Acme Novelty Library No.18 - Chris Ware

It goes without saying that Chris Ware's latest instalment of his on-going, continually evolving work is as beautifully designed and packaged as ever, as much as it is evident that the tone is the familiar one of almost overwhelming regret and sadness for past mistakes, creating a sense of self-pity that prevents his characters from moving forward or even being able to fully appreciate their present lives.

That sense of past, present and future combined is ambitiously tackled here in ANL book 18 by Ware in a way that can perhaps only really be accomplished graphically, not just relying on the standard of flashbacks, but having all time periods operating almost simultaneously, and often viewed from the perspective of an apartment building - shown in typical Ware cutaway - where the protagonist, a young woman with one leg amputated below the knee lives. Her life is similarly dissected with surgical graphic precision and laid out in cut-away on the page.

The sense of narrative flow in the first half of the novel (and the work is certainly novelistic in its scope) soon gives way to those temporal experiments in repetition and patterns in the latter half over several overlaid events and their locations. Ambitious though it may be, it doesn't really succeed in adding any greater depth to the situation, but it's remarkable to see an artist even attempting something this original and distinctive within the medium.