Acme Novelty Library

Acme Novelty Library, issue 17, pre production and final cover.

I came across the work of Chris Ware this year. He is a comic book artist and graphic novelist, from Oak Park, Chicago, with a love for the early 20th Century aesthetic movements of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. He has won numerous awards for his work. He is especially known for his Acme Novelty Library, a series of issues published since 1993, with the 19th issue released in 2008. The series features a number of Ware's characters, Big Tex, Rocket Sam, Quimby the Mouse, and the central characters of two graphic novels serialised in Acme Novelty Library, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, and Rusty Brown.

New Yorker Thanksgiving cover, 2006.

I encountered Ware via The Acme Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book (2005), a collection of issues 7 and 15 with extra material. The book's graphic content wowed me, the intricate detail in the draftsmanship, the fine lettering and stylised art. The melancholy mood of Ware's creation also grabbed my attention. His work has been described as "the wry, surreal satire of the anachronistic unipolar depressive: desperately funny, profoundly sad and nightmarish all at once." The story line of Rusty Brown amplifies these attributes, magnifying the character's alienation and sense of depressed loneliness. There is a contemplative nature to his art: this isn't Batman, kids. It is at once reflective and stimulating.


What initially caught my attention was Ware's parodying of classic American comic book advertisments, selling the Charles Atlas body for the wimpy teenager getting sand kicked in his face. Ware takes the marketing ideals of Superpower USA and subverts them, casting light on the darker side of his nation, its fast food culture and hegemonic foreign policies. His ideas are laugh out loud funny, but not typical Adam Sandler gut reactions. You laugh with your brain and your aching heart. And you have to read the small print.


Ware has completed a new series featured in issues of Acme Novelty Library, The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine called "Building Stories". This series, according to the critics, pushes at the boundaries of the comics medium, re-imagining new ways to tell visual stories. In Building Stories 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."
For those who enjoy art and reading, I recommend Chris Ware with one reservation. His characters are generally not happy people. Don't go looking for inspiration from them. Admire their resilience, and the fineness of their surroundings, and perhaps begin by dipping into The Acme Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book.

All images are, naturally, the copyright of Chris Ware.