Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three

Drawn & Quarterly

Chris Ware

Dec 30, 2024 Web Exclusive By John Paul Bullock

The third and final installment of Chris Ware’s (Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Building Stories) facsimile sketchbook series is a heartwarming and, often hilarious, window into the life and work of one of the most important figures in modern sequential art. Spanning the years 2002-2023, Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three is packed with short comics, portraits of strangers and musicians, and location sketches. It contains stray thoughts and illustrated meditations on parenthood, depression, and the afterlife. It’s especially dear in its depictions of the artist’s daughter, Clara, following her from childhood to her departure for college.

Perhaps most interestingly, the book chronicles Ware’s frequent doubts about his own talent, which coming from one of the most celebrated cartoonists of the last century, shows how even the most gifted craftsmen are still subject to the horrors of imposter syndrome. This book begins with the admission: “I fear there is little of interest in the pages which follow to sustain the attention or even the tolerance of the average civilian reader.” But even considering the careful editing and arrangement, it’s obviously quite brave to share this kind of raw, intimate, and in-progress work with the world. The resulting journey through the last two decades of Ware’s personal testing ground is nothing short of revelatory.

Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three is a beautiful object, bound with paper boards and a gold-embossed cloth spine. It’s also available in a handsome slipcase edition with the previous two volumes. And, there’s an empty slipcase for sale if you’ve been buying them along the way. If you’re a fan of Robert Crumb’s sketchbooks, who Ware explicitly cites in the introduction, or just curious about the process of creating comics, this book should definitely be on your list. In fact, you should probably just go ahead and get the other two as well.
(https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/acme-novelty-datebook-volume-three/)

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