Product Description

What would happen if William Faulkner, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Eugene O'Neill drew masterful strips for their Sunday comics pages? Frankly, we'll never know. But, in the meantime, we'll have "The Acme Novelty Library" and its eye-tearingly beautiful depictions of longing, despair, melancholy, disappointment, bleakness, lethargy, abandonment, and relentless parental cruelty. Not since Tosca has such utter emotional collapse been so ravishingly depicted. All of Ware's extraordinary cast of characters are here: Jimmy Corrigan, the put-upon sad sack of the space age in "Tales of Tomorrow", Rocket Sam, Quimby the Mouse, the Super-man, Sparky the cat, Big Tex, and introducing...Rusty Brown - the world's most pathetic over-grown adolescent toy collector and the star of Ware's next magnum opus (which won't be finished for years). Also included are Ware's trademark ingenious make-it-yourself paper toys, including: Rocket Sam's rocket ship, a Victorian 'library' cabinet, and an actual, working stereopticon picture movie viewer!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64600 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 108 pages

Lucy Davies, Telegraph
‘Chris Ware’s peculiar genius is in tackling the kind of issues that contemporary fiction loves…'.

Esquire Magazine
Ware’s genius lies in the detail...beautifully drawn

From the Publisher
The genius behind Jimmy Corrigan ('arguably the greatest achievement of the form, ever' - Dave Eggers, New York Times) is back in a big way - literally - with a stunning tabloid-sized collection of single-page cartoons.

Customer Reviews

Not just for comic-book lovers
This stunning book is one that quite literally has to be read from cover to cover. The amount of imagination and attention to detail that Chris Ware puts into this work is staggering, and you can be lost for hours in the articles, phoney adverts and delicious comic strips that fill the pages. Indeed there's so much variation in the content of this book that you never know what's coming next when you turn the page. There's a section of cut-out-and make activities but there's no way you'd ever do that; this publication is too beautiful to take a knife to. Quimby Mouse makes an appearance, and some pages appear at first glance to be front pages of newspapers. The most stunning double page however has to be the author's re-interpretation of the constellations, which does actually glow in the dark to give you a guide to night sky viewing.

This is no story book, but really is a joy to dip into or alternatively to devour in several hours of absorbed reading. It is humourous and evocative and will take a proud place on my bookshelf. Or if you're not a keen comic-book fan, I'm sure it will be equally treasured as the best book you've kept next to the toilet, ever.

Hilarious, but with the occasional misfire
This is a collection of comic strips and fake advertisements/articles by Chris Ware (of Jimmy Corrigan fame). The comic strips are drawn in Ware's inimitably stylised fashion and the humour is dark, commonly based around the tragedies of everyday adult life or growing up.

I like the Quimby the Mouse strips (as I expected to, being a fan of Ware's larger collection of Quimby strips "Quimby the Mouse") but was pleasantly surprised by the Rusty Brown and Milky White strips, about a pair of boys who collect toys, getting increasingly obsessive about them as they grow up. By adulthood, Rusty Brown is still living with his parents obsessing about the toys, while Chalky White has started a family and decelerated his interest in toys, caring less about action figures and more about being happy with his wife. It's a brilliant series of strips, which I could really relate to as a collector of items myself and someone who knows many people who take such collections too seriously.

However, the text-dense pages of fake advertisements and articles are not only difficult to read but, I felt, not actually very amusing. They constitute maybe 10% of the book and certainly oughtn't to be skipped over completely (there are still a few comedy gems in there) but did let the book down as a whole. Part of the joke in these sections is the prolix use of language, emphasised by the tiny font allowing more space for all those extraneous words. Unfortunately this can feel like a one-shot gag as you read yet another 2 inch square text box absolutely rammed with words that really don't say anything that the previous one didn't.

This contrast between decadent, large comics and dense, witty prose is definitely a deliberate tonal choice though and the collection overall works magnificently as a dip into book of wet Sunday afternoon entertainment.

This book is Genius!
Chris Ware is a Genius!!!! I absolutely love his work and this is a must for all Chris Ware fans, and perfect for those who are just beginning to learn the ways of the Ware.
Essentially, this book is a collection of the individual Acme Novelty books that have been published through the years. Individually, these are hard (and expensive) to come by, so having them all re-printed in one book is a great idea.

The book includes many of his comic strips and sketches, his brilliant and hilarious fake adverts and the famous cut-out models. Sadly, the mechanical cat one seems to be missing, which otherwise would have made this book the ultimate Chris Ware book.

Chris Ware's style is dark and pretty depressing, but very funny and incredibly well executed. I could spend all day looking at this book. For those that already own the award-winning Jimmy Corrigan and/or the Acme Novelty Note book, this book does offer something different so is well worth the purchase. More so considering its amazing price!!