The Acme Novelty Library No. 19

by Chris Ware

After finishing the brilliant Building Stories a couple of months ago, I felt a powerful need to read more Chris Ware, which is not an easy thing to do.  I'd read Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth years ago, but aside from that, it's very difficult to get ahold of the rest of Ware's work.  His slow-moving and sporadic Acme Novelty Library series is out of print, and often exceptionally expensive to buy on eBay (except that I got lucky with a reasonably-priced #19).

I'd originally avoided this book when it came out because I knew it continued the 'Rusty Brown' story, which I had not read the beginning of, and which I assumed would be collected one day, like Jimmy Corrigan.  It having been five years, with no further movement on this story taking place, I decided it was time to dive in.

This volume is split pretty evenly between two stories.  The first, 'The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars', is a comics adaption of a science fiction story written by Rusty Brown, the protagonist of the second story.  It follows the story of a man (also named Rusty), who is part of a four-person expedition to Mars, in a tale modelled after the pulp sci-fi books of the fifties.  The four people are really two couples, who set up farmsteads on opposite sides of a special atmospheric field that allows them to walk around in a small bubble of atmosphere and warmth.  Their plans to farm and start a colony there are dashed by the lack of a relief ship, and by the bitter jealousy of Rusty.  This story is much more poetic than those it is taking after, as Ware uses the design of the page, and his usual minute attention to detail to create a pretty interesting tale.

After that, we are treated to a story about Rusty Brown, as we follow him through his first love, during his early days in the 'big city', through to his hasty second relationship and marriage.  This is pretty familiar footing for anyone who is used to Ware's work - the hapless protagonist can't relate well to other people, and constantly misreads his lover's cues, moods, and motivations.

Reading this book leaves me craving a little more Ware, because despite how depressing his work can be at times, it really is marvellous.

Building Stories

by Chris Ware

Does a book have to be a book to be considered your favourite book of the year?  Chris Ware's new graphic novel Building Stories is a large cardboard box filled with fourteen separate pieces of comics art.  Some of the pieces are hard-bound graphic novels, others large tabloid newspaper shaped stories (think Wednesday Comics), others mini-comics, and still others just long folded strips of paper.

The subject matter is typical Ware.  People live lives of isolation and displeasure in strips meticulously designed with an obsession for architectural and design detail.

The pieces of this box can be read in any order, but I found going in ascending size order more or less progresses through the larger story in a linear fashion.  The earlier pieces I read are all centred around a single three-story apartment building in Chicago.  The later stories are narrated by the woman on the top floor, after she left the building.  This nameless protagonist is the main character, although some of the other residents (including a bee from the hive outside) get a sizeable chunk of story for themselves, as does the building itself.

The old woman on the main floor is the building owner.  She was raised in the building, and looked after both it and her infirm mother until her death, and the time when she settled into an unhappy old age of her own.  The second floor is occupied by a couple who don't seem to get along anymore, yet don't know how to live apart from each other.

The woman on the top floor is the real centre of this box, however.  We slowly piece together her entire life, from the accident (never shown) that takes her leg as a small child, her first serious relationship, her unhappy period of isolation, and eventually her marriage and entrance into motherhood.  Branford (the best bee in the world) also gets some screen time.

I remember having read parts of some of this work in the New Yorker and/or in McSweeney's, but when placed in the context of the rest of the material, everything is much more meaningful and impressive.  Ware is an excellent observer of the human condition, and is capable of casually tossing in moments that can just blow you away with the honesty they portray in the fallibility of his characters.  I found much of this work depressing, but even as it bummed me out, it blew me away.

It's hard to explain the visual wizardry that Ware creates on the page.  His pages set up their own rhythm and flow that is unique among working cartoonists.  He doesn't use a traditional grid, but manages to craft his work in such a way that it's instinctive to follow.  I cannot recommend this book/box enough.

The Acme Novelty Library Vol. 20: Lint

by Chris Ware

It's pretty easy to understand why this latest entry in Ware's Acme Novelty series would end up on so many reviewers' "Best of 2010" lists, as it's an absolutely brilliant piece of work, but it's also a brutally sad read.

