Only a small number of copies from the first printing were signed.
Accompanied by the first French edition, translated by Anne Capuron (Paris, Éditions Delcourt, November 4, 2020), also a true first printing.
A sprawling graphic epic, Rusty Brown continues the meticulous and melancholic exploration of everyday life that established Chris Ware’s reputation as a major figure of the contemporary graphic novel.
Begun in the early 2000s and partially serialized in The Acme Novelty Library, Rusty Brown is the first volume of a vast choral work. Centered on a school in Omaha, Nebraska — Ware’s native state — the book follows the intersecting lives of Rusty, a solitary child obsessed with action figures, his classmate Chalky White, and their families and teachers, all over the course of a single day, while the narrative ranges across several decades of memories, frustrations and unfulfilled dreams.
Through a graphic construction of extraordinary precision, Ware brings together the present moment, memory and imagination. His first major book, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, received the Guardian First Book Award in 2001 — the first time it was awarded to a graphic novel — followed by the prize for best album at the Angoulême Festival in 2003. Angoulême honored him again in 2021 with the Grand Prix for his body of work, to which the Centre Pompidou devoted a major retrospective the following year, confirming Chris Ware’s central place in the contemporary graphic novel.
Both volumes in fine condition; a very fine and rare set.