Un graphic novel in 14 albi di diverso formato, leggibili in qualsiasi ordine e racchiusi in un'elegante scatola. La storia narrata da Chris Ware, commovente e tragicomica, è quella della vita di un'anonima giovane donna americana e degli altri abitanti di un palazzo di Chicago, tra gioie e dolori, successi e fallimenti.

In edizione cartonata con il design originale concepito dall'autore, dove la sovraccoperta è un omaggio alle pagine dedicate ai comics nei quotidiani di inizio secolo: un foglio enigmatico e decorato, che una volta dispiegato svela un mondo di invenzioni grafiche e narrative. "Jimmy Corrigan" è la storia di un uomo qualunque paralizzato dalla paura di non piacere agli altri, a disagio persino con se stesso. Ambientato a Chicago lungo l'arco di tre generazioni, il racconto inizia con Jimmy che riceve una lettera dal padre, scomparso quando era ancora bambino, in cui lo sconosciuto gli propone un incontro per la festa del Ringraziamento. Quello che segue è un universo fatto di "3072 disegni e 47.339 parole", dove il tempo è suddiviso come nelle battute di una partitura musicale.

Rusty Brown, un timido scolaretto ossessionato dai supereroi. Chalky White, il compagno di scuola. Sua sorella Alison. Jason Lint, il bullo che li tormenta. Woody Brown, il padre, e Joanne Cole, la loro insegnante. Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore sullo sfondo di una popolosa città del Nebraska. Ware racconta ognuna delle loro storie dall'inizio alla fine, dai momenti formativi ai più trascurabili dettagli, cesellando un'epopea che è al tempo stesso banale e straordinaria, spassosa e straziante, in ogni caso eroica.

Nel suo classico stile istrionico l'autore, considerato uno dei padri del fumetto moderno americano, avverte il lettore "non comprate questo libro". Ware ha gettato le basi per un nuovo tipo di narrazione ultra ironica. Il libro è un labirinto di segni e storie umanissime in cui i lettori di tutto il mondo amano perdersi. Ware è il guru di un nuovo sentire. Il David Foster Wallace del fumetto. Premiato in festival artistici o letterari, è oggi corteggiato dagli editori più prestigiosi.

Sebbene non fosse nelle intenzioni dell'autore della presente pubblicazione produrre un'opera che alcuno potesse considerare "difficile", "ermetica" o, ancor peggio, "impenetrabile", è sorto all'attenzione del nostro consiglio di ricerca che alcuni lettori, per via di una (interamente scusabile) ignoranza di certe mode che scorrono lungo gli affluenti della "cultura giovanile d'avanguardia" di oggi, potrebbero ritrovarsi sprovvisti dei mezzi per intrattenere un dialogo semantico soddisfacente con il teatro pittografico ivi offerto. Sebbene il grosso dei principi e delle regole che lo governano siano essenzialmente intuitive, gli editori hanno ritenuto utile offrire una guida rudimentale intorno a modifiche e/o adattamenti di detti principi e regole qui in atto allo scopo di adattarsi a questa inedita forma di dramma immaginario. Naturalmente, se il lettore o la lettrice dovesse già trovarsi a suo agio con tali meccanismi, avendo già dedicato una quantità importante del suo tempo alla lettura dei contenuti del presente volume, il lettore o la lettrice è senza meno incoraggiato a sorvolare su questa introduzione per procedere direttamente con l'opera "in sé e per sé".

"Charming, innocent and empathetic... Rancourt passes the reader a gift: the ability to experience and see a venal adult life through the forgiving, blameless and easily-wounded eyes of a child."-Chris Ware, from his introduction

In 1980, Sylvie Rancourt and her boyfriend moved to Montreal from rural Northern Quebec. With limited formal education or training, they had a hard time finding employment, so Rancourt began dancing in strip clubs. These experiences formed the backbone of the first Canadian autobiographical comic book, Melody, which Rancourt wrote, drew, and distributed, starting in 1985. Later, she collaborated with the artist Jacques Boivin, who translated and drew a new series ofMelody comics for the American market-the comics were an instant cult classic.
Until now, the Rancourt drawn-and-written comics have never been published in English. These stories are compelling without ever being voyeuristic or self-pitying, and her drawings are formally innovative while maintaining a refreshingly frank and engaging clarity. Whether she's divulging her first experiences dancing for an audience or sharing moments from her life at home, her storytelling is straightforward and never sensationalized. With a knowing wink at the reader, Rancourt shares a world that, in someone else's hands, might be scandalous or seedy, but in hers is fully realized, real, and often funny.
The Drawn & Quarterly edition of Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer, featuring an introduction by Chris Ware (Building Stories), places this masterpiece of early autobiographical comics in its rightful place at the heart of the comics canon.

The prelude to the Walt and Skeezix series offers a portrait of a country in transition

Walt Before Skeezix collects the first years of Frank King’s beloved comic strip Gasoline Alley—one of the most widely read and syndicated strips of its time, which is still syndicated today. These comics, produced between 1919 and 1920, focus primarily on Walt Wallet and his friends as they engage with the then-novel automobile sensation that was sweeping the nation.
This period of the newspaper strip is especially fascinating as a historical time capsule, charting a moment in America’s past when horses and buggies shared the road with cars, and when the country was making the transition from rural farmers to urban, industrialized society.
King was a pioneering American cartoonist who changed comics forever by setting his strip in contemporary America and having his characters age. These lavish volumes pay tribute to the evolution of his style and storytelling. Designed and edited by the world-renowned cartoonist Chris Ware (Building Stories), Walt Before Skeezix includes a wide-ranging introductory essay from the noted comics historian Jeet Heer, the coeditor of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium, and an essay by Tim Samuelson, the cultural historian for the city of Chicago, about how Chicago’s history is reflected in King’s newspaper strip.

