Chris Ware - C or D?

If by "nice," you mean extremely shy and therefore polite by default. I met him after a Chicago Humanities Festival lecture a couple years ago: I was pleased that when he left, he did the anemic indie-boy goodbye wave, hand close to chest, like Dick in High Fidelity. A couple days later at the Festival, he was on a panel of comix creators (Spiegelman, Eisner, Katchor, Gaiman, McCloud) and answered questions by first putting his head down on the table and shielding his eyes with his hands before whispering into the microphone. Of course, after a while, you begin to wonder if it's a shtick.

I would argue that there are certain titles put out by Marvel and DC which are quality. I don't really go for indie comics after wasting a good chunk of change on one of the newer versions of "Strangers In Paradise" and not feeling any type of investment or interest in the characters, their issues or their lives.

the middlebrow indie comic is the bane of my existence.

Explain why this comic is worse than ElfQuest.

classic, motherfuckers.

Surprised I didn't say more on this thread earlier, though I know I've praised Ware elsewhere on here in the past. Oddly enough I find myself thinking along the lines of Jess more now, though I'm still deeply impressed by his talents and by Jimmy Corrigan as a whole. I think, however, there's a willful disregard/disdain for the 'modern day' which ultimately grates on me. That Ware was able to capture a Chicago now beyond living memory in the World's Fair section was wonderful -- it made reading The Devil in the White City much more lively. But so much of his approach seems to rely on an ill-disguised (and often not disguised at all) feeling that anything made after 1940 is questionable -- I think it makes his older characters much more interesting than his younger ones, because he has a greater affinity for them, but playing the 'I am out of sync with my time' card becomes a crutch. God knows what he would do if you ever confronted him with an iPod filled with music created solely in the last five years.

I wish he did some other things too. Like a space adventure comic or something.

Well, there was Rocket Sam...sorta.

You wanna borrow my copy of Floyd Farland, Citizen of the Future? It's super rare! He had most of the run pulped.

Anyway, yeah, I can dig that. I hope that he isn't simply making all his stuff about people dissappointed in their lives because he thinks that's what will get him critical acclaim as serious literature. And let's face it, it's worked so far, so it's understandable that he's felt reinforcement to continue in that direction.

But from reading his work for decades now, and from the Rayburn book, and so forth, I think that he's actually more interested in being a formal innovator than anything else. Content may be a secondary consideration to form for him.

...and then there was ILC.

Well, there was Rocket Sam...sorta.

There was totally Rocket Sam! And also the long long Superman storyline in the new book, c'mon.

let's spread the love a little bit.

Plus the comics section in my Barnes & Noble is at least 50% manga; if you want to hate on someone, hate on the Japanese.

I guess one of these days I'll maybe learn to dig manga, but so much of what I see is all the same and boring.

His OTT packaging is so far from serious that it can't even see the light of serious! hundreds of jokes! COMIC STRIPS ON THE EDGE OF THE COVERS ffs.

Why did they make Jimmy Corrigan look like he was 80? He looked older than his dad.

I think this was one of the major things holding me back from enjoying Jimmy Corrigan.

http://m.assetbar.com/achewood/autaux?b=M%5ea11f09b8576e606bcb5038dfdb92fb821&u=http%3A%2F%2Fachewood.com%2Fcomic.php%3Fdate%3D01112008

i thought for sure this was why you revived

he's drawn to look real old because he's such an outcast and is not really a part of his generation, surely? He wears old man clothes also.

And yeah, i assumed you were reviving for achewood too.

But how am I supposed to know he's not real old if he looks real old? I was seriously confused on how old he was until he met his dad, basically, and that is a long way into the book.

I was going to ask, too, "And where the hell does he buy those Mr. Toad clothes?" but it's a comic so that would be a silly question.

there are clues here and there like he still has a mum, and there's a reference to him being middleaged near the start of the book. but honestly i think it was intentional, he's so crippingly awkward he's not good at being any age so why reveal it.

He's a child when he speaks to his mum, he's sort of an old man at work, his coworker colleague talks to him like a man in his sexual prime but he's none of those he just sort of exists.

I'm surprised that not knowing his age annoys people!

for some reason i just grabbed the acme novelty libary from my shelves and read it all. Rusty Brown and Chalky White just stunning stuff, heavy at times but had to keep reading to see where it would all end up.

And Jimmy Corrigan is great, I need to re-purchase this after giving it away as a gift.

Anyone see that Chris Ware mural or facade or whatever above that gallery in the Mission? If it's not his then it's obviously in tribute, with Quimby-type mouses and empty word balloons all over the thing.

