The Acme Novelty Library (Pantheon Graphic Library) by Chris Ware

The Acme Novelty Library (Pantheon Graphic Library) Reviews

• 
  Calista

  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, and nudity accept that it was all poor taste and terrible. Blarg!
• 
  Nate D

  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 THREE OR MORE of the above, you could ALREADY BE A WINNER of a BRAND NEW collection of TOTALLY MISERABLE LARGE FORMAT COMICS which almost entirely forgo punch lines in favor of PIERCING INSIGHT into the (your?) HUMAN CONDITION and OVERWHELMING SADNESS.
  
  (Chris Ware is scathing and incredible (almost typed "inedible" which may also be true). A little piecemeal here, but there a couple pretty priceless story arcs (and even an endless loop) strung throughout this volume).
• 
  Dave Schaafsma

  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 great to have around, a pleasure.
• 
  Kirk

  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 people who want to be rock stars could hold hands and circle the world twice, and achieving my dream would be impossible. So I started collecting comics and soliciting obscure bands for signed postcards . . . then my house burned down and I lost everything. As a result, I'm convinced during occasional bouts of delusion that Chris Ware was writing my life back then.
  
  AND
  
  There used to be a joke among the band kids back in high school that if you can't play an instrument they give you two sticks and you play drums. If you can't play drums they take one stick away and make you a conductor. The same thing applies to writing. If you can't write professionally, you teach others how to write. You become a glorified conductor. So now I have a job teaching writing. Don't get me wrong, I love it. But the Rusty Brown in me, or the Rusty Brown that isn't in me perhaps, wishes he could just sit around and collect old cereal boxes with his parents' social security money. Part of me wishes I could live in the past. Not my own past, but a past beyond this lifetime, a past glorified in film and other media that harbors no negative connotations for me. It is this wish that makes me feel nostalgia for history I was never a part of.
  
  SO
  
  If you have ever felt this way, then you can rest comfortably knowing that Chris Ware brings this history to us through his work. You open this book and suddenly you're transported to this strange hybrid of modernity and the golden age of comics. The artistic rendering of the fake comic ads quenches that thirst for the past we were never a part of, and the elements of parody in the accompanying writing allows us to laugh at ourselves.
  
  CONSEQUENTLY
  
  This isn't just a comic. This is therapy for the disillusioned, for those who have lost hope of achieving their dreams, whether those dreams be of success or failure. If I had become what I thought I'd become when I was a teenager (Rusty Brown), rather than what I had hoped to become (a writer), I think I'd read this book every day, surrounded by a pile of generic cola cans and fast food wrappers. And I think, after reading, I'd probably believe for a short while that life wasn't all that bad. Ware's book would reinforce my negative outlook on the world, and I'd be happy I never took a leap of faith . . . because I'd probably just end up like Mr. Brown, trying to stuff mangled Barbie dolls under someone's door in a desperate attempt to establish rapport with them.
  
  BUT
  
  I didn't become what I thought I'd be. I became, for the most part, what I had hoped to become. Sure, they took one of my sticks away, but I'm comfortable and happy. And when responsibility begins to bog me down, I flip through this book and think about what it would be like on the other side, if I had become Rusty Brown, or even Chalky White. I'm glad to be a visitor in passing rather than a full-time inhabitant, and I have Ware to thank for the opportunity to explore what I could have become from a safe distance.
• 
  Raina

  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 wanted me to tip the book or read teensy panels. And maybe that makes me a wimp. But I like the stuff I can read without distration.
• 
  Bryan

  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.
• 
  Zenpvnk

  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.
• 
  Onur Yz

  Burada buçuklu puan verebilmemiz lazım. 3 puan ile 4 puan arasında öylesine kararsız kaldım ki.. daha önce de benzer kararsızlıklar çok yaşadım o nedenle buçuklu puan istiyoruz efendim. En doğal hakkımızdır, yürütmeyin şimdi ankaradan, konyadan... :)
  Chris Ware'in bu eserini beğenmiş olanlar var yazdıklarımı takip eden değerli arkadaşlar bu türde daha önce çok beğendiğim eserler olduğunu biliyor, onların yanında buçuklu şekilde geride kalıyor. EN büyük handikapı da mikro ölçekli çizimler. Okuma gözlüğüm bile yetişmedi, bir lup lazımdı muhakkak, eh sahil kenarlarına taşımıyoruz öyle şeyler.
  Unutmadan bu eseri Best Art Comics 2010s seçkisi bağlamında okudum. Bu seçkideki diğer okumalarım devam etmekte. Peyderpey burada paylaşacağım sevgili okur..
• 
  Leon