New York Times Book Review, Top 10 Books of the Year
Time Magazine, Top Ten Fiction Books of the Year
Publishers Weekly, Best Book of the Year
Kirkus Reviews, Top 10 Fiction of 2012
Newsday, Top 10 Books of 2012
Entertainment Weekly, Gift Guide, A+
Washington Post, Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2012
Minneapolis Star Tribune, Best Books of the Year
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Top 10 Fiction Books of the Year
Amazon, Best Books of the Year/Comics
Boing Boing, Best Graphic Novel of the Year


Everything you need to read the new graphic novel Building Stories: 14 distinctively discrete Books, Booklets, Magazines, Newspapers, and Pamphlets.

With the increasing electronic incorporeality of existence, sometimes it’s reassuring—perhaps even necessary—to have something to hold on to. Thus within this colorful keepsake box the purchaser will find a fully-apportioned variety of reading material ready to address virtually any imaginable artistic or poetic taste, from the corrosive sarcasm of youth to the sickening earnestness of maturity—while discovering a protagonist wondering if she’ll ever move from the rented close quarters of lonely young adulthood to the mortgaged expanse of love and marriage. Whether you’re feeling alone by yourself or alone with someone else, this book is sure to sympathize with the crushing sense of life wasted, opportunities missed and creative dreams dashed which afflict the middle- and upper-class literary public (and which can return to them in somewhat damaged form during REM sleep).

A pictographic listing of all 14 items (260 pages total) appears on the back, with suggestions made as to appropriate places to set down, forget or completely lose any number of its contents within the walls of an average well-appointed home. As seen in the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Building Stories collects a decade’s worth of work, with dozens of “never-before-published” pages (i.e., those deemed too obtuse, filthy or just plain incoherent to offer to a respectable periodical).

Suitable for trainee and working farriers, this manual starts with a brief history of farriery, then looks at the legalities of the job and how to control equines for trimming and shoeing. It includes photos and explanatory line drawings to explain shoe making, surgical shoes, lameness and shoeing.

Utterly eschewing the general bonhomie surrounding the newly-minted contemporary regard for the comic strip medium as a language of complicated personal expression and artistic sophistication, professional colorist and award-winning letterer F. C. Ware returns to the book trade with “The ACME Novelty Library,” a hardcover distillation of all his surviving one-page cartoon jokes with which he tuckpointed the holes of his regular comic book periodical over the
past decade. Sometimes claimed to be his “best work” by those who really don’t know any better, this definitive congestion of stories of the future, the old west, and even of modern life nonetheless tries to stay interesting by including a luminescent map of the heavens, a chart of the general structure of the universe, assorted cut-out activitites,
and a complete history of The ACME Novelty Company itself, decorated by rare photographs, early business ventures, not to mention the smallest example of a Comic Strip ever before offered to the general public. All in all, it will likely prove a rather mild disappointment, but at least it catches the light in a nice way and may force a smile here and there
before being shelved for the next generation’s ultimate disregard and/or disposal.

The multiple Harvey and Eisner Awards series collecting one of America's true national treasures, Krazy Kat. This is the fifth in a series reprinting George Herriman's early 20th Century comic strip masterpiece. Most of these strips have not seen print since originally running in Hearst newspapers over 70 years ago. Each volume is edited by the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum's Bill Blackbeard. Krazy & Ignatz 1933-1934 will be a hot-baked brickbat of a volume, adance with nearly two full years of the Sunday Krazy Kat (Herriman did not use color until 1935), snug between multiple pages of Herriman extras, not the least of which include an introduction by Blackbeard, a new "Debaffler" page, and a stunning layout front and back and throughout by the inimitable Chris Ware! Krazy Kat is a love story, focusing on the relationships of its three main characters. Krazy Kat adored Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz Mouse just tolerated Krazy Kat, except for recurrent onsets of targeting tumescence, which found expression in the fast delivery of bricks to Krazy's cranium. Offisa Pup loved Krazy and sought to protect "her" (Herriman always maintained that Krazy was gender-less) by throwing Ignatz in jail. Each of the characters was ignorant of the others' true motivations, and this simple structure allowed Herriman to build entire worlds of meaning into the actions, building thematic depth and sweeping his readers up by the looping verbal rhythms of Krazy & Co.'s unique dialogue.

The paperback edition of the first graphic novel to win the }Guardian{ First Book Award in 2001. Has sold 12,000 copies in hardback. "The most versatile and innovative artist the medium has known" Dave Eggers.

This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired "everyman" (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked.


From the Hardcover edition.

The comic strips of Chris Ware are collected in this graphic novel, which celebrates the life of Jimmy Corrigan, a boy with a face like a disappointed old man. "A comic book with the soul of a literary novel" }The New Yorker{.

This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired "everyman" (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked.