Ghost World, the film made from Daniel Clowes' graphic novel, looks like it may be one of the sleeper hits in a summer filled with sequels and gross-out teen comedies.  Early reactions to the film have been strong and the buzz is building in Hollywood where Clowes and Terry Zwigoff (the director of Crumb and Ghost World) have signed to write a script based on Clowes' 'Art School Confidential' for Drew Barrymore (see 'Another Clowes Film in the Pipe').  Originally scheduled for an early summer release (see 'Ghost World Bows in June', Ghost World will premiere on August 3rd, by which time critics and audiences should be tiring of the typically overblown Hollywood summer fare.

Several critics have already attended advance screenings of Ghost World, and in the current (May 24) issue of Rolling Stone, writer Peter Travers raves about Ghost World in his 'Summer Movie Guide' article.  Travers sees Ghost World as the perfectly contrarian antidote to the excesses of the current cinematic season, ' it's everything you don't expect when you connect comics and Hollywood.  Working with Clowes, the gifted director Terry Zwigoff brings delicate feeling to this raw-edged tale of two teenage girls who are out of sync with the world around them...(Ghost World) is a rebuke to everything crass that Hollywood is bombing us with this summer.  Don't duck this one; it's a winner.'

Ghost World isn't going to open with a $60 million dollar weekend at the box office, but with its intelligent characters and subtle storytelling it is going to please the critics and could well find a hip audience that is far greater in size than the readership Clowes, who according to Fantagraphics, is the most popular alternative comics creator in the world, enjoys now.   This represents an opportunity for retailers, particularly those who already have had some success selling alternative comics.  Books are the safest, most reliable form of movie tie-in merchandise and Fantagraphics has three excellent offerings that will definitely appeal to anyone who enjoys the Ghost World film, a movie edition of the original Ghost World graphic novel, an illustrated edition of the screenplay (by Clowes and Zwigoff), as well as a great new collection of Clowes' work, 20th Century Eightball.  Plenty of other summer movies will undoubtedly out-gross Ghost World both on the screen and at the box office, but for retailers who sell comics, Ghost World could be one of the best merchandising bets of the summer.