Jesus, what a sad, relentless book. Ware's Acme Novelty Library No. 20, or Lint, is a grinding, crushing exercise: the life story of one Jordan Lint (1958-2023), an unlikable if not wholly unsympathetic study in, unsurprisingly for Ware, broken masculinity. Lint inverts the premise of Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: instead of a shy, painfully recessive, Charlie Brown-like shlemiel à la the semi-autobiographical Jimmy, Jordan Lint is extrapolated from the archetypal locker room bully, a bluff, crass, bli...

BLUGH. It's almost painful to read Ware right now - he's the greatest living cartoonist doing his best work, and it's just BRAIN and SOUL-melting. Taking time out from his ongoing "Rusty Brown" epic (which, when finally finished and compiled, will split the entire universe in half and render all human narrative obsolete - it's THAT ridiculously good in toto, the greatest work of art that will have ever been rendered by mankind's craven hand) to tell the entire life story from birth to death of a...

Since Acme Novelty Library made the transition from a "pamphlet" or "chapbook" format (issues 1-15) to an annual (mostly) hardcover book series, there has been less miscellaneous material and it has mostly served to serialize portions of two works which will eventually be published as full-length works a la Jimmy Corrigan: Rusty Brown and Building Stories.Issues 16 and 17 were essentially parts one and two of Rusty Brown, and they very much felt like segments of an ongoing work. Since then, some...

Out of the vasty deeps of Barnes & Noble, Union Square, came this strange thing which I could not resist, and which I now understand to be the latest in a work in progress by this guy Chris Ware who was a new name to me, and who, like a great many graphic novelists, likes to make gorgeous inventive graphic works about the most miserable, unglamorous, quotidian characters, such as the hideous jerk in this tale, Jordan Lint. The entire life of Lint is told in glimpses, refractions, splintered shar...

Yes, this one was spectacular. I don’t know anything about the Acme Library except I missed the preceding nineteen novels, but the life and death of Jordan Lint was beautifully designed. A truly pioneering way to tell a simple story, leagues ahead in the originality and wittiness stakes. Like a dream that becomes a nightmare, beaming life back at us in all its horrible inevitability. I read portions of this in The Book of Other People, so completing the piece a year later was a prolonged pleasur...

I bought this book because it's goooooooorgeous. Really, really, gorgeous but I'll be selling it back soon because it's also devistating. Really, really devistating. And I don't mean to suggest that that's a bad thing, being devistated by a book, but it's just not something I'll want to re-visit. My brain gets a little cross-eyed when I try and find a compartment for Ware to fit into. His illustrations floor me everytime, his stories punch me in the stomach everytime. And the fact that he can do...

This is one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. I am amazed. He creates a character who is emotionally damaged at birth, and who carries this scar through his life, preventing him from ever knowing himself or what we would consider a complete life. I recognized myself in him, my friends, and felt terrible heartbreak. The artwork is astounding. Ware creates a subjective journey, with burblings of memory, and a visual dynamism that is simple and precise. I don't know what else to say, exc...

I love the art. The story was depressing. Features the life of an asshole.

Plots are not Chris Ware's strong suit. His specialty is observing the entire life of a solitary loser or asshole in minute detail. Ware's latest subject is Jordan Lint, a bully who flowers into an asshole. Not the kind of asshole people love. Not a Barney Stinson or a Dr. House. Jordan is just a no-account douche, who is otherwise perpetually confused about how to live.Without exaggeration, this probably the best graphic novel I have ever read. Not for the story: Jordan is born into an upper mi...

Another addition to the world of Rusty Brown! This time we learn about Jordan Lint. Lint was introduced in the first Rusty Brown volume as a school bully. This new story line follows Lint from birth to death, with each page representing a specific time in his life. The narrative and art work also represent each developmental, with the first few pages visually representing the world as a baby would see it and then as a toddler, a small child, a pre-teen, a teenager, etc. As the story progresses,

I may be the only person on Goodreads who disliked this graphic novel. I get that this was *supposed* to be a miserable story of a terrible person, but what I am meant to get out of reading it is lost on me. The almost brutally geometric artwork was visually appealing, but didn't serve as a beautiful contrast to the bathos of Lint - instead only made it feel more grotesque and unfeeling. Maybe I am just not entertained by naked misogyny, even when presented ironically.

