Chris Ware - Rusty Brown - Ear-Man

First published in "Newcity" on the 17th of January 2002.





Exhibited in Basel at the expo "Chris Ware: Paper Life" (2023).
Chris Ware - reluctantly - let met take a picture with his art at the Basel Exhibition.



In Monograph you can see a glimpse of this page - in situ - at Chris Ware's Chicago Oak Park residence...



"The week after I finished the last page of Jimmy Corrigan I immediately started a new long story based on characters who had originated as parodies, but whom now I wanted to humanize… amidst a setting of memories of my Omaha childhood and Nebraska upbringing." (Chris Ware, Monograph)

Chris Ware already used the characters of Rusty Brown and Chalky White (and himself) in a series of gags published in Newcity (in 1998) and the ACME Novelty Library #10.

"Because I am a terrible writer, almost all of my stories seem to start this way, i.e. as a satire or gag which then somehow metastasizes into something serious, grave and depressing — sort of like saying "just kidding" to someone when you really mean what you're saying. I’m not sure if this working method is due to my lack of innate confidence or some other psychological problem, but then again it seems to have worked for other authors, like Flaubert‘s Madame Bovary and Melville‘s Moby-Dick, both of which were, I believe, born of satire but ended up at very different finish lines."
https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/stories/chris-ware-rusty-brown?utm_source=chatgpt.com


With a Chris Ware cameo...
Is the Chris Ware teacher character the you you might have been or the you you occasionally want to be?
"He’s just the biggest jerk in the book, and I figured I might as well own him as much as possible, even if whatever his convictions and beliefs are have nothing to do with mine. Incidentally, those pages were drawn for your publication way back in 2002, which is sobering."
https://lit.newcity.com/2019/09/19/fall-arts-preview-the-monumental-life-and-inconsequential-times-of-rusty-brown-as-told-by-chris-ware/


You can see my other Rusty Brown art here:
- Adventures of the G.I. Jim Action Club
https://www.2dgalleries.com/art/chris-ware-adventures-of-the-g-i-jim-action-club-47656
- Rusty Brown - Stephanie and Alice in Class
https://www.2dgalleries.com/art/chris-ware-rusty-brown-32430
- Rusty Brown - Woody Brown in garage; Alice White footnotes
https://www.2dgalleries.com/art/chris-ware-rusty-brown-woody-brown-in-garage-alice-white-footnotes-177598