Quimby the Mouse (Acme Novelty Library) [Hardcover]

Chris Ware (Author)

Book Description

Series: Acme Novelty Library | Publication Date: August 1, 2003

A one-mouse theater of the absurd. Quimby the Mouse is the second book from Chris Ware; his first book, Jimmy Corrigan (Pantheon, 2000), has been widely acclaimed as one of the medium's finest graphic novels in history and is currently in a fourth hardcover printing.

Cleverly appropriated old-fashioned animation imagery and advertising styles of the 1920s and 1930s are put to use in Quimby at the service of modern vignettes of angst and existentialism. As this cartoon silhouette of a mouse ignominiously suffers at every turn, the spaces between the panels create despair and a Beckett-like rhythm of hope deceived and deferred (but never quite extinguished), buoying Quimby from page to page.

Like Ware's first book, Quimby is saturated with Ware's genius, including consistently amazing graphics, insanely perfectionist production values, cut-out-and-assemble paper projects, and the formal complexity of his narratives that have earned him the reputation as one of the most prodigious artists of his generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This large-format collection of Ware's early work, mostly from 1990 and 1991, repackages material that appeared in Acme Novelty Library as well as other publications, but still feels amazingly fresh. Even in these early strips, Ware displays a virtuoso ability in both rendering and storytelling. The material consists of primarily one or two page strips focusing on Quimby's remarkable bad luck in life and everything else. Quimby resembles a distant cousin of Disney's iconic Mickey Mouse, but instead of being a chipper mascot, he's a tiny, bleak figure travelling across a hostile world. The depressing subject matter is clothed in the peppy antics of primal cartooning, making the strong emotions that much more potent for being so surprising. All of the work is packaged impeccably-Ware's beautiful gold foil stamped cover alone is worth the book's price, while his running joke that the book is, in fact, a discarded library book is funny and touching, underscoring comics' ephemeral quality. Ware also provides a wonderful autobiographical introduction that gives the work context without ever explaining it; he simply adds another layer. Fans of Ware's earlier Jimmy Corrigan will find much to enjoy here; the tragicomic sensibility, beautiful drawing and impeccable packaging that marked that book are all here in full effect.
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From Booklist

Ware's Jimmy Corrigan (2000) was the most critically acclaimed graphic novel of the last decade. Although this collection of his work won't receive the accolades its predecessor reaped, in some ways it attests even more strongly his mastery of the comics medium. Here Ware toys with the very essence of comics. In some stories, he slices and dices the narrative quite extraordinarily, meticulously dividing a single page into as many as 168 individual, postage-stamp-size panels. Elsewhere, in a more straightforward but equally painstaking manner, he lovingly draws in the styles of vintage newspaper comic strips, reproducing even their yellowed-newsprint backgrounds. The eponymous Quimby's adventures, such as they are, are essentially pointless, but that is the point. The nondescript cartoon rodent goes through mundane activities, punctuated by the occasional dread-inducing experience, with an emotional resiliency equivalent to the physical elasticity of his animated forbears. He is the existentialist Wyle E. Coyote. Fortunately, the gorgeousness of this oversize volume matches Ware's fastidiousness. Indeed, it is almost too beautiful to share shelf space with drabber books. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 56 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560974850
• ISBN-13: 978-1560974857
• Product Dimensions: 14 x 11.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,493,267 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

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chris Ware is the most amazing talent of this era., August 28, 2003

By 

Timmy K. "Zoidberg Enthusiast" (123 Fake Street, Springfield AX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quimby the Mouse (Acme Novelty Library) (Hardcover)

I will start off by saying that Chris Wares Masterpiece, Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, is the best graphic novel ever produced, and should serve as the example of how true graphic novels, so long pushed to the fringes of acceptable reading alongside the latest issues of X-Men and Batman, can be one of the most engaging, and expressive forms of literature. As a comic fan I don't mean any disrespect to other comic books, I grew up reading them, and still do read some. But I don't read works like Chris Ware's as I do a regular comic book. In fact his Jimmy Corrigan graphic novel fails to work in the standard comic book format. It was originally delivered over quite a few years in separate volumes of Wares comic series The Acme Novelty Library, and the experience of reading it in that manner pales when compared to reading the entire thing in one volume. It was obviously a great work when released at long intervals, but in order to truly appreciate it for what it is you must read it in a short period, as you would a regular novel. Then you take in everything, with no months, or even years of time to erode what you have read before.

Quimby The Mouse, as a collection of earlier weekly newspaper strips and other comics, doesn't have the grand overall story of Jimmy Corrigan, but it also never fails to deliver any of the emotion, honesty, and visual amazement of the later masterpiece. Wares use of the comic strip to discuss his dealing with the death of his grandmother is just as moving as the semi-autobiographical Jimmy Corrigan's dealing with meeting his long estranged father. With the release of this book, and also that of his sketchbooks (under the name of The Acme Novelty Datebook) this man shows that he puts truth and real feeling in everything he does, even the most simple, and silly of comics. All of his work makes one feel as if there is more to it than just what you are seeing on the page, or is even possible to understand by simply reading the strips. In fact to get everything out of a particular strip often you must decipher different paths leading you through various overlapping sets of panels that, when followed correctly, tell you the story of everything in the said strip, from a tree in the yard, to a pocket full of change.

Ware is a master whose works deserve to be taught in university literature courses, and art schools alike. If any one person could ever finally raise the graphic novel to an acceptable level in the art world then Chris Ware is that person, and he doesn't even have to make a special effort to do so. All he has to do is keep creating works such as he already has, and the future will look back on him as the person who opened the door for graphic novels to become more than just the weirdo cousin of Spiderman and the like. I look forward to anything else that he decides to bring us in the future.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Early work by Ware. Magnificent book design., August 21, 2003

By 

Tim Idsole (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quimby the Mouse (Acme Novelty Library) (Hardcover)

"Quimby" offers many pleasures, though this is not as substantial as "Jimmy Corrigan" is (or as "Rusty Brown" promises to become). Much of the work in this volume was done by Ware as an undergraduate(!) at U of Texas. It's probably not the best intro to Ware (that would be Jimmy Corrigan, or a recent issue of Acme Novelty Library), but it is a very welcome volume for those already hooked on his brilliant comics and witty sidebars. Much of this material was published in early Acme Novelty issues, but there's enough new and redisigned material here to justify Ware fans buying this one, even if you (like me) have the earlier editions already.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A word on brilliance, August 20, 2003

By 

"blessed_phoenecian" (Portland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quimby the Mouse (Acme Novelty Library) (Hardcover)

To appreciate C. Ware's work is simple: his genius is hard to miss. From the palate he uses to construct seasons to the grotesques of characters reminiscent of certain 19th century tracts, the man is a master of his craft.
Oddly enough I have found not one mention of the man's ability to panel well. The way he (literally) lays out his pictoral narrative is nothing short of amazing and nowhere is this seen more clearly than in Quimby Mouse. What essentially boil down to rotoscopic images more fit for a flip-book than a strip of celluloid transparencies, Ware's frames are set down in a fashion that is entertaining _to work through_. And rest assured, you will be working: often times a single page can and will take you a good 20 minutes to read thouroughly. This is material not for the casual reader of comics, but for the artisan or art critic who needs stimulation that runs beyond the visceral.