To read my full review, please go to: http://paneldiscussions.wordpress.com...If you haven’t been exposed to the work of Chris Ware before, you should take some time out to do so, especially if you’re looking for something to read besides superhero books or thrillers. It’s drawn entirely in a minimalist style that resembles what you might see inside of airplane pamphlets explaining how to attach the oxygen mask in case of a loss of cabin pressure. The theme of the book too is similar to the airp...

What do you say about yet another mindblowingly designed, yet gloriously depressing installment from Chris Ware? Umm, I'm usually at a loss for words, and this time is no real exception. There are some moments along this sad journey that I found myself identifying with in the usual stomach ache inducing way, that's neither good nor bad, it's just the "Ware way," and of course it's not for everyone, but fuck those people who don't get it. I always have to prepare myself when I sit down and read o...

I really gotta stop doing this.I gotta get used to the fact that Chris Ware just isn't my thing.But his stuff is SO PRETTY!I love the high concept SO MUCH!His brain is so interesting. The geometry of how he creates his pages and panels, the color concepts, the overall sweep of a life in a comic book. There is so much I like about what he does.Yep, there's a big ole But.Everytime I read Ware's stuff, I leave feeling disconnected and nonplussed. While I admire the scope and design of everything he...

The comics equivalent of depressing literary fiction about middle-aged white men who treat everyone poorly but feel misunderstood and alone (Like Updike, for example, or Something Happened by Joseph Heller.) The artistry of this stand-alone comic is beyond comparison in its details and sophistication and layout, but it describes a dismal, joyless, futile life. It makes me wonder what it is about Ware that makes him compelled to imagine a story like this. Starting from birth, each page of this bo...

My low rating of this book has little to do with how much of a good job that Chris Ware did. He wrote a very believable, nuanced story about a terrible person. My low rating has to do with how much I enjoyed it. Not very much. Composition of the story is very good except for the complex layouts and microscopic text. Had the book been twice as big, it would have been easier to read, but would remain confusing. Should my eyes be going vertically or horizontally? I really don't know. But I do know

Chris Ware just gets better and better. Each of his yearly collections over the past few years has been dense, perceptive, highly nuanced stand-alone character study and this continues the tradition: a bitterly convincing condensation of an entire lifetime of self-driven fickleness, compromise, and disappointment. It's notable that, as opposed to the usual sympathetic failures who populate Ware stories, Jordan Lint would be considered a "success" by typical American standards. That his story is

*Update June 2016*Until further notice this is my favourite graphic novel.*Original Review*Up until now I have read Jimmy Corrigan, Vol 16 & 17 (first two of Rusty Brown) as this is all I have managed to find in my university library. Up until now I have not really agreed fully with people's description, or sometimes criticisms, of Ware's work as 'relentlessly depressing' or 'bleak'. I normally laugh at some of them, and think they are fairly honest if not pessimistic views of daily life.This wa...

the artwork and layout of this book is really nice. I liked how images show how his past trauma affects his life. The storytelling is also very unique, each page is a random day from each year of the main character’s life. The reader is left to fill in the blanks and guess what happens in the time between, i’ve never seen a story being told like that and it was very interesting to read. as for the actual story itself i find myself loathing the main character, i think that was the intention of th...

Well, that was... interesting. I have literally no point of reference from any book I've ever read to evaluate this graphic novel. It tells the life history of Jordan Lint in 80 pages, from birth to death - an ambitious undertaking accomplished through single-day impressions of the man, tiny snapshots of his miserable life through pictures and icons and a bit of dialogue and a more than a few pfs and ohs and kofs and taks. It isn't a happy book, really.If this review seems disjointed that would