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

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

  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 through the tiny type. And the way he builds frames to show the passage of time or relationships in space is not only fascinating, it is also often in service of a melancholy mood.
• 
  Will

  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!
• 
  Dimitris Papastergiou

  Fun collection with some good stories and some mundane ones. Artwork is amazing!
• 
  Batmark

  
  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 Crusoe on Mars-type character who builds affectionate robot companions for himself, only to destroy them when they do not live up to his expectations), Rusty Brown (an obnoxious collector of old toys and vintage cereal boxes, etc., who still lives with his mother well into late middle age) and his only friend Chalky White (a slightly more well-adjusted collector--and perhaps the only truly unqualified sympathetic character in Ware's oeuvre--who eventually gets married and has a daughter who, naturally, comes to hate him as much as any rebellious teenager could hate her father), Quimby (an anthropomorphic mouse who tries, and fails, to relive the joys of childhood), and the unnamed character in the "Tales of Tomorrow" strips (which foretell the impersonal and solitary nature of mankind's consumer-based future). There are also several text-based features, including a fictional illustrated history of the ACME Novelty Co., a strip titled "Ruin Your Life: Draw Cartoons and Doom Yourself to Decades of Isolation, Solipsism, and Utter Social Disregard," and another called "Collectors: A Guide."
  
  Finally, The ACME Novelty Library is bookended by an untitled Moebius strip of a story that follows Ware's "Super-Man" character, a slightly feral, overweight pastiche of DC Comics's Superman character (and who has much in common with Rick Veitch's Maximortal). This wordless sequence follows Super-Man's eternal life through the birth and death (and rebirth, ad infinitum) of the universe as he ponders his time on earth and the one true love that he once had and rejected.
  
  This book is funny, in a "life is a lonely series of bitter disappointments strung together with moments of existential humiliation and terror--isn't that hilarious?" kind of way. In other words, the comedy is about as black as black comedy can get. However, this book is also one of the most beautiful examples of contemporary comic book art available, particularly in its design. Ware takes design very seriously, and every single page in The ACME Novelty Library rewards those who take the time to study them carefully. In this way, the page count is misleading; despite being a slim 108 pages, each page contains at least three times as much content as the average comic book page. Plus, the book is oversized (9" x 15"), making it well worth the price.
  
  Note: The full title of this particular book (perhaps in an effort to distinguish it from Ware's regular ACME Novelty Library series) is The ACME Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book.
• 
  Andrew

  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. hurrah!
  
  the novelty library is a kind of annual, featuring a range of cartoons and all the usual ware graphical trappings that make his books so fascinating, and mean that his cartoons always take a lot longer to read than you thought they would. the novelty library is a brilliant example of graphical work.
  
  if
  jimmy corrigan constantly verges on the tragic, then this book could be accused of wallowing in it. i must admit that i got a little depressed by the end of it. the main story that weaves through all of ware's cartoons (regardless of the characters) is about a little boy who got picked on at school then grew up to be disenchanted lonely adult.
  
  maybe there is a high degree of authenticity in ware's work, but i can't help wishing that he would balance out the sadness a bit more. for me the balancing is in his beautiful drawing style, but at times i think that is overcome by the sheer weight of the tragedy.
  
  i still think ware is a genius, but hope that his genius will be revealed more when he goes on to exhibit an ability to portray the hopeful, more beautiful aspects of life with the same accuracy as tragedy in future works.
• 
  Mike Horne

  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 consoling frivolity in the face of a wholly depraved essence -- i.e., even if a product, or service is utterly without redeeming value or integrity , it may still be made presentable, and conceivably sold-- or at least repackaged --at a considerable profit."
  This is one paragraph on a page filled with small print which you must constantly turn the book, an oversized book, around to read. If you don't think that is funny, Well! maybe this is not the book for you.
  Just read it again (August, 2014). Utterly depressing!
• 
  Nayeli

  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 "relaxed" reading comics with less text. It's not that I don't understand it, even if it went into heavy topics, it was just too much.
  
