Rusty Brown

‘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.

„In saptamana dupa ce am terminat ultima pagina a lui Jimmy Corrigan, am inceput imediat o noua poveste lunga bazata pe personaje care isi au originea in parodii, dar pe care acum am vrut sa le umanizez ... in mijlocul unui cadru de amintiri din copilaria mea din Omaha si educatia din Nebraska . ’- Chris Ware, MonographNow, douazeci de ani mai tarziu, Ware publica Rusty Brown sub forma de carte.