Chris Ware

"Rusty Brown is a normal, nerdy, bullied, disenfranchised Tweenage kid in Omaha, Nebraska who is just trying to survive a regular junior high school day with his best friend Chalky White. But in this deeply Ware-ian world, it won't be easy"--

Rusty Brown

alina s

Ethan Hill

59- Light recommend

Perhaps someone (i.e. me) seeking to explore the bibliography of one of the preeminent graphic novelists of the twenty-first century should start with the more accessible works that garnered early acclaim instead of diving headfirst into a project with its earliest roots some twenty-two years ago. Alas, I am neither intelligent enough to make the informed decision nor to appreciate everything Chris Ware is attempting in Rusty Brown a sprawling, bleak, and often meandering look at six individuals (well, three in this first of two parts) in mid-twentieth century Nebraska that will knock you off balance one moment with its nonlinear narrative before punching you in the gut with the tragedy that slowly builds with each page. I can't say it had me hooked one hundred percent of the time, but it's clear that Ware knows exactly what he's doing, and I look forward to the next triad of stories (and to actually getting to Rusty Brown, the kid is in the introduction then promptly disappears for the remainder of the pages).

A new installment of the "Rusty Brown" cartoon series, originally published in the cartoonist's "Jimmy Corrigan" periodical, features seven individuals whose lives revolve around a universally despised child at a Nebraska private school. Teen.

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'The week after I finished the last page of Jimmy Corrigan I immediately started a new long story based on characters who had originated as parodies, but whom now I wanted to humanize... amidst a setting of memories of my Omaha childhood and Nebraska upbringing.' (Chris Ware, Monograph) Now, twenty years later, Ware is publishing Rusty Brown in book form. It is, he says, 'a fully interactive, full-colour articulation of the time-space interrelationships of six complete consciousnesses on a single Midwestern American day and the tiny piece of human grit about which they involuntarily orbit.' The six characters are Rusty Brown himself, a shy schoolkid obsessed with superheroes, his father 'Woody' Brown, an eccentric teacher at Rusty's school, Chalky White, another schoolboy, Alison White, Chalky's sister, Jason Lint, an older boy who bullies Rusty and Chalky and fancies Alison, and the boys' teacher, Joanne Cole. Ware tells each of their stories in minute detail (or as he puts it, 'From childhood to old age, no frozen plotline is left unthawed'), producing another masterwork of the comics form that is at once achingly beautiful, heartbreakingly sad and painfully funny.

Rusty Brown

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