Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Acme Novelty Datebook, vol. 2

I've finished the pencils for p. 10, and I want to post them tonight so I can get feedback before the inking starts, but the batteries in my camera are drained, and my scanner doesn't pick up pencils well. I'm recharging the camera batteries right now.

Meanwhile, let me note that in the past two days, I got a couple of books that promise to keep me busy in any spare minutes I might have between now and the spring semester. One is The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, which I got on Amazon for a ridiculously low price (something like $58 instead of its $150 cover price); the other is the new second volume of the Acme Novelty Datebook, which is a powerful reminder of the value of keeping a notebook. Chris Ware draws and thinks like an utter genius, even in his moments of self-loathing or idle time. It's hard to think of a more impressive record of a cartoonist's working process, or a more impressive book of incidental drawings.

Like the volume before it (and like the final paragraphs of Gulliver's Travels which I happened to re-read this morning), this installment of Acme Novelty Datebook is a stern rebuke against pride.

If Chris Ware tells himself, every day, many times a day, that he sucks, then what can the rest of us think of ourselves?

1 comment:

Mike said...

"If Chris Ware tells himself, every day, many times a day, that he sucks, then what can the rest of us think of ourselves?"

Easy: we can keep thinking what we already think of ourselves, which isn't pretty. Especially since our own moments of self-loathing and down time are far less productive, let alone impressive.

(Mind you, I'm a little sympathetic to the idea that some of Ware's public self-loathing is shtick; but that sense is tempered with utmost respect and indeed awe at what he has accomplished.)