Customer Reviews

Acme Novelty Library #18 (No. 18)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With his latest "comic book" offering, Chris Ware has again demonstrated a mastery of the medium uniquely his own. His design sense and technical skill as an illustrator long unquestioned, his writing routinely (and especially here) deserves the same consideration.

Underneath the story's typically apparent theme of alienation (with new characters in the Acme Library, if I'm not mistaken), there is much more at work. Amazingly, over just 56 pages, Ware's finely crafted drawings along with well considered dialogue and occasional stream-of-consciousness narration provide the reader an awful lot to ponder (a good prose writer would need hundreds if not thousands of pages and could still not fully convey the beauty in this slim volume). However, the mind is further boggled when Ware concludes his details-laden enterprise with one very... simple... tiny... wordless... panel. The effect is instant having read it, and I recommend all experience it.

The author describes this as part of an ongoing story, and that may well be. However like all good comics, this story is complete as is. Indeed within the book, certain single page, two page, and especially a few multi-page spreads also constitute complete satisfying stories. Should the reader approach the work with even some of the imagination Ware himself must employ, every single panel is itself can be a complete story. As an illustrator in the truest sense, that may be Ware's intent.

So the "Stunning Masterpiece" title given this review is not to indicate one should ever be surprised when Ware tops even his own earlier triumphs, but rather because the reader may actually be left stunned at the story's conclusion, fair warning given.

There are always great expectations placed on Mr. F.C. Ware, who here delivers devastating inspiration (inspired devastation?) in the calm and measured manner of a master at work. Wow.

Dolorous and melancholy, Chris Ware's work has always drawn me like a moth to flame. I can't recall a work from a female perspective before, and this one is a quiet, soft, lovely work about a sad and lonely woman who has had a very intense life. The work of deciphering his labyrinthine panel constructions or reading all the fine print has always paid off and this work is no different, but this one sticks out for me a little for being even more intimate than his other more clinical studies of his characters. And his draftsmanship is without peer, as always.

This is a beautifully rendered, deeply affecting work of art. I am not much of a comic reader, but once I started this one I could not put it down. And when I finished, I was crying. Readers of The New York Times Magazine will be familiar with the setting of the old building with feelings and the character of a woman with a prosthetic leg. The story here focuses on her: a lonely, alienated young woman's first experience with love and loss, depression and despair. Told this way, with sensitivity and empathy -- in Chris Ware's tight, tender little drawing style, like I said -- it moved me deeply. Very sad, yes. But beautiful.

A must-read for Ware fans. It's a compelling narrative with the same quality artwork we've come to expect and is reasonably priced for such a beautifully-designed hardcover.

That said, it's a valid criticism that Ware treads too much familiar territory, here and in all his post-Jimmy Corrigan work. Yes, he experiments in this book, but it's in the style he had already carved out by 1995. We see Ware experimenting with different artistic styles in his notebooks, so why never in his comics? Ware's layouts, lettering and unconventional use of panels in this issue are interesting as always, but it's hard to say his style has evolved or grown in the almost fifteen years he's been doing Acme. Artistically, we've seen this all from Ware before.

Thankfully, Ware *is* evolving as a storyteller. Jimmy Corrigan, although inventive, was a bit too much about being Chris Ware, and it's nice that here, in issue #18, Ware is exploring the world of a female protagonist. Certain scenes, particularly the sex scenes, have never been portrayed with this level of damning honesty and accuracy in any other medium. Ever.

Some people decry Ware's perennial exploration of loneliness and depression. The great comic book writer Grant Morrison once said, "I love Chris Ware's work and consider him a formal genius, but... I sometimes feel like slapping him upside the head and telling him to stop moaning about everything. Sorry, but I live in one of the poorest cities in Europe, and when I see privileged Americans whining about how awful everything is in their sunlit world, I have to gag into my porridge. Kill yourself or get over it, buddy." It's hard to disagree, but perhaps we can appreciate Ware as the best and most determined artist exploring a certain type of American... not outcast, exactly, but people with lower social status or perceived value: the chubby girl, the cripple, the socially awkward guy, the uncool kids... People who are rarely represented in the media and who our American culture, which celebrates the beautiful and confident, looks down upon. Ware is their patron saint, of sorts, but presents them with flaws just like the rest of us.

I'd personally like to see Ware loosen up, artistically and thematically, but whatev. This issue is a powerful read.

This Acme Novelty # 18 is the first chapter of an upcoming novel. It's very intricate, as all of Ware's work, and the main character, with her one point five legs, reminds me of a Flannery O'Connor character from the story "Good Country People." I can't wait to see the rest of the story.

Highly recommended if you enjoyed any of the other Acme Novelty Library books, or Quimby Mouse or Jimmy Corrigan.

I'm a new fan of Ware's, having seen his work in a collection of fiction, "The book of other people" his work stood out amongst the lot.
The thing I love most about his style is the intricacy within it. His drawings are some what scientific, piecing apart a thought or a scene layer by layer. I guess I love character development, so that is why I'm such a fan of his work.
The Acme Novelty Library is just a feast for the eyes, right down to the binding, which is textured and looks like something you'd find on your grandpa's bookshelf - you can tell that Ware has a passion for reading and for book design itself. As he said in a GQ article he wrote about Penguin Classic's 75 anniversary, "It seems to me a book design should be inevitable--a book demands its own shape just as an oak sprouts from an acorn and a pine from a cone. A book is a body in which a story lives and breathes, and, like a body, it has a spine"
The story within is heartbreaking, it chronicles the inner thoughts of a 29 year old disabled girl who lives by herself, and doesn't seem to have any friends to speak of. The opening panel, detailing her thoughts of suicides, and the thoughts connected with such an action (who will find her? her parents? her landlady?) really sets the mood
The female protaganist continues to bring the reader into her thoughts, mainly expressing her lonliness and her feelings of not really belonging anywhere.

If you are after a fairytail ending, you won't get it here, but you will encounter an honest portrayal of a lonely woman, drawn magnificently, and with real heart, which is really better than any fairtail could ever be.

I've always been a huge fan of Chris Ware, and this latest Acme installment doesn't disappoint. His themes don't often vary, but his richness of style makes up for his monotony of topic. He is also the only comic author and one of the few authors of any type that makes reading about stifling depression and loneliness anything but boring.