Word: ware
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...genius," maestro George Szell reportedly said about the eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. The quote describes comix artist Chris Ware as well. Author of last year's critically-acclaimed graphic novel, "Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth," Ware has finally come out with issue fifteen in his comicbook series "The Acme Novelty Library." After a year and a half of waiting, rest assured that his reputation(s) remain intact...
Just look at the size of that thing. A foot and a half tall and over ten inches wide, it reaches the proportions of menus at Italian "family-style" restaurants. It sure doesn't look like a comicbook. But then, Ware has never produced anything that looked like a comicbook. It's part of his aesthetic. Sub-titled "Book of Jokes," it matches the dimensions of "Acme" number seven, from five years ago. It also follows that issue's format of putting a self contained "gag" on each page rather than a continuous story...
...form the center of a beautifully symmetric pattern. It resembles one of those mystical organization charts that some kook would meticulously work out, including the cycle of seasons, evolution, day into night, birth into death and all of human thought. Look more closely and you see it also involves Ware's particular motifs of stupidity, loneliness and the mundane...
...Empty consumerism becomes the running theme of the book, typified by the series of stories about Rusty Brown, a nasty collector of pop-culture detritus. He lives in filth but owns the complete Summer of '87 Happy Meal toy series. It's the only work by Ware to clearly condemn a character without offering any sort of forgiveness. This gives the Rusty Brown vignettes a certain savagery but with limited scope. The whole book, owing chiefly to its "gag" format, begins to feel like the same note being hit over and over. It lacks the rich development of the Jimmy...
...result, we are not able to achieve the type of diversity we’d like,” Ware said...