The Acme Novelty Date Book: Sketches and Diary Pages in Facsimile [Hardcover]

Chris Ware (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2003

Acclaimed cartoonist Chris Ware reveals the outtakes of his genius in these intimate, imaginative, and whimsical sketches collected from the years during which he completed his award-winning graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon). His novel not only won the Manchester Guardian First Novel prize in 2001 but it has sold over 100,000 copies. This book is as much a companion volume to Jimmy Corrigan --one of the great crossover success stories-- as a tremendous art collection from of one of America’s most interesting and popular graphic artist.

Chris Ware has a passion for drawing that is surprisingly wide-ranging in style and subject. This book surprises the reader on every page with its sense of spontaneous vision. Architectural drawings from Chicago and interplanetary robot comics collide with cruelly doodled human figures and quietly troubling studies of the still life. A must for people with a passion for modern design and old-fashioned style.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Prolific alternative-comics artist Ware follows his epic, Jimmy Corrigan (2000), and Quimby the Mouse [BKL S 1 03] with a collection of sketchbook pages. Ware owes his lofty reputation largely to his awesome command of the "grammar" of comics, and this handsome volume showcasing his drawing ability amounts to something of a new revelation. Ware's strips are so meticulous in their rigid perfection that they seem to indicate an obsessive character. Yet these hundreds of life drawings, cityscapes, doodles, preliminary sketches, and other drawings, rendered in an impressive variety of styles, contrarily display unexpected spontaneity and looseness. Particularly revelatory are a handful of actual strips in Ware's familiar multipanel approach, and featuring Jimmy, Quimby, and other characters from his long stories, that are rendered in a rougher, almost crude style. Ware's fans will find his marginal notes fascinating, too, for their revelations about his creative process. Besides showing off Ware's facility and variety, this beautifully designed book demonstrates just how much thought and planning go into his acclaimed graphic novels. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly; 1st edition (August 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1896597661
• ISBN-13: 978-1896597669
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #756,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

CHRIS WARE is the author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and the annual progenitor of the amateur periodical the ACME Novelty Library. An irregular contributor to The New Yorker and The Virginia Quarterly Review,Ware was the first cartoonist chosen to regularly serialize an ongoing story in The New York Times Magazine, in 2005-2006. He edited the thirteenth issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern in 2004 as well as Houghton Mifflin's Best American Comics for 2007, and his work was the focus of an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2006. Ware lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with his wife, Marnie, a high-school science teacher, and their daughter, Clara.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An very personal glimpse at an amazing artist..., August 5, 2003

By 

cory combs (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Acme Novelty Date Book: Sketches and Diary Pages in Facsimile (Hardcover)

I found this book very inspiring and entertaining. To my non-trained eyes, even his rough sketches are amazing. And the journal entries are intense to read. In publishing this sketchbook, he seems unafraid to show us his most private moments of self doubt and insecurity. It was surprising to me that someone this talented could be such a harsh critic of his own work. That's probably what keeps his work so unique. There's lots to check out in this very cool book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Monster talent!, October 23, 2005

By 

A. McDonald (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Acme Novelty Date Book: Sketches and Diary Pages in Facsimile (Hardcover)

The book is a record of an absolute monster drawing talent!
It collects tentative investigations, as a scrapbook of ideas and odds and ends. The amazing thing about it is its vitality.
Anything and everything becomes a source of inspiration and investigation into the nature of drawing. A coffee cup, a telephone in a waiting room, a washing machine, such mundane things seem to begin as notations but are transformed by Ware's observation of line and tone into their inner vitality - much like Van Gogh's peasant shoes. There are beautiful portraits. And beyond the observed notes, the book is positively brimming with characters, mutations, and cartoons from his eccentric imagination. The fantastical musings and the observed notations blend, merge together, separate like DNA strands through the book, adding up to a rich record of creativity

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shows Chris as the true artist that he is, January 13, 2007

By 

P. Flannigan "fliznizzey" (Edgewater, Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Acme Novelty Date Book: Sketches and Diary Pages in Facsimile (Hardcover)

I didn't think I would like this one. But after owning everything else the man ever made, I asked for this one for x-mas. Wow! I love it! There are spontaneous portraits of people on the bus, views from friend's rooftops, the rudiments of strips like: God, Jimmy the robot etc...
If you are a Chris Ware fan YOU WILL LOVE THIS BOOK! If you are not familiar with Chris, best to start somewhere else.