![]() I say that last part only because, considering Chris’s talent as an artist/writer, his claims to uninterestingness during the course of our interview didn’t ring true. Jimmy isn’t just pathetic he’s damned.Ĭonversely, Chris Ware himself is a bright-eyed, bespectacled lad of twenty-six, possessed of an amiable demeanor, chirpy voice, and sense of humility almost bordering on shtick. Jimmy isn’t merely a Charlie Brown figure of amiable ridicule, he’s Tantalus and Sisyphus rolled into one, living in one of the most hellish urban environments this side of Dis. Through his own personal style (a style combining equal elements of nostalgia and hard-bitten reality) Ware reveals in Jimmy Corrigan that the simpler things in life aren’t gone they’re hiding, too scared to show their faces. Chris’s work has a meanness too, but it is simply a reflection of life’s meanness toward the world’s proles in particular Ware’s lead prole, Jimmy Corrigan, the purported Smartest Kid on Earth. They resonate with futility, depression, weltschmerz, and despair, stopping short of maudlin weepiness and too-cute-by-half preciousness. Unlike the usual refrigerator-door fodder tiling mainstream and alternative newspaper funny pages, Chris’s comics come across more as urban myths than cartoons. ![]() This is what I’ve learned from the work of Chris Ware. Moreover, sharks are swimming ’round and ’round the perimeter, attracted to the blood issuing from a heart ripped in two. ![]() Reprinted with permission.Įvery man, my friend, is an island. Of Mice and Men and Cat Heads Too!: An Interview with Cartoonist Chris WareĬhum Magazine vol. Brand-new interviews with both Chris and Marnie Ware conclude the volume. Candidly and humorously, she considers married life with a cartoonist in the house. An interview with Marnie Ware from 2000 makes for a delightful change of pace, as she offers a generous, supremely lucid attitude toward her husband and his work. Braithwaite has selected the best broadcasts and podcasts featuring the interview-shy Ware for this volume, including new transcriptions. Several of the earliest talks are reprinted from zines now extremely difficult to locate. They span Ware’s career from 1993 to 2015, creating a time-lapse portrait of the artist as he matures. Ware also remains a literary author of the highest caliber, spending many years to create thematically complex graphic masterworks such as Building Stories and the ongoing Rusty Brown.Įditor Jean Braithwaite compiles interviews displaying both Ware’s erudition and his quirky self-deprecation. Since the earliest issues of ACME Novelty Library in the 1990s, cartoonist peers have acclaimed Ware’s distinctive, meticulous visual style and technical innovations to the medium. His regular New Yorker covers give him a central place in our national cultural conversation. Like Art Spiegelman or Alison Bechdel, Ware thus stands out as an important crossover artist who has made the wider public aware of comics as literature. In 2002 Ware was the first cartoonist included in the Whitney Biennial. The Guardian First Book Award for Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth was the first major UK literary prize awarded for a graphic novel. 1967) has achieved some noteworthy firsts for comics.
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