The Acme Novelty Date Book: Sketches and Diary Pages in Facsimile - Hardcover

Ware, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1896597661 ISBN 13: 9781896597669

Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly, 2003

Synopsis

Acclaimed cartoonist Chris Ware reveals the outtakes of his genius in these intimate, imaginative, and whimsical sketches collected from the years during which he completed his award-winning graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon). His novel not only won the Manchester Guardian First Novel prize in 2001 but it has sold over 100,000 copies. This book is as much a companion volume to Jimmy Corrigan --one of the great crossover success stories-- as a tremendous art collection from of one of America's most interesting and popular graphic artist.

Chris Ware has a passion for drawing that is surprisingly wide-ranging in style and subject. This book surprises the reader on every page with its sense of spontaneous vision. Architectural drawings from Chicago and interplanetary robot comics collide with cruelly doodled human figures and quietly troubling studies of the still life. A must for people with a passion for modern design and old-fashioned style.

About this title

About the Author

Cartoonist/designer Chris Ware is the author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Quimby the Mouse, and the ACME Novelty Datebook. Ware was born in 1967, two years before Frank King’s death.

From Booklist

Prolific alternative-comics artist Ware follows his epic, Jimmy Corrigan (2000), and Quimby the Mouse [BKL S 1 03] with a collection of sketchbook pages. Ware owes his lofty reputation largely to his awesome command of the "grammar" of comics, and this handsome volume showcasing his drawing ability amounts to something of a new revelation. Ware's strips are so meticulous in their rigid perfection that they seem to indicate an obsessive character. Yet these hundreds of life drawings, cityscapes, doodles, preliminary sketches, and other drawings, rendered in an impressive variety of styles, contrarily display unexpected spontaneity and looseness. Particularly revelatory are a handful of actual strips in Ware's familiar multipanel approach, and featuring Jimmy, Quimby, and other characters from his long stories, that are rendered in a rougher, almost crude style. Ware's fans will find his marginal notes fascinating, too, for their revelations about his creative process. Besides showing off Ware's facility and variety, this beautifully designed book demonstrates just how much thought and planning go into his acclaimed graphic novels. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1896597661
• ISBN 13: 9781896597669
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208