Chris Ware - Rusty Brown - Woody Brown in garage; Alice White footnotes

Chris Ware in Monograph:
"The introductory chapter of Rusty Brown contains two concurrently running narrative threads, one presented as a footnote at the base of each page detailing the experiences of Chalky white and his sister Alice at exactly the same moments as the events presented above.
The idea of a split page goes all the way back to the first daily strip I drew in The Daily Texan, as well as the potato man donut story, to say nothing of, once again, George Herriman's original conception of Krazy Kat as a separate running narrative below The Family Upstairs."




"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


Exhibited in Antwerps at Grafixx (2023).


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 - Ear-man
https://www.2dgalleries.com/art/chris-ware-rusty-brown-ear-man-69434