Acme Novelty Library - Lint

Today, via Fed Ex, I received my Alternate Reality Comics copies of Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library v. 20 that I ordered directly from Drawn & Quarterly (and it is available for sale now, well during the hours I'm open!). Chris Ware has been creating, writing, and drawing these wonderfully depressing graphic novels for years and he hasn't run out of steam yet (Praise Promethea!).

Acme Novelty Library is the blanket title for Chris Ware's graphic novel and he rarely even titles the individual volumes, but this newest one is titled Lint, which is the last name of the central character, of which this volume is a chronicle of his life. All of Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Libraries are separate stories that don't require one to have read previous volumes.

Ware is the master of the depressing narrative graphic novel and he does this with minute detail in his character's lives. Someone who hasn't read a Chris Ware graphic novel may ask why would they want to read a depressing book? I'd answer that when a cartoonist mines depression to such an expert pedigree as Chris Ware, that the reader will go away from reading one of his works with a greater understanding of the human condition and maybe get some insights into themselves or people they know.

Even though I hope to read many more Acme Novelty Libraries in the future, I hope that doing these graphic novels is a kind of catharsis for Chris Ware because I fear that he is too self aware or aware of the darkness within humankind and we all know what Fredrich Nietzsche said about staring into the abyss...

Acme Novelty Library - Lint, is highly recommended, like all of Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Libraries, many of which are sadly, oddly, not in print. Remember to have one of those full page magnifying glasses on hand when reading Chris Ware's graphic novels though, because even with reading glasses, I was straining to read some of the pages.