Rusty Brown

　　漫畫與圖像小說指標獎項─艾斯納獎Eisner Awards、哈維獎Harvey Awards常勝者，創作大師克里斯‧威爾〈Chris Ware〉繼《Building Stories》、《Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth》風格鮮明、跳脫框架的閱讀體驗，讀者引頸期盼的新作終於來了！

　　領銜主演：魯斯迪‧布朗〈Rusty Brown〉、其父親伍迪〈Woody〉、好友朝奇‧懷特（Chalky White〉、藝術教師威爾〈Ware〉、語言教師喬安妮‧科爾（Joanne Cole）……20世紀70年代，這些生活在內布拉斯加州奧馬哈市的人們，有著專屬於自己的煩惱和快樂。

　　魯斯迪‧布朗〈Rusty Brown〉住在中西部一個白雪皚皚的郊區，過著安靜絕望的生活。他沉迷於超女〈Supergirl〉這樣的漫畫英雄，並確信用她的熱視覺可以融化雪。對他而言，最重要的事就是在降雪後的安靜時光中，他是否發展出超級聽覺。而他的父親伍迪〈Woody〉本為科幻作家，現在擔任英文教師，和一位恰好也叫威爾〈Ware〉的藝術教師是同事，但伍迪〈Woody〉只有抽煙時，和在教師休息室喝咖啡時，才會感到開心。朝奇‧懷特（Chalky White〉是魯斯迪‧布朗〈Rusty Brown〉最好的朋友，他原先也是一個小小收藏家，但隨著時光流逝，成為大人的他，決定把這一切都塵封起來。語言教師喬安妮‧科爾（Joanne Cole），則是一位在貧困中長大的黑人女性，她喜歡彈奏班卓琴，對音樂、教育和人生都堅持不懈……。這些看似錯落的人物和故事，保持著各自的獨立，又有緊密的關聯。他們皆以奇特和引人注目的方式纏繞交錯，依照自己的河道流動，卻又在某處匯集，形成這個城市裡最平凡也最美麗的風景。

　　克里斯‧威爾〈Chris Ware〉善於使用鮮明逼真的畫面，搭配細緻的故事內容，讓人物更加立體。他同時講述好幾個故事，以生命和時間的本質作為底蘊，特寫人與人之間的關係，更聚焦於書中人物的孤獨，繪製出挫折中共鳴的迴聲，例如他筆下兩個不同的角色，相隔數十年，都有同一個動作：將花放在一碗水中。這些如同電影畫面般的呼應，以及故事裡人物的悲喜，都將看似平凡的生活提煉為深刻、難忘和真實的情節。（文/博客來編譯）

A major graphic novel event more than 18 years in progress: part one of the ongoing bifurcated masterwork from the brilliant and beloved author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Building Stories.

Rusty Brown is a fully interactive, full-color articulation of the time-space interrelationships of three complete consciousnesses in the first half of a single midwestern American day and the tiny piece of human grit about which they involuntarily orbit. A sprawling, special snowflake accumulation of the biggest themes and the smallest moments of life, Rusty Brown literately and literally aims at nothing less than the coalescence of one half of all of existence into a single museum-quality picture story, expertly arranged to present the most convincingly ineffable and empathetic illusion of experience for both life-curious readers and traditional fans of standard reality. From childhood to old age, no frozen plotline is left unthawed in the entangled stories of a child who awakens without superpowers, a teen who matures into a paternal despot, a father who stores his emotional regrets on the surface of Mars and a late-middle-aged woman who seeks the love of only one other person on planet Earth.

Author

CHRIS WARE

　　CHRIS WARE is widely acknowledged to be the most gifted and beloved cartoonist of his generation by both his mother and fourteen-year-old daughter. His Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth won the Guardian First Book Award and was listed as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade by The Times (London) in 2009. Building Stories was named a Top Ten Fiction Book of the Year in 2012 by both The New York Times and Time magazine. Ware is an irregular contributor to The New Yorker, and his original drawings have been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and in piles behind his worktable in Oak Park, Illinois. In 2016 he was featured in the PBS documentary series Art 21: Art in the 21st Century, and in 2017 an eponymous monograph of his work was published by Rizzoli.