In the world of cartoonistDaniel Clowes, time moves at a different speed.

Long recognized as a pioneer of the graphic novel form, Clowes is now 40 years into a career that’s already seen him win a trophy case of awards, inspire a generation of new peers and cement his own place as one of the best in his field. All are worthy accolades for the mind that’s given us seminal works like the groundbreaking comic series “Eightball” and stand-alone titles like 1997’s “Ghost World,” which Clowes would later co-adapt into an Oscar-nominated screenplay with director Terry Zwigoff.

Yet, the 62-year-old Clowes has shown no desire to hang up his pen, instead choosing to hole up in his Oakland studio for years at a time to complete a new title.

“I always think of the way I work as how I imagine a painter like Willem de Kooning works,” he said. “You start with little things that feel right, you explore those, and then you realize that thing isn’t quite right, so you fix it and add to it. You’re finding out what you’re doing as you do it. That’s why it takes forever.”

In 2016, the result was — fittingly — “Patience,” a surreal, time-traveling murder mystery ripe with gorgeous colors, meticulous craftwork and Clowes’ signature themes of alienation, loneliness and paranoia.

This fallthe reward is “Monica.”

Out Tuesday, Oct. 3, from Fantagraphics, the narrative consists of nine interconnected stories and centers around a daughter’s desire to find out more about the mother who abandoned her as a child. It’s a genre-bending meditation on familiar bonds, a dazzling testament to Clowes’ skills as an artist, and, quite possibly, the cartoonist’s single greatest work to date.

That’s certainly what Eric Reynolds, Clowes’ longtime editor at Fantagraphics, believes.

Though Reynolds jokes that his job mostly involves “staying out of Dan’s way,” this winter he became the second person in the world — after Clowes’ wife — to set eyes on the highly anticipated title.

“I was blown away by it,” Reynolds recalled of his initial reaction. “I think it’s his masterpiece. It kind of feels like an apotheosis of everything he’s done before.”

Reaching into the past, in fact, plays out on multiple levels with “Monica.”

视觉上,每一个故事,narrative pays homage to a unique comic aesthetic. Clowes shared that “Foxhole,” the book’s opening tale, was inspired by cartooning legend and former MAD Magazine editor Harvey Kurtzman’s haunting depictions of soldiers at war, while “Pretty Penny” offers a dark twist on the teenage romance comics once ubiquitous in the 1950s and ’60s.

There are also aliens, cults, dead people communicating by radio and, across the book’s opening two pages, a tidy and succinct summary of the entirety of human history. Were that not enough, “Monica” additionally serves as an indirect epitaph to four important people Clowes has lost in recent years: his mother, Allison; his older brother, Jimmy; and dear friends (and fellow cartoonists) Richard Sala and Gary Lieb.

Though it’s the loss of Clowes’ mother and some autobiographical details concerning his upbringing that loom largest over the stories of “Monica,” the artist said that all four of the names to whom his latest book is dedicated — that page notably appears after the saga’s opening tale — have significant places within its pages.

“All four of them died within the same two-year span,” Clowes said. “The book was already leaning into that territory, then once they died, I assimilated it into my work. The book was haunted by them — Richard especially. I could just feel him walking around in the background of it, looking disdainfully at me.”

While Clowes laments that he’ll never be able to share the finished product with Sala, a close companion and his longtime East Bay walking buddy, he was excited to send the book to another pal: writer-director Ari Aster.

Known as the filmmaker behind modern horror classics like 2018’s “Hereditary” and this year’s “Beau Is Afraid,” Aster has forged a friendship with Clowes that is steeped in their mutual love for what the latter calls “a Kafkaesque sense of humor.”

Despite a marked contrast in both scope and tone, Clowes agrees that his latest work and Aster’s newest film share a common, if curious, source of inspiration: his own early comics.

“He grew up reading my comics,” Clowes explained, “and, in a strange way, I feel like both of us were influenced by that. By the time he let me read an early draft of ‘Beau,’ I was mostly done writing ‘Monica’ and I remember thinking, ‘Man, there are so many reverberations between these two things!’ ”

事实上,尽管出彩花费自己的时间— it takes him a year just to do the coloring, he says — there is also value to be found in good company and spirited exchanges on craft. The artist hopes to see plenty of the former as he prepares to embark on a short tour in support of “Monica.” Set to kick off with a launch event at San Francisco’s Green Apple Books on the Park on Tuesday, Oct. 10, Clowes admitted that while he looks forward to the excursion, he’s already moved on from the mammoth undertaking of “Monica” in search of his next project.

It’s simply what Clowes does. Following the five years he spent working on “Patience,” the cartoonist said it was only a few days before the familiar itch to return to the studio took hold. The same was true again this spring, as Clowes attempted to take a month off after completing “Monica” but again failed to hold out for long.

“I lasted about three days,” he said. “After that, I got out a sketchbook and started coming up with ideas and doodling things.

“I do have a very vague idea of what I want to do next. I can’t really do anything until I’m done with book promotion, but I would guess that by the end of October, I’ll be back to it.”

Zack Ruskin is a freelance writer.