Comic book readers have their fair share of fetishisms, and writer/artist/colourist/auteur Chris Ware seems only to encourage them with his ‘Acme Novelty Library’ series. Each issue comes with its own unique design and packaging, and is printed in limited numbers (also enabling it to be re-sold for an exorbitant price on eBay). Issue number 20, ‘Lint’, is no exception, with its eye-catching floral cover design and gold lettering.
Each page of ‘Lint’ recounts an episode from the life of its protagonist, Jordan/Jason Lint, starting at birth, ending at death, and with a whole lot of sexual imagery in between. It may sound linear; however it is anything but, as Ware’s choice of images and words hide as much as they reveal, and they are arranged across the page in such a way that it is not always clear which panel follows from which. Images from the past intrude upon the present, and often to disturbing effect. Lint makes a number of wrong turns in his life: from schoolyard bully to pothead musician… to worse; still he is a somewhat more sympathetic figure than Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp or Clowes’ Wilson, for he has less of an inflated sense of his own importance, and seems more regretful than they do for the damage he causes. (Also, he is drawn in the soft, fattish sad-sack manner in which Ware tends to depict his protagonists.) ‘Lint’ may take less than an hour to read, but by the end of it you will feel you know this man better than characters you have read about hundreds of more times.
So that’s the end of my brief look at comics’ brush with the literary establishment. Nothing to do now but sit and wait for that Green Lantern movie.
Images copyright Drawn & Quarterly
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