Chris Ware, _Rusty Brown_

ONLY NOW NOTICED that my previous post was post #777. Not bad, hmm? I mean, that is a lot of posts.

Rusty Brown was published as a complete volume just last year, but it collects pieces that Ware has been publishing separately for quite a few years. That is, some of it (most of it?) predates Ware's last book, Buildimg Stories. I am hoping that puts in a different light Rusty Brown's being a good deal bleaker and comfortless than Building Stories. Not that Building Stories is a stroll in the park, God knows. But each of the featured characters in Rusty Brown is terribly, achingly alone--sometimes their own narcissism or immaturity is to blame, but not always--so I like having room to hope that Ware's outlook brightened somewhat after conceiving of this book.

The principal characters, in the order in which they are featured:

Rusty Brown, a third grader in a Catholic school in about, I think, 1974 or 1975. In a word, Rusty is bullied. On the day we spend with him, he has accidentally brought to school his favorite action figure--Supergirl--and he spends the day in a cold-sweat extended panic about what will happen to her, or him, if the toy's presence is discovered. A new kid in his class, Chalky White, makes friendly overtures, but Rusty barely notices. Yes, someone finds Supergirl. Yes, something bad happens.

Woody Brown, Rusty's father, teaches English at the high school level in the school Rusty attends. He seems to have burned out on teaching long ago, and burned out on his marriage even longer ago, and never to have cottoned to fatherhood at all. Most of his episode is retrospective, recalling a strange off-and-on affair he had with a co-worker as a new hire at a newspaper (he married on the rebound) and a science fiction story he wrote shortly after--his one burst of creativity.

Jordan, aka Jason, Lint is an older boy at the school, enrolled in one of Woody's classes and Rusty's chief tormentor. This episode covers a much longer span of time--about a page for each year of Lint's life--and he never seems to quite get over having a distant, cruel father, becoming something of a distant, cruel father himself and leaving behind a trail of emotional wreckage when he dies in his 70s.

Joanna Cole is Rusty's teacher--a dedicated and effective teacher, eventually she gets promoted to administration, somewhat to her chagrin. She plays banjo, looks after her aging mother, keeps her school going, but no one, not even her mother or sister, seems to notice what a loyal, conscientious, and good person she is. There is a little glimmer of redemption in the very last panel. I hope.

Ware's uncanny grasp of the structure of comic art--both its traditions and its possibilities for extension and renovation--astonishes. The man is a genius. But the sadness of Rusty Brown is deep. This was hard to read.