The Acme Novelty Company

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! Praise for Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth: 'In exchange for your efforts, this haunting and unshakable book will change the way you look at your world.' Time 'Stupendous.' Matt Groening 'Perceptive, poetic and sometimes profound.' Independent 'A work of genius.' Zadie Smith 'An excruciatingly desolate yet wonderfully nuanced portrait of loneliness.' New York Times 'Demanding, disturbing, funny and exciting. Oh yes, and essential.' Time Out 'The colours are dreadful, it's like looking at a bottle of Domestos or Hapric or Ajax. Awful bleak colours, revolting to look at; it's on its way to the Oxfam shop. Disgusting look to it. Really horrible.' Tom Paulin, BBC Newsnight, December 8th, 2001