Just wanted to do a quick post about the newest items I've been reading by Chris Ware, The Acme Novelty Library #16 & #17. The previous 15 volumes were collected into Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Chris' drawing style was the first thing that drew me to his work, as it's elegantly technical and is as spare as his narrative style. His storylines are replete with hopeless individuals stuck in the rut of their own mediocrity that is best described as pathos. The current narrative arc Chris is working on in ANL 16 & 17 revolves around Rusty Brown, an eight-year-old boy, in 1975. Rusty is the nerdiest kid at school, constantly picked on, and understandingly retreats to his imagined superhero world. The image below is taken from ANL #16, where Rusty is confronted in the hallway by his daily tormentors.
(click on the image below to expand it)
I just can't get over how powerful a literary device it is for Chris to parallel the defiling of Rusty's glove with his memory of the gloves being a gift (akin to getting socks for Christmas, right?). Anyway, I wanted to post about Chris' recent works, because I can't get over them (I even put off reading Bill James, the famous baseball abstractor, to read this--God, am I a nerd).