Lint tells the story of Jordan (Jason) Lint, from his birth to his death, in one page installments.  Jordan's mom died when he was young.  He was a pain in the ass at school.  He didn't get along with his dad.  He cheated on girlfriends and wives.  He failed at entering the music industry.  He got involved in some shady business practices at his father's company.  He cheated some more.  He got old.  With almost every new chapter, we start to think of this guy as more and more of a creep, but I found myself also hoping that he might finally turn himself around and become a nicer person.

What makes the book so interesting is the way in which Ware keeps surprising us in the selectivity of what he chooses to reveal.  We think that we are seeing Lint's whole story, but then something happens to make us realize that while we've seen some of his most intimate moments, we have no idea what this guy is capable of.  The scene where he starts to read from his son's memoir where it describes an incident when his son was small was a shock.

As usual with a piece of Ware's work, the page design in this book is stunning.  He has an ability to break pages into sections that, while they defy the usual flow and format of a comics page, are intuitively easy to follow.  I love the dissonance he sets up in this book, caused by portraying a person who is spiritually bereft and ugly with such beautiful art and design.  This is an amazing piece of work - go read it.

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #33

A year or two ago, I read Nicholson Baker's wonderful book Double Fold, which was about 'Libraries and the Assault on Paper', as the text beneath the title calls it.  In this book, Baker rails against recent library practice of disposing of tons of old and historic newspapers, replacing them with commercial (poorly) made microfiche, citing storage and space requirements.  Baker himself now owns a large collection of almost full early runs of such celebrated and wonderful papers as Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.  The descriptions that Baker furnished of large broad-sheet papers with detailed diagrams and loving illustrations, not to mention legendary comics sections, made me envious of people living in an earlier time.  We now live in a time of great newspaper poverty, as dailies suffer from endless cut-backs and diminished readership.

Into this dismal scene comes the 33rd issue of McSweeney's, Dave Egger's literary quarterly.  For this issue, Egger's et. al. constructed the San Fransisco Panorama, a one-time old-school newspaper of gigantic proportions.  The paper is a week-end edition, including two supplemental magazines, various sections, a generous and lovely comics section, and even a fold-up paper toy rocket ship.  The entire paper comes off as a labour of love and an almost forgotten sense of American journalistic craftsmanship.  It took me just about forever to read this thing.

The list of contributors to this thing is as impressive as the span of topics discussed and reported upon.  There is Baker himself (writing about paper mills in Maine); William T. Vollmann discussing mining issues in Imperial, an area about which he is most definitely an expert; Jesse Nathan on the marijuana growers of Mendocino; and J. Malcolm Garcia reporting from Afghanistan. 

San Francisco is the main topic of the paper, with various articles examining the state of the city and its inhabitants.  There is an eight-page section devoted to the new Bay Bridge, and all of the problems associated with that project, which features stunning illustrations and makes good use of the large-size format of the pages (this thing is much wider than today's newspapers).  The Sports, Food, and Arts sections represent the Bay Area a great deal.  There are also tons of human interest articles and interesting charts throughout.

The two magazines are very impressive.  The Panorama Magazine is modeled after the New York Times Magazine, with many long-form articles, some of which I've already reviewed.  Were this a weekly or monthly magazine, I would gladly subscribe.  The Panorama Book Review Supplemental was also very impressive, containing some great short stories from authors such as Roddy Doyle and George Saunders, as well as an interesting conversation between Dave Eggers and Junot Diaz.  The book reviews were wonderful in their variety, and I liked the way each review reproduced the first page of the book so potential readers could sample its style.

Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't say something about the comics section.  Art Spiegelman, Dan Clowes, Michael Kupperman, Gene Luen Yang, Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware, Erik Larsen (!!), and many others contributed, and it was a very nice little compilation.  

It's a shame that this project is not to be repeated.  I doubt very much that there is a market anywhere in the world for a regular paper like this, and that is all of our loss.  Reading this allows you to imagine a time when people were very well informed (and not just up on the celebrities), and also had the leisure to read the damn things.  This is a truly unique and impressive work of art.

