What is cool 1992: Books

Cool Cartoonist
Cartoonist Daniel Clowes specializes in stylized moroseness — he makes abject despair funny. ''A lot of my attitude is a reaction to other comics,'' he says. ''They're so stupid, all that superhero stuff that looks like it's turned out by a corporate machine.''

Clowes' drawing has a crisp rigor that reminds some of early-'60s advertising art — it's realistic and surreal at the same time, quiet yet intense. ''I like to mix moods, to make comics that are both funny and angry, to throw readers off just when they think they've figured out which way the story is going.''

Clowes has a growing following for Eightball, an anthology of unnerving stories he calls ''deeply wacky but rooted in reality.'' Some of Clowes' best Eightball stories have been collected in the new book Lout Rampage. The Chicago artist, 31, is contemplating a move to L.A.: ''It seems like the most hideous place in the country, so it ought to inspire some good art.''
— Ken Tucker

Cool Retro Book
It's a classic collector's story: 33-year-old Rick Polizzi used to have board games as a kid in New Orleans. But he grew up, threw them out, moved to L.A. Then he saw one in a thrift store three years ago, and his whole childhood swam in front of his eyes. So he began picking up old games for a buck or two each. Now he has 1,000 — and he and cowriter Fred Schaefer have produced Spin Again, a classily designed, essence-of-stuff-in-the-attic book about board games from the '50s and '60s to remind you of what you, too, stupidly tossed. Your turn.
— Lisa Schwarbaum

Cool Book List
Cool Title
I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, a deft skewering of the self-help movement from Wendy Kaminer.

Cool Sales Gimmick
The essay contest sponsored by Poseidon Press, publishers of The First Wives Club: Describe, in 1,000 words or less, what a cad your ex-husband is. (The winner got a $1,500 Cartier gift certificate.)

Cool Curmudgeon
Patrick O'Neil, the disagreeably charming antihero of Stephen McCauley's novel The Easy Way Out.

Coolest Idea In This Election Year
The Women's 1992 Voting Guide. An inspired book showing who stands where.

Cool Kids' Book
Up North at the Cabin. Evocative text (by Marsha Wilson Chall) and beautiful paintings (by Steve Johnson) capture the timeless pleasures of a summer at the lake.

Cool Character
Barrett Rossignol, the oh-so-slippery seducer in Diana Hammond's The Impersonator.