In each story in the entirety of Rusty Brown, there are key passages where the narrator tells us that their memories of a particular period are fuzzy. One of the central themes of the sci-fi story and Woody’s own reverie is the way emotional trauma muddies memories, and, by association, muddies identity. The dialogue she utters on the page is missing in the actual prose that’s revealed at the end. For example, the unnamed wife of Rusty the explorer has brown hair on the page, but she is described as a redhead. Key details on the page are slightly different. Thus, when the reader is presented with his science-fiction story, “The Seeing-Eye Dogs Of Mars,” it’s through Woody’s mind’s eye years later. It’s important to understand that Woody’s chapter is mostly a reverie, as he relives and reconstructs events in a highly subjective and unreliable way. He’s thrown for a loop when he meets Alice White, who bears a resemblance to his old lover. He can’t let go of the nameless woman with whom he had a toxic and intoxicating relationship, nor could he ever begin to understand her. He is someone who believes that things happen to him, rather than understanding how his own sense of agency affects others. In the introduction of Rusty Brown, Woody Brown is presented as a casually cruel and befuddled man who is profoundly shocked by the passage and ravages of time. At the same time, he never lets the characters off the hook for their cruelties and bad decisions, especially Woody and Jordan. Each of these characters, on the surface, is vastly different, but Ware creates empathy for them by emphasizing both the ways in which their memories betray them and by showing the similarities of their traumas. In this volume, he uses different narrative techniques to tell the stories of Woody, Jordan, and Joanne. Ware digs into these connections by exploring memory and its connection to identity - especially the ways in which it’s fallible. They are all connected through a location, an elementary school, and the long introduction that comprises Rusty Brown spins the first strands of their infrequent but decades-long interactions. They are Rusty, Chalky, Chalky’s older sister Alice, Jordan, Woody, Rusty’s teacher Joanne Cole, and “Chris Ware,” a version of the artist who becomes a high school art teacher. The unifying concept is a huge, sprawling narrative that extends back and forth in time involving seven people. That includes bully/victims like Rusty, his dad Woody (a teacher), and frequently repulsive bully Jordan Lint.
The Rusty Brown graphic novel, the first half of which was published in 2019, is Ware’s most ambitious comic in part because he’s seeking to understand and empathize with a wide swathe of human experience.
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