by Chris Ware
Publisher: ANL
There are writers, there are artists, and then there are craftsmen. Those who treat creativity like building a chair, a table, a clock, or a whole house from component parts which they fashion themselves. This is made to fit here and nowhere else. That is carved or sculpted to adorn this or support that, and the whole ensemble is a meticulously assembled oeuvre. Evelyn Waugh was a writer who considered himself as such, and I don't disagree. And now that Dave Sim has completed CEREBUS, Chris Ware is undoubtedly the foremost craftsman in comics right now. You can see it on each page, constructed like a piece of architecture, its lines so satisfyingly laid. As to the colours, it's no mean feat to make something so delicate out of shades that are anything but "flat" but which nonetheless, in this age of computerised jiggery-pokery, are not once blended.
A few years ago Ware introduced his new character, Rusty Brown, in a series of vignettes - of short, single, or half-page "sketches" - snatched from throughout the miserable, ginger bastard's life. We've seen him sitting alone in what would be most people's middle age, surrounded by the detritus of his lethargy and greed, slouched on the couch, bloated and mesmerised by the television. We've witnessed his petty selfishness, secret spite and overt cruelty towards his overly loyal, childhood friend, Chalky White, from the playground to the jumble sales and right into Chalky's new family unit, intruding into their lives until Chalky's wife becomes fearful for their daughter's wellbeing. Backwards and forwards in time, we've been given (hilarious and awful) glimpses which suggested what might have happened to fashion such a repulsive excuse for a human being. Now... now Chris Ware tells it straight, beginning with Chalky and his older sister's first day at their new school, where Rusty is already "happily" living in his own version of reality which revolves around Superman and Supergirl fantasies, aided by his girly action figures he knows he should be ashamed of. But, of course, Chris doesn't tell it straight. For a start, there are two parallel stories here, occurring simultaneously, sometimes within yards of each other. One runs along the top four-fifths of the page, the other down at the bottom. Secondly, not everything you see happens except in the daydreams (and nightmares) of the participants, and thirdly -- what on earth is Chris Ware doing in this strip? You know, except to flay himself a little, as he's won't to do. The most revealing character this time round, is Rusty Brown's father, who teaches at the same school, but I'll leave you to discover that for yourself.
Returning to the architectural theme, Chris likes his buildings, he surely does, as well as those individual stories secretly harboured or acted out by those living inside. And, as a bonus, the last eight pages here are devoted to a four-storey tenement building, one floor and its inhabitant(s) at a time. Firstly, you get a floor plan, then a jigsaw of interconnected panels which you can weave together in different ways, in different orders, to tell a story - a puzzle, if you like, for you to solve. It's an immensely satisfying exercise, decrypting each piece, and sometimes it's the discovery of a short sequence or a single, telling inset panel that will reveal the whole tapestry. For me, the third piece presented the most joy, when I finally realised (in a way that make me curse my initial stupidity) that the interior decor of the woman's sitting room was changing dramatically between panels, indicating the passage of not moments, but years, whilst her clothes remained all but identical, and her mother kept calling from the bedroom off-panel, in the form of an exclamation mark in a red speech bubble. They're all fairly upsetting stories, if you have a heart.
The sheer hard work, let alone talent, that has gone to making this book, is enormously humbling. When you hold it in your hands, you will recognise instantly why it has taken so long to appear. I know I have a history of handing out my Book of the Year awards with a rash prematurity, but rarely am I given cause to change my mind. So, although it's January (!), this is my Book of the Year 2006, and if there are any creators out there who consider that a challenge, so much the better. Five Eisners at least, if there's any justice - and a radically different Eisner panel.
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