  But anyway, Chris Ware's style is something that I enjoy and I particularly love how this book (with its pages beautifully printed in pretty big format) even had a small comic strip on the edge of the front and back covers.
• 
  Cameron Mount

  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. It just seems...contradictory. Like if Harry Potter would have lost and evil prevailed - it doesn't fit what's being set up stylistically. Now, it's the same style as "Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth," but it worked much better there because it was just a single story. Here, with dozens of characters and plots, it just comes across as incomplete. Chris Ware is constantly amazing, but the utter lack of joy in his work is extremely frustrating.
• 
  Kevin

  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 the opening story in volume 19, which is one of Ware’s best pieces), but I struggled, and sometimes failed, to get through his “Quimby the Mouse” pieces, and only got a few pages into the “Quimby the Mouse” collection we received.
• 
  Brenton

  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 serves as a perfect introduction for the uninitiated, serving up a fantastic variety of Ware's brilliantly bleak explorations of human folly.
• 
  Josh

  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 sadness. It's kind of cruel to write and sort of masochistic to read but Ware has a way of portraying his flawed characters in an amazingly honest way.
• 
  K

  I likely I picked this up because it was referenced by an author whose work I do thoroughly enjoy, and based on the fact that his work has won awards....but THIS was definitely not to my tastes; depressing, cynical, weird, and confusing. I think this is one of those books that you either love or hate. Honestly, I don't feel like typing up all the details.
  
  The one thing I thought was kind of cool was the start charts w/ glow-in-the-dark ink & the intricate newspaper 'ads' stylized like the old novelty ads in comics.
  
• 
  matt

  It's obvious to anyone who reads comics/graphic novels that Ware has a strikingly distinct and rich style/color scheme but his constant morose attitude and disdain towards his characters gets a bit daunting. Between Rusty Brown and
  Jimmy Corrigan, jeez...give me someone to root for! The entire set up of this entire book is astounding, just make sure to pack some prozac.
• 
  Jerome K

  This is just pretty to have. The hardcover version is huge. It will not fit into your regular bookshelf. LOL. But it gives a good idea of Chris Ware's gobsmacking art. There's no one story as on
  Jimmy Corrigan. It's little bits here and there and some loosely related panels. Love it. Love it. Should've gotten Quimby The Mouse too but these pockets are not really that deep.
• 
  Ian

  I go back and forth between four and five for this book. A part of me wants to give it five stars, but another part of me just gets exhausted with how big this book is. I love Chris Ware and I always will. His illustrations really show how people suffer, real people at their best and worst. At their most naive and their most pig-headed. That's rare. But a hundred huge pages, some packed with over a thousand words each, just gets exhausting.
• 
  Neil Strauss

  With the first volume of this seminal series, most about “Jimmy Corrigan, the smartest kid on earth,” Chris Ware made loneliness ache in more color and dimension than the saddest country song. Where Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman taught me that comics could be novels, Chris Ware taught me that they could be literature. Though the series has been anthologized into a book, the printing, graphics, and reproductions are far superior in the original comics.
• 
  Frederic Germay

  A very interesting work of art, almost deliberately peculiar and humorously miserable. I honestly don't know how else to describe it. It was memorable, which is mostly a good thing. The actual book itself was quite unique, abnormally large with intricate designs. The images throughout are beautifully abstract and the text makes you smile and ruminate the various proposed declarations or suggestions. I enjoyed it.
• 
  Jay

  This one-off collects a few of Chris Ware's most self-reflective characters: Big Tex, Rocket Sam, and Rusty Brown. I mean, absolutely beautiful drawings and heart-breaking development. The only thing this book has going against it is the dimension of the page. The thing is like two stories tall [ba dum bum]. But seriously, this book is a bitch to read in bed.
• 
  Peacegal

  Like Ware's other books, the detail in this one is nothing short of incredible. A variety of bitterly ironic comics and mock advertisements explore rejection, misery, and the futility of life in general. I enjoyed it quite a bit, even if Ware's tiny writing makes my already-weak eyes feel even worse. Someday I'm gonna need Large Type comic books. Now get offa my lawn!