now
in stock!
The ACME Novelty Library
by Chris Ware
retail price - $27.50
copacetic
price
- $24.00
This
startlingly well produced Big Book, the latest from the greatest full
grown adult
comics whiz kid, that literary minded artistic genius and graphic
technician extraordinaire who possesses what could possibly be the most
divided consciousness in a fully-functioning adult in the known world
-- yes, that's right, Mr. Chris Ware -- collects material previously
presented in the comics periodical Acme Novelty Library #s 7
& 15 (AKA Acme Novelty Big Book of Jokes
#s 1 & 2 ) published
by Fantagraphics, along with plenty of finely crafted, bruising new
work with which it has been seamlessly integrated, all bundled together
in an extravagant and exquisite oversize hardcover edition published by Pantheon Books. It pretty much goes
without saying that this singular volume is a must for anyone
interested in
contemporary comics. A contender for the most
densely packed volume in the history of printing -- there are
more drawings and more text squeezed into every nook and cranny than
any other book we can think of -- this is a work that will
rend the senses and boggle the mind.
With this stellar (literally; you'll see...) volume, Chris
extends his reign as the undisputed master of abnegation, rejection, dejection, denial, disgust
and loathing -- self and otherwise. An all-American Samuel
Beckett, Mr. Ware is an artist in whose underlying sensibility one can
detect un sotto voce, "I
can't go on" -- yet go on he must and, with one clean clear line after
another, go on he unrelentingly does.
While
countless others before him have plundered the vaults of popular
culture in
search of material with which to satirize the American mind, Ware
has managed to move the game to an entirely new arena and in the
process raise the stakes. His is a thorough going formal critique
of the bases of American power that defines them as rooted in a
ruthless exploitation and degradation of the small, the weak and the
naive; the disenfranchised of the world. In keeping with the
tried and true dictum of working with what you know, Ware finds that
his experience has shown him that no one more fully fits this
definition than the consumer of pop culture ephemra -- comic books,
action figures, cereal premiums, and the like, all of which he likens,
ultimately, to pornography and a slow but steady erosion of the
soul.
The
work contained in this volume functions on one level as a eulogy for
those naive youths (among whose number was, doubtless, one C. Ware) who
were seduced and abandoned by the American dream as embodied in the
popular culture of the twentieth century. As a result of his deep
insights into the American version of la conditione humane,
Ware's humor is quite effective in cutting straight to the heart of the
pain and surgically releasing it in what he hopes will be a curative
and restorative laughter. But it is a laughter which dances on
the edge, just one slight misstep away from a plummet into the abyss of
desolation and loss, for this is not an ordinary "funnybook," and the
pieces it contains can hardly be wholly contained by the classification
of "comic": they express what are surely some of the most
brutally bitter narrative sequences in the history of
art and literature. Over and over again we are confronted with
bald, clear-eyed betrayal of the worst and most debased kind: of
consumers by the very companies they patronize, of citizens by their
own government, of a son by his own father, of a lover by the loved, of
creation by its creator; all leading inexorably to the betrayal of one's own self
to utter despair. Ha-ha, indeed.
The universe portrayed in The ACME Novelty Library is one in which the conception of individual actions being governed by personal choice is revealed to be a hollow sham behind which lies a cold reality in which all events are soullessly controlled by the primal drives and those forces that manipulate them, and in which, in the final analysis, all decision is pointless and meaningless. The ACME Novelty Library is a distant cousin to Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, only this time crossing over from the other side of the tracks: It is a brutally dark yet hysterically funny (provided that the reader hasn't been so overwhelmed by despair that laughter is no longer possible) look at American culture which reveals that Ware has, in his own manner, come to the same conclusion as Burroughs: The powers that dominate American life are, in the final analysis, pushers, and we the people are a bunch of hopeless addicts. Of course, in order to successfully carry out his satire, Ware is "forced" to don the guise of corporate America himself in order to "sell" you his irony.
Book Description
Utterly eschewing the general bonhomie surrounding the newly-minted contemporary regard for the comic strip medium as a language of complicated personal expression and artistic sophistication, professional colorist and award-winning letterer F. C. Ware returns to the book trade with “The ACME Novelty Library,” a hardcover distillation of all his surviving one-page cartoon jokes with which he tuckpointed the holes of his regular comic book periodical over the past decade. Sometimes claimed to be his “best work” by those who really don’t know any better, this definitive congestion of stories of the future, the old west, and even of modern life nonetheless tries to stay interesting by including a luminescent map of the heavens, a chart of the general structure of the universe, assorted cut-out activitites, and a complete history of The ACME Novelty Company itself, decorated by rare photographs, early business ventures, not to mention the smallest example of a Comic Strip ever before offered to the general public. All in all, it will likely prove a rather mild disappointment, but at least it catches the light in a nice way and may force a smile here and there before being shelved for the next generation’s ultimate disregard and/or disposal.
Need
more? Can't get enough? Do you feel like your nerves are
shot? like there's something inexplicably missing from your life?
Check out
this
detailed review at Salon.com.
Once you're through there, you can move on to the link
bestrewn Copacetic Chris Ware
page.
After
that, however, you're pretty much out of luck and on your own until you
manage to put enough nickels together to purchase this ineffably
desirable item.
retail price - $27.50
copacetic
price
- $24.00
prices and
availability
current as of 17 March 2007