David Boring

The book depicts the misadventures of its eponymous character, whose main interests are finding the "perfect woman" and learning more about his father, an obscure comic artist whom he has never met.

Trying to imagine what a one-sentence sales pitch for David Boring would sound like, Clowes told an interviewer "It's like Fassbinder meets half-baked Nabokov on Gilligan's Island.

[2] David Boring is a story told in the first person by its eponymous protagonist, concerning his sometimes fantastic and sometimes mundane exploits and misadventures in and out of big city life.

Much of the plot of the book concerns David's attempt to obtain a woman whom he considers his feminine ideal, based largely on the characteristics of his first cousin, Pamela, with whom he shared some innocent adolescent kisses at a family summer retreat.

Soon after attending the funeral of a friend, David meets, dates, and is abandoned by Wanda, a woman whom he considers the perfect fulfillment of this ideal.

After sinking into an all-consuming depression for weeks, David is shot in the head by an unknown attacker in front of his own home, but survives with only a small dent in his forehead.

He soon discovers that the man who shot him was a professor named Karkes, who was similarly abandoned by Wanda, and assumed that she had left him for David.

Smith resolves to frame David and Dot for Whitey's murder, in order to eliminate any competition for Iris, whom he marries.

She fled to the island for her child's safety, and has several months of food supply, planning to start a vegetable garden so that they can survive indefinitely.