Ghost World: the Special Edition

One of the greatest graphic novels of all-time, in an expanded, hardcover edition—the full graphic novel, the complete script of the Oscar-nominated movie, and over 30 new pages of rare ephemera. Originally released in 1997 as a limited hardcover edition of 2,500 copies that sold out almost instantly, Ghost World has subsequently gone through 14 softcover printings, selling in excess of 150,000 copies in the United States, becoming one of the best-selling and most revered graphic novels of all-time, culminating in the 2001 Academy Award-nominated film starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson and Steve Buscemi.

Despite Ghost World's success, the original, limited-edition hardcover first printing remains the only hardcover edition of Ghost World ever published and fetches hundreds of dollars on eBay. To commemorate the tenth anniversary, Fantagraphics Books is proud to present a deluxe, expanded Ghost World special edition, combining the original graphic novel, the Oscar-nominated screenplay adaptation by Clowes and Terry Zwigoff, as well as over two dozen pages of rare and obscure bonus material in one book, along with a new cover and introducton.

Ghost World is the story of Becky and Enid, two teenaged girls and best friends facing the common prospect of not only growing up, but growing apart from each other. Clowes paints a tender picture of this intellectually precocious, sexually adventurous (despite a mutual lack of experience), and formative period in their lives, filtered through a light blue hue echoing a world lit by the cathode rays of a television—a perfect metaphor for their post-nuclear existence. Both naturalistic and nostalgic, Ghost World carves a layered narrative out of the daily existence of these fully-realized young women.

Ghost World: Special Edition will include the original, 80-page graphic novel; the out-of-print, Oscar-nominated 106-page screenplay; the little-seen comic strip created for the Ghost World soundtrack; and over 30 pages of rare ephemera related to the book and film, including covers to foreign editions of Ghost World, rare promotional art, pictures, sketches and much more.