Rusty Brown and Chalky White just stunning stuff, heavy at times but had to keep reading to see where it would all end up.

how did you get back here to post, shouldn't you still be reading until 2015 or something?

I never, ever get the point of this guy ever.

xp you mean above the pirate store? pretty sure that's him, since that store is mcsweeney's headquarters or something

Oh Jesus Christ it figures.

stoked, just purchased.

>Chris told me that's me in the upper right. My mother in law framed it for me for father's day!

Josh, that's *great*, a lovely thing to be part of :)

I'm hoping to get the box set for my birthday this week, it looks fantastic laid out like that.

yes that's amazing josh!

you're the one with the baby harness/papoose thing?

looking forward v much to this - ware has been doing a lot of press for this, but wondering if anyone has asked him abt The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson yet

yeah holy shit josh!, that's so lovely. what a lovely way to carry on existing somewhere.

will try to get hold of this somehow, i can't buy it yet but i want it bad. i'm super psyched for the new charles burns, too.

First ever coffee table book that's about the size and weight of a coffee table.

wait, what is?

check z s' pic!

I've held the box though, and it's not even the size of a D&Q Moomin collection

holy fucking shit does that look awesome. this guy really gives you value for your dollar.

(xpost, brain kept firing)

it's not even close to the Quimby or Book Of Jokes collections!

let alone Ninja or So Many Splendid Sundays [or any of Maresca's other books] or George Sprott or Wally Wood's EC Stories [or any of the other IDW Artists Editions] or Wednesday Comics or (to cite something from the new Ware) Kramer's 7 or Paris Soirees or Les Yeux Du Chat.

(or even the Stray Bullets hardcovers or Picturebox's Panter monograph or Fanta's Gahan Wilson Playboy collection, or their Dedini collection for that matter. and that's just comics, not actual coffee table books - half the Taschen line and those LaChappelle semi-boxed volumes are immdiately twice the size of Building Stories....)

http://cdn.publishme.se/cdn/5-2/32622/images/2010/coffee_tables_15_68179312.jpg

http://www.chrisrand.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/smith-and-jones-coffee-table-book.jpg

^ back cover was printed with fitted screw-holes in the corners

xpost Yeah, that's me with the Baby Bjorn. The weird thing is, so many of the subtle details are exactly right, down to the age span between my two daughters, one's blue crocs and blonde hair, etc., ... but exactly right three or four years ago. I wonder if he took a picture? Sketched it up and held onto it until he had a use for it? Very mysterious, the way the guy works. That's genius for you.

I found his knowledge and recall of old school New Yorker covers remarkable:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/mothers-day-the-women-cover-artists-of-the-new-yorker.html#slide_ss_0=1

this is fking huge! i'm torn between "can't wait to start" and "where the hell do i start?" and, as a result it has sat in it's massive box untouched. I have to say though that this is a beautiful object and a bargain at amazon prices.

Joe McCullogh posted a suggested reading order if you really want one

yes please. although i may disregard it.

http://joglikescomics.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/building-stories-suggested-reading-order.html

thanks, sic.

haha, never knew about this:

Fortune 500 cover

In 2010, Ware designed the cover for Fortune magazine's "Fortune 500" issue, but it was rejected.[21] Ware had mentioned the work at a panel at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo on April 16, as first noted in an April 20 blog post by Matthew J. Brady.[22] The cover, featuring the circle-shaped humans common in Ware's more broadly socially satirical comic-strips, turned the numbers 500 into skyscrapers looming over the continental United States. On the roofs, corporate bosses drink, dance, and sun themselves as a helicopter drops a shovelful of money down for them. Below, among signs reading "Credit Default Swap Flea Market," "Greenspan Lube Pro," and "401K Cemetery," a helicopter scoops money out of the US Treasury with a shovel, cars pile up in Detroit, and flag-waving citizens party around a boiling tea kettle in the shape of an elephant. In the Gulf of Mexico, homes are sinking, while hooded prisoners sit in Guantanamo, a "Factory of Exploitation" keeps going in Mexico, China is tossing American dollars into the Pacific, and the roof of bankrupted Greece's Treasury has blown off. A spokesperson for the magazine only said that, as is their practice, they had commissioned a number of possible covers from different artists, including Ware.[23] Brady wrote in his blog that Ware said at the panel he "accepted the job because it would be like doing the [cover for the] 1929 issue of the magazine".[22]

He recently wrote a neat piece on the Laura Ingalls Wilder books... I think it was on The Millions site?