Acme Novelty Library #16 and #17

Fantagraphics published the first issue of Chris Ware's comic series Acme Novelty Library (which was composed largely of collections of his weekly comic strip appearing in New City, an alternative free weekly newspaper in Chicagoin the winter of 1993-94. Issue #5 (1995) featured the beginning of the epic tale of Jimmy Corrigan, the smartest kid on Earth. This melancholy and partly autobiographical tale of family alienation was serialized through the following 9 issues of Acme Novelty Library, with a short break in issue #7, and then published in its entirety in 2000. The work is groundbreaking, mixing heavy doses of symbolism, an exceptional use of pacing, complex iconic diagrams (often completely void of text), and Ware's phenomenal draftsmanship. This work is widely considered to have pushed the possibilities of the comics medium in way not seen since the work of Winson McCay and Frank King created nearly a century earlier.

After a short break with Acme Novelty Library #15, which featured other Ware characters such as Big Tex, Rocket Sam, and Quimby the Mouse, the Acme Novelty Library started its next large-scale serialized graphic novel with issue #16 (2005): Rusty Brown. It is again a sad tale of a ill-functioning adult and his childhood counterpart.

In the story, Brown is shown as a young boy from Nebraska and an approaching-middle-age man, who has a lifelong obsession with the collection of action figures and similar pop culture detritus. Rusty Brown's only friend throughout his life is Chalky White. White is also a collector of action figures and the like, but gives up collecting as he grows up, gets married, and starts a family, unlike his friend Rusty, who remains locked in a permanent manchild state, always looking for elements of his lost childhood.

Much like Jimmy Corrigan, the Rusty Brown story follows the characters as both children and adults, with frequent side-stories of supporting characters. While the artwork remains amazing, and the books themselves (self-published by Ware himself starting with issue #16) are gorgeously hardbound and embossed, the story is a downer. I mean a big, big downer. In fact, while almost all of Ware's work circulates around themes of loss, alienation, depression, disappointment, and loneliness, the Rusty Brown story is just too depressing for me to handle. I really don't know if I will fork over another seventeen bucks when #18 comes out.

However, issue #16 of Acme Novelty Library ends with a fantastic addition to the Building Stories comic series by Ware (previously featured in Nest and the New York Times magazines). This features what truly excites me about Ware's work - the complete re imagining of how to tell a story visually. A mix of architecture, narrative comic panels, and informative diagram connects the residents of a 4-story building to their apartments, each other, their pasts, the flowers, and even a family of bees. And speaking of bees, issue #17 of Acme features several pages of the tales of Branford the Bee and his family.

In conclusion, I think that Ware's work should not be missed, but I don't recommend the current Acme Novelty books. You'd be far better off finding the oversized The Acme Novelty Library Annual Report to Shareholders (2005) or the Chris Ware book from Monographics(2004), which also features his toy and machine designs as well as comic work.


Some Chris Ware links:
An article in Time magazine, Chip Kidd's article in Print magazine, the Acme Novelty Archive