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.

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

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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.

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.

Visually explosive like everything Ware does, but much of the textual content is mindnumbing.

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

So good, so bleak

Why are graphic novels the saddest? There are some laugh out loud jokes thrown in, but even those are based in deeply dark humor. TYou can find occasional tiny glimpses of movement & understanding, but overall it feels like wallowing. There was a time I would have liked that more; now it just feels too heavy. Still, a very smart collection, and visually lovely.

No hay muchos autores de los que leería cualquier cosa que publicaran, Chris Ware sería, sin duda, uno de ellos. Genio.

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.

This guy manages to draw the most depressing comics possible and loves to write the text balloons with the smallest text he can fit, it's a hell reading them.

Arguably one of the most brilliant comic creators out there. I have yet to see work as visually and mentally intriguing as his.