Daniel Clowes's Retrospective at the Oakland Museum Terry Lorant Daniel Clowes at a columbarium in Oakland, California. IT was a gloomy winter day, and the cartoonist Daniel Clowes was taking me on a tour of his neighborhood here, including a downbeat stretch of Piedmont Avenue that has served as a setting in some of his recent graphic novels. He pointed out the bench where Marshall, the alienated loner of "Mister Wonderful" (2011; serialized in The New York Times Magazine in 2007-8), sulks after being kicked out of a party, and the nail salons that the titular sad sack of "Wilson" (2010) curses when he returns home from prison. Although he was supposed to be talking about his coming retrospective at the Oakland Museum of California, Mr. Clowes kept returning to the subject of his hometown of nearly two decades. "It's such an underdog," he said admiringly. He saved one of his favorite places for last: the Chapel of the Chimes, a gloriously over-the-top columbarium filled with ferns, splashing fountains and wall after wall of glass-fronted compartments stacked with crematory urns. As he wandered through its rooms, Mr. Clowes said that he sometimes comes here to write. Then he pointed to an array of urns shaped like leatherbound tomes. His face lit up. "That's my dream," he said blissfully. That's going to be my last book. Mr. Clowes, 50, may have a fascination with the mordant and the downtrodden, but he is also one of today's most successful and respected graphic novelists, lauded for his stylistic genius, his mixing of heartfelt emotion and biting cynicism, and his prolific output: 14 books, not to mention dozens of comics like the pioneering Eightball. In the last two years alone he has published three graphic novels, including "The Death-Ray" (2011), about a teenage boy who becomes a superhero when he smokes cigarettes, which helped land him a 2011 PEN career achievement award. Two of his comics have become independent films, 2001"s "Ghost World" (starring a young Scarlett Johansson) and 2006"s "Art School Confidential"; and "Wilson" will be a movie from the director Alexander Payne, who just shared an Oscar for the "Descendants" screenplay. "I liked this bizarre portrait of a misanthrope," Mr. Payne said in a telephone interview. It's a great part for an actor. And who would play that hideous ex-wife? But for all of the plaudits Mr. Clowes has received from the cartooning, literary and film worlds, he's never quite gotten his due where visual art is concerned. Although his work has turned up in group shows, and he had a 2003 solo show at Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles, he has never had his own museum exhibition. But now the art world is finally catching up. This month Abrams will publish "The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist," his first monograph. And on April 14 his first museum retrospective will open at the Oakland Museum, featuring 100 works dating to 1989, all but two the original ink drawings and gouaches for his cartoons, books and New Yorker covers. After closing on Aug. 12 the show will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Corcoran Gallery in Washington; the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio; and very likely to Europe and Asia. According to Susan Miller, the independent curator who organized the show, the recognition is overwhelmingly deserving. "Not only is Dan a great storyteller who gets dialogue cold," Ms. Miller said, "but he's rendering his images with a kind of facility that you see in some of the masters." The clarity of his character depictions, she added, often remind her of the portraits of the Pop artist Alex Katz. Many fine artists admire his work, like the German painter Neo Rauch, who included Mr. Clowes in a show of his favorite cartoonists at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht in 2002. "Dan's work stands out because of its precision," Mr. Rauch wrote in an e-mail. He was also "fascinated by its underground, slightly creepy aspect," and added, "Plus, he has a very dark humor that appeals to me immediately." Mr. Clowes can create a striking face with a few deftly placed lines or brush strokes, often seizing on some specific characteristic that summons up an indelible personality. Think of Enid Coleslaw, the snarky teenage anti-heroine of "Ghost World," and her big, black nerdy-hip glasses; they cover most of her face, but they can't conceal the tiny shifts in expression that loudly telegraph her mood. As Art Spiegelman, the author of the comic book memoir "Maus," observed, the same can be said for Mr. Clowes's knack for creating a sense of place. "He's a really terrific comic artist," said Mr. Spiegelman. He's also very observant. The little details that come up in setting his stage are based on having a very keen look around him.