Acme Novelty Datebook Volume Three [Hardcover]

The third and final installment of the artist's facsimile sketchbook series.

After over fifteen years deferral, delay and dawdling, the ink-and-paper cheerleader F. C. Ware finally succumbs to imaginary public pressure by concluding his tiresome experiment in reader trust with the third and final volume of secret notebooks and sketches spanning over thirty-seven years of bus rides, airport delays and telephone hold music.

Exquisitely crafted fine art doodles, hand-selected meanderings and artisanal rewritings of personal conflict are scattered throughout comic strips unconsciously revealing private hostilities and unflattering portraits of public transportation riders, the whole carefully cleansed of any impugnable or litigious tracery. As a professional adult-picture-book drawer and regular contributor to the New Yorker, Le Monde and the Illinois Cook County Assessors office, Mr. Wares work in these pages secures his reputation as an reliably unreliable self-narrator, willing to say or write anything to win petty disputes and imagined squabbles.

208 full-color pages augmented by annotations, introduction and a professional apology, with paper boards and cloth spine of misleading demureness to conceal its native prurience.A completely unique kind of comics memoir... Wares work is always formally diverse but here thats even more true than in his fiction, to the readers great benefit. Sam Thielman, The New York Times Book Review, Best Graphic Novels of 2024

A beautifully constructed collection of his sketchbooks. Jacob Brogan, The Washington Post

A gorgeously printed, lovingly curated exhibition of Wares short-form work and sketches. Chris Barsanti, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Genius unplugged& a refreshing and illuminating departure. Rob Salkowitz, Forbes&l0