Beautiful, intricate and meticulously crafted. But nihilist and so damn depressing. Consume in parts.

this review first appeared on [http://intraspace.blogspot.com]chris ware's 'jimmy corrigan' is on my list of favourite books. i really like ware's drawing style and his use of bold outlines.jimmy corrigan blew me away as being a thoroughly excellent post-modern novel quite apart from its being a graphic novel to boot. it deserved all the accolades it got.so i was tremendously excited when i found that the local library had anticipated my request and already got 'the acme novelty library' in. hur...

It makes no sense that this book should be so depressing. Each page is incredibly fresh and almost unfathomably intricate. This is the kind of book that seems to hold inspiring claims about the future of graphic novels and fiction in general. And yet...punchline after punchline is cynicism and emptiness, cynicism and emptiness. It's beautifully expressed, but it doesn't make sense without another side. Even two semi-uplifting comics amid the hundreds here would let me wrap my head around this. I...

I have seen people enjoy this book and I found this in the book 100 greatest graphic novels of all time. I didn't get it and I didn't like it. There wasn't anything I enjoyed about this. I am not a fan. This is not for me.There is no real story. It is a bunch of one page stories with characters that do go through the book. I guess it's like adult Sunday morning comics. They are really bad comics with curse words in them and depressing situations - and nudity. None of that bothers me - cursing, a...

There's a little bit of Ware's Rusty Brown and Chalky White in all of us. Well, there's a little bit of both of them in me, anyway. And then there's a part of me unlike them who desperately wants to be like them, even though they are at times shallow and pathetic characters. Let me explain employing single-word transitions in the vein of Ware's work:Most people dream about riches and fame. I've been there. I used to want to be a rock star when I was 14. Then my father told me that the number of

I guess I like it better when Ware sustains a narrative, like in Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth (one of my all-time favorite books) or the "Building Stories" series he did for the New York Times Magazine. So this collection of works doesn't quite have the same emotional resonance for me that some of his other work has.But that doesn't mean there isn't a ton to like here. Ware is often funny, and some of the false advertisements are laugh-out loud hilarious, if you can work your way thr...

Either you like this or you hate it. Chris Ware's art I think is absolutely beautiful. The stories are utterly depressing. I really enjoyed both Jimmy Corrigan and Building Stories. This is a collection of stories his comic book (I think). But with all sorts of incredibly small print!!! My favorite quote--"Already herein, I believe lies one of the principles of the ACME method: viz., regardless of quality, integrity, or intellect, even the most rudimentary veneer of perfection can provide some c...

I have had this out of the library on a few occasions. It's damnably hard to read without a magnifying class sometimes, but the close scrutiny is always worth the time. This is a collection of various cartoons and maps and ads and short comics. Often, these are hilarious. Ware's rep is to Charlie Brown level sadness and misery, but here you see how funny he can be. And always, the best artist, just amazing. I guess this isn't "readable" in the way of his other works, it's not a novel, but it's g...

very first I ever bought and really read from Chris Ware.. amazing amazing, and a great man.

Around the beginning of the year, I was on a graphic novels kick, set off by a customer selling my bookstore several volumes of fairly rare books by Chris Ware, including several volumes of his Acme Novelty Library, and a published version of his surprisingly chaotic and vulgar sketchbook (several of which I promptly bought as belated Christmas gifts), and by my discovery of Joe Sacco and Guy Delisle. I am a pretty big fan of Ware, and enjoyed these graphic novels for the most part (especially t...

Are you:-A failure?-Terminally lonely?-Miserable?-A miserable failure?-Miserably lonely?-Failing and alone?-A miserable, terminally lonely failure?-Depressed?-Dissatisfied with getting what you always wanted?-A collector of defunct happy meal toys?-A collector of vintage advertising?-Depressed about your dissatisfaction with getting what you'd always wanted?-Miserable and depressed?-A depressive, terminally alone failure?-A completely OCD comic designer?-All of the above?If you answered YES to T...

The design work is beautiful, superior, every superlative you can imagine, but the how miserable we all are attitude of the content I can do without. Todd Solondz, David Foster Wallace, and Chris Ware all walk into a bar... the joke is on them. Mark Twain had more hope for humanity than this. I love myself. I love being alive. The R. Crumb worshipping, self loathing, misanthropic, stunted adolescent comics auteur crowd has wore itself thin with me.

http://morethansuperhumans.blogspot.c...The ACME Novelty Library begins with a satirical study of "Our History of Art," which starts with Pre-Cambrian art and proceeds all the way to the Contemporary Age (though in fact the story covers Ware's speculation on the future of art as well).The book also contains several short pieces featuring some of Ware's recurring characters, including Big Tex (a dopey farmboy desperate for the love of his father, who hates him utterly), Rocket Sam (a Robinson Cru...

This book is a collection of material taken from Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library volumes, a Best Of if you will, packed with standout selections from his various ongoing comic strips as well as all the fine-print-in-the-margins hilarity you would expect from such a volume with Ware's name on it. Some may find the fake Acme inserts tedious after a certain point, but I think that's part of the whole joke and dutifully read every word on every publication of Ware's. This oversized hardcover serve...

I really want to like Chris Ware. And Sometimes I do. But sometimes I feel like the the way he subdivides panels into oblivion, twists perspective so that you have the literally twist the book, and adds so much detail that you couldn't possibly read it all, is a little self-defeatist. I feel like a wimp for not reading every article on every newspaper collage spread in this book, and I wonder if I'm not the only reader who "finishes" the book feeling that way. And I skipped all of the pages that...

If you're only gonna own one Chris Ware, it should probably be this one. But, you really should own more than one Chris Ware. You should have ALL the ones listed on my goodreads list.. they're awesome .. they feed the soul... they lighten the mind .. they will get you laid.. they will get you into the pearly gates. Seriouly, get them, and show them to company when they come over.. they won't believe they've never heard of him.

I like the tragic and beer-bellied super hero story a lot. I appreciated Rusty Brown's selfish cruelty and loved, loved, loved Brittany White the teenage broken-hearted lesbian! Oh, and the Rocket Sam chronicles are the saddest robot tales you'll ever read. Poor robots! Learn your lesson, robots! Your creator is heartless!!! He will betray you and treat you like a slave tool every time!

This collection had a completely different mood than what I expected, I think I would have liked it better if I had read it before some other stuff by Chris Ware (before this I read Building Stories and Floyd Farland, Citizen Of The Future) I enjoyed it very much but it felt very gloomy, so I took my time to go through it all. The pages full of tiny texts and fake advertisements were fun at first and then overwhelming - it's pretty difficult to read it all and specially hard if you've been "rela...

Terrific but relentlessly sad. Chris Ware weaves a handful of portraits of different people together into one big collection, with interludes and dense ad copy for fake products. There's a lot to pour over but the pervading theme is loneliness. Everyone in Ware's world is trying to find some human connection and failing miserably. I find his work to be very effective and touching but story after story here has some random terrible tragedy, and the characters are just left to wallow in their sadn...

I haven't read Chris Ware in periodical form, and I wonder if I missed an opportunity there. Ware is a brilliant artist (his 2009 Building Stories is an amazing exploration of form and asks the question, entirely outside of digital disruption, as to what a "book" is), and he impresses here with a myriad of graphic design ideas. But I can't say this compilation is a pleasure to read, exactly. Given the comic-book/zine fine print and the relentless themes of loneliness, cruelty, and human stupidit...