work of French artist David B. as well as R. Crumb’s shorter work about the religious visions of Philip K. Dick.”
—Martin Schneider, Dangerous Minds
“Something wholly unexpected, grotesque, and poignant—a deeply idiosyncratic biographical project that is less interested in chronology and reported details than in the attendant horrors and anxieties of childhood, mental health, and creativity.”
—Will Stephenson, The Fader
“You’ve never read anything like The Incantations of Daniel Johnston, a poetic, frenetic dive through the mind of the singer/songwriter, using it as a filter through which the larger strokes of his life are presented. What results is unstable, sympathetic, confused, and damned. As graphic novel biographies go, this one excels, using all the possibilities of its subject to shape the narrative execution, and to skillfully inform the meat of the text, and the themes that it addresses.”
—John Seven, Comics Beat
“If there’s a cultural ambassador to Appalachia at this moment, it very well may be West Virginian writer Scott McClanahan. McClanahan’s latest work, The Incantations of Daniel Johnston, is a graphic novel about the life of Daniel Johnston, the influential outsider rock musician and artist also from West Virginia. Like the accompanying images provided by Spanish artist Ricardo Cavolo, McClanahan’s prose is intoxicating, taking care to detail magnificent anecdotes from Johnston’s life while simultaneously shedding light on ineffable notions like culture, psychology and fame.”
—Dan Mistich, Salon
“Stunning… spirited and dark and sweet and sad. Reading The Incantations of Daniel Johnston makes the reader feel less alone, makes us feel connected to the vivid beauty and torment that underpins the human experience. McClanahan and Cavolo have managed to generate something spectacular.”
—Kimberly King Parsons, Fanzine
“No tribute has been closer to the spirit of Johnston than a new graphic novel, The Incantations of Daniel Johnston [which] manages to pay homage to the legend of Johnston without romanticizing his mental illness. The illustrations by Cavolo, a Spanish artist, are inspired by folk and devotional art, so they elevate Johnston and his figurative creations to the realm of the mystical and the mysterious. Cavolo has effectively created Saint Daniel, but it is a complicated path to sainthood.”
—Leah Caldwell, Texas Observer
“McClanahan pays due respect to Johnston’s genius while casting a less mythical or overly inspirational light on his struggles.”
—Amy Diegelman, Book Riot
“What McClanahan and Cavolo accomplished can only be called magic and holds the same bizarre power as Johnston’s voice, scrunched face, and shaky hands whenever he’s not holding a guitar. [The Incantations of Daniel Johnston is] a weird, heartbreaking, deeply personal piece of art that will hopefully become as much a part of Daniel Johnston’s story as the iconic mural he left in Austin.”
—Gabino Iglesias, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“Beautiful and original.”
—Michael Schaub, Men’s Journal
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