Rusty Brown

(Pantheon, $ 35) “Chris Ware can do seemingly anything with a comics page,” said Isaac Butler in Slate.com, “Anything, that is, except portray a recognizable human being.” In his latest book, about two high school outcasts in 1970s Omaha, the celebrated graphic novelist offers his signature mix of “astounding” visual invention and bleak worldview. Though he very nearly succeeds here in visually capturing how we experience time, “Ware pushes the miserabilism so hard that it comes to feel like self-parody.”