How much loneliness, despair and self loathing can one man fit into comics? Apparently at least 19 volumes worth and still counting if Acme Novelty Library Volume 19 is any indication. After taking more than a year off to produce a different story, Chris Ware returns to the world of Rusty Brown, or more exactly, to Woody Brown, Rusty’s father. While volumes (it feels weird to call these little hardcovers “issues”) 16 and 17 focuses on young Rusty and his school life and friends, his father takes center state this time around in a split story that produces one of the year’s best science fiction stories before delving back into the sad and miserable lives that inhabit Chris Ware’s comic world.
“The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars,” the first story in this volume, is like an old Robert Heinlein juvenile science fiction story filtered through Ware’s own comic worldview. A band of astronauts, two males and two females, launch off in a rocket ship with the plan of colonizing Mars. Set up in a 1950′s sci-fi pastiche, Ware’s story feels like a classic sci-fi tale as the astronauts split into couples with the idea of being the new Adam and Eves of Mars. This being a Chris Ware book, the isolation leads to self doubt, loneliness and jealousy as the quartet is split apart and our lead characters slowly goes crazy.
The second story, “Youth, and Middle Age,” plants us down in more familiar ground as the focus shifts to a young Woody Brown, a shy journalist who’s stuck working the obituary page at the local paper. The position actually fits his personality as Woody prefers to sit in the background unnoticed. He’s a rather unassuming fellow until he’s noticed by the lady in red. That’s what we’ll call her because I don’t think she was ever given a proper name. She opens up young Woody’s life, mostly and primarily sexually, as Woody develops the same kind of obsession as the main character in “The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars” did.
Chris Ware doesn’t stray too far from his usual themes in this book but by wrapping them in a science fiction setting for half the book, he shows his versatility as a storyteller. Now remember, this is the cartoonist who’s explored these ideas using Krazy Kat stand-ins so using what could be retro-science fiction plots and characters isn’t much of a stretch. Ware amplifies those themes and moods by moving his story to Mars, separating his characters from humanity and society already and then creating further alienation among themselves. A world of people become four people becomes one person through the course of the story.
The story of Woody Brown builds very naturally off of “The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars” because even though Woody is constantly surrounded by people, he’s as alone and lonely as the pioneers on Mars. While the lady in red makes the first sexual move towards Woody, he’s unable to distinguish between love and lust. His lack of experience only intensifies his insecurities once he’s had an experience. And once you realize the connection between Woody and the main character in “The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars,” it becomes obvious how Ware has used the two stories to create one larger and even more compelling one.
As always, how Ware tells the story is just as important as the story that he’s telling. His pages are like mazes, with unexpected twists and turns that you need to take to get through them. Only in a very general sense do you read his books left to right, top to bottom. Each page is broken down into smaller units, with the panel progressions built into those smaller unit. On a typical Ware page, you will read a couple of panels, drop down to a few more, then move to a larger central image that may set the tone of the page before moving to another segment on the right side of the page before reading a series of panels that line the entire bottom of the page. There’s no glossing through a Ware page or story; you’ve got to work at it and decipher where exactly on the page he wants you to go to follow the story.
From the red planet Mars to the obituary desk at the newspaper, nothing much changes. In both places, no one can escape despair, loneliness and alienation. As always, Chris Ware gives us a front row seat to watch men’s souls slowly and surely crumble away under that loneliness.
Acme Novelty Library Volume 19
Written and Drawn by: Chris Ware
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