Rusty Brown

Discover the long-awaited new book from the author of Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth and Building Stories. `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. `A treasure trove of invention... With its awe-inspiring exploration of regret and ageing, anxiety and ennui... Rusty Brown is a human document of rare richness` Guardian `Chris Ware is one of the great writers of our generation...I spent 20 minutes reading the cover of Rusty Brown. Buy it. Buy all his work. Make your life larger.` Mark Haddon, Observer