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13

Edited by Chris Ware

This is the comics issue of McSweeney's, which received a fair amount of attention when it was published in 2004 for showcasing a lot of up-and-coming talent in the arts comics field.  It contains a wide range of short comics and excerpts from longer pieces, as well as a few essays or memoirs about comic books, their history, or their influences on other artists or writers.

The biggest problem with reading this book for the first time six years after it was published is that I've read a lot of the material in here in its complete, finalized form.  This is not really a problem, as I am very happy to return to some of the works here, but it did limit the novelty of reading such a well-produced and designed hardcover with some of my favorite 'independent' artists contained in it.

Ware and company have assembled a very interesting collection, with contributions from people like Adrian Tomine (Shortcomings), Joe Sacco (The Fixer),Charles Burns (Black Hole), Art Spiegelman (In the Shadow of No Towers), Chris Ware, and Los Bros. Hernandez.  There were also plenty of lesser-known cartoonists included, some of whose work I found irritating, while others were quite enjoyable.

Strangely, there was a very visible Canadian delegation to this collection, with and excerpt from Joe Matt's Spent, David Collier's strips about moving to Hamilton, and a long excerpt from Chester Brown's classic Louis Riel, detailing the death of Orangeman and agitator Thomas Scott, a pivotal moment in Riel's story, and a great example of the genius of that book.

Some of the pieces that were new and interesting to me were Ben Katchor's Hotel and Farm strips, one-pagers that dealt with those two topics; David Heatley's Portrait of my Father; and Kim Deitch's Ready to Die, about a man on Death Row.  I also really enjoyed Chip Kidd's memoir on friendships and Batman merchandise.

Of course, as with any anthology like this, there were plenty of things that I either had no interest in, or just flat-out hated (I'm looking at you Kaz), but overall, this was a very worthy purchase.

Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth

by Chris Ware

This is an incredible, and incredibly complicated, piece of work. On the surface, Ware's novel seems simple - a lonely and socially maladjusted guy, with a domineering mother, accepts an invitation to stay with the father he never met. Running parallel to this story is the story of Jimmy's grandfather, also a Jimmy, who had a difficult relationship with his own father in turn of the century Chicago.

Ware's characters all have trouble communicating, misread situations, and stumble through life. He is excellent at writing stilted, awkward dialogue, and there are many places where the reader cringes for these characters.

The structure of the book is complex; scenes jump around without a lot of exposition, and the page layouts are unconventional. Ware's art is quite simple, and for some reason he avoids portraying the faces of characters other than the Jimmys and their fathers. There are a lot of people who talk into their shoulders... The draftsmanship of the larger panels, especially the ones portraying the World's Fair or the small town where Jimmy's dad lives, are remarkable.

This is a highly eccentric piece of work, and a very rewarding one.

The New Yorker

Nov. 2, 2009

I've managed to fall way behind on my magazine reading, and as such, I've noticed I haven't been writing about any "Things I Like" in the magazines I've read. So, in capsule form:

The Good Cook by Barbara Demick
I've mentioned before my on-going interest in North Korea as one of the strangest places on Earth. In this article, Demick tells the life story of Song Hee-Suk, a woman who raised her family under the Kim regime. It is an incredible story, as she recounts Song's relationship with food in the 'good years', and then as famine gripped the country. Her story is harrowing, especially when one takes into account that she generally believed the propaganda fed to her, at least until she defected to South Korea. This is a fantastic article.

Unmasked by Chris Ware
This four-page comic has convinced me to start reading Ware - now I need to find some inexpensive editions of the Acme Novelty Library on Ebay or something. In this short piece, a woman visits her mother on Hallowe'en. She is contemplating leaving her husband, although she says nothing of this to her mom. The older woman, however, intuits that something is up, and reveals that her husband had had an affair, something she didn't discover until after his death. It's a powerful piece of work. Also, Ware's cover to this issue is gorgeous.

While the Women Are Sleeping by Javier Marías
This is a creepy little story told by a man on vacation to a Spanish island with his wife. On the beach, they are intrigued by another couple, a much older man who spends his entire day filming his younger, beautiful wife. Later, the two men share a conversation by the swimming pool, wherein the photographer holds forth on the topics of obsession (which he refers to as adoration) and murder. It's a chilling